Darryl Wilson

I graduated from Belmont University (BA, 1982) and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (MDiv/CE, 1985 and EdD, 2003). Since 1997, I have served God and the 2,300+ churches of the Kentucky Baptist Convention as the Sunday School & Discipleship Consultant. These years followed 14 years of church staff experiences in Kentucky and South Carolina, adding passion for the church, discipleship, and Sunday School.

I have taught Sunday School since age nineteen. I began The Sunday School Revolutionary blog in 2006. I currently serve on the Faculty and Academic Council for Rockbridge Seminary. My wife and I have two sons (and daughter-in-laws) and seven grandchildren. For fun I enjoy reading, golf, chess, family, and the beach.

BOOKS: In addition to the books I have written, I have contributed to these: How to Sunday School Manual; Be a Catalyst: Start New Groups; Lead Your Group; and 100 SMALL Sunday School Changes That Make a BIG Difference.

KEY STORY: I began teaching a class which had been taught by a well-loved teacher. The former teacher moved to another church to support his adult children in their return to church. After lecturing the first two weeks (like the former teacher), I rearranged the chairs the third week into horseshoes of six chairs.

Each week for eight weeks, I launched the lesson by helping them to see why the lesson was important and reading scripture. Then I gave each horseshoe group an assignment. Each group worked on their assignment for 5-10 minutes. Then I called on the first group to share their report. After they finished, I asked the second to report, and so on.

Each group's assignment had questions asking about the scripture and background. A middle question asked what was the point/main truth of the scripture. And the final question asked what response God expected.

After two weeks of leading the lesson this way, I had three people from the group approach me before the lesson. They told me they liked my lecture method better than this method and asked me to go back to that method. I told them I was going to keep using the groups for six more weeks and then we would have a family meeting to talk about it. That satisfied the delegation who believed they would get their way after the six weeks.

The larger group moved from 4-6 participating verbally each week to nearly everyone participating each week in the horseshoes. After eight weeks of practicing this method of teaching, two people from the delegation approached me before the family meeting. They told me, "Thank you. We understand now. For the first time in our lives we now know how to do Bible study for ourselves." Needless to say, we continued using this method.

That is the reason I wrote, Discipling. The members of our groups are starving as Christians through the week because they do not know how to feed themselves from God's Word. Sunday School and small group Bible study sessions must open God's Word in such a way to enable group members to meet God in Bible study--so they learn to do so the rest of the week!