Step 1: Fruit
Ministry Starter Training

Focus:

• Personal growth and development by learning to hear God's voice, enabling you to find yourself and be yourself, so that you will experience God's will once and for all
• Learn how to develop your vision statement for ministry - almost guaranteeing your success as a Christian counselor
• Identify weak areas that would hinder your success and God's blessings upon your life through taking spiritual gifts and personal portrait assessments. This free $180 value will show you where and how God has blessed you. What is your #1 motivation in life?
• How to work with others successfully to generate more income and help more people
• Learn to hear the voice of God in every decision - from counseling others, networking with professionals, pastors, non-profit orgainzations to decisions that will affect you personally.

Step 2: More Fruit
Degree Program Training

Focus:

• Meditation - sitting at the feet of Jesus as He teaches you about yourself and how He is going to use you to help others
• Learn a simple but powerful method of helping others in 5 simple steps with a 95% success rate while earning a B.A., M.A., Ph.D., second Ph.D., and/or Certification and Licensure as a Temperament Counselor. This training is through a partnership with the National Christian Counselors Association and select schools.

Step 3: Much Fruit
Outreach and Networking with Abundant Life Christian Counseling

Focus:

• Joining the ranks - joining a team for maximum effectiveness. We are helping to establish counselors and counseling ministries throughout America and in other countries.
• Unlike most schools, the relationsihp does not end upon graduation. In many ways, it officially begins because you become an extention of our ministry and vision of helping others. We will do the following: 1) Pray for you and your ministry by putting you on our prayer list. 2) Be available to help with specific issues that relate to your ministry as you continue to grow and be blessed of God. 3) Free devotions on living successfully and free in Christ, etc.
  

Lamad

The Hebrew language uses one root (lamad) for the two words "to teach" and "to learn." In the Hebrew culture, the teacher has not taught unless the student has learned. All learning and teaching is ultimately to be found in the fear of the Lord. The goal of teaching is ultimately to be found in the fear of the Lord. The goal of teaching is not the impartation of facts but the changing of lives. For the Hebrew, knowledge (yadah) involves personal encounter and response to God's revelation.

Lamad Lifelong Learning

Learning is to be lifelong. It is impossible to cram education into the early years of our lives. Learning, transformation , assimilation, and creativity are lifelong matters, with extended periods of time being given to first one topic and then another, until one's giftedness has been multiplied many fold (Matt. 25:20).

Lamad Key Components

• Personal Encounter
• Spirit Encounter
• Life Encounter

The Greeks emphasized "detached information," while the Hebrews stressed "personal encounter." It was important to the Hebrews that each learner personally encounter and be transformed by what was before him. Spiritual encounter and response to the revelation of God is the central dynamic of Scripture. Life is the classroom. If we offer classes, we must make sure they are life encounters in which we practice truth.

Goal of Instruction

• Love
• Good Conscience
• Sincere Faith

Lamad learning recognizes the GOAL of our instruction is love from a pure heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith (I Tim. 1:5). You will notice that all of these are HEART realities. The mind is made to serve the heart. All training is to be heart-focused. Mankind has been FORBIDDEN to eat from the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil." Instead, he is to eat from the "Tree of Life," Jesus Christ!

Lamad Teaching Techniques

• Guided Self-discovery
• Revelation Knowledge
• Group Interaction

Personal encounter demands a teaching style of guided self-discovery, where the student is guided in his own uncovering of the truth. Lamad learning encourages the flow of revelation within the hearts of the students. Discovery often happens best in a lively interchange within the classroom. Therefore, effective group interaction must be promoted and guided by the lamad teacher.

The Abiding Realities

• Faith
• Hope
• Love

"Now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love" (I Cor. 13:13). Certain things are central to life and eternity; others are not. Anger, fear, and doubt are temporary and will be swallowed by love. The lamad curriculum constantly emphasizes the abiding realitites, instilling them in the lives of its students.

The Trinity

• Worship of God
• Life In Jesus
• Fellowship with the Holy Spirit

Man is to live caught in the flow of God. This is accomplished by lifting up our eyes in worship to the King, becoming consumed by His presence While we are in the Lord's presence, we acknowledge that we no longer live, but that Christ is our life, and the life we now live is by faith (Gal. 2:20). We live out of daily fellowship with the Holy Spirit, recognizing that everything done outside of divine flow is a dead work.

The Lamad Educational Format Offers The Following Unique Emphases:

1. We value the principle of hiding the Word in our hearts (Ps. 119:11) so highly that we require students to memorize a life-changing verse form the Bible in nearly every lesson of every course.
2. We value the principle of acting only according to the Father's initiative (John 5:30; 8:26; 14:10) so highly that we require students to hear from God personally in every lesson, and to record what He is saying to them.
3. We value the principle of writing for ourselves a copy of Scripture (Deut. 17:18-19) so highly that we require our students to write out Scriptures in nearly every lesson.

Memorization of the Bible, hearing from the Holy Spirit and writing our Scriptures are central to our training process.

Lamad system developed by Dr. Mark Virkler, President, Christian Leadership University. Permission granted to use material.