The CEB Blog - February 2025

Baptist Training Heritage Maintained 

In the 1915 General Association of Baptist Churches, the report on Sunday Schools included a recommendation to the Sunday School Committee to create a new “training course suitable for the teachers in our Sunday Schools.” Early in the history of Missionary Baptists, our forebears recognized the profound importance of Christian education. They began a movement to provide Baptistic training literature which Bogard Press would later call Baptist Training Course. In the Winter 2024 quarter, the BSSC Baptist Training Course curriculum reached one hundred and eleven volumes, which historically coincides with this recommendation from the 1915 messenger meeting. 

 Beginning with the Spring 2025 quarter, Baptist Training Course will become Baptist Discipleship Series. The same Missionary Baptist-specific content will be provided in BDS, including materials written years ago by some of the greatest writers in the ABA. But you will notice a few changes which we think will make the material more user-friendly.  

1. Baptist Discipleship Series will continue with the same Missionary Baptist training content as BTC, but the books will now be undated and available for purchase after the end of each quarter, indefinitely. 
2. Because the material for Baptist Discipleship Series is the same BTC material that has been published in the past, each lesson will continue to be broken down into a numbered outline, providing ease of use in a classroom setting. 
3. The BTC Sponsor’s Guide will be discontinued due to declining sales, but we have placed much of the helpful information from the Sponsor’s Guide into each lesson of the BDS Adult Bible Study. Each lesson in the BDS Adult book will now also include Devotional Thoughts, Contemporary Application (now titled Making the Application) and Related Scripture (now titled Background Study) formerly included in the Sponsor’s Guide. 
4. Each Baptist Discipleship Series quarter will also be identified as fitting into one of four categories, depending on the topic of study: Doctrine, Foundation, Theology, Practice. This will make it easier for churches to find appropriate studies for their small groups and provide flexibility in each church since the studies are undated. 

Each quarter of the Baptist Discipleship Series includes an Adult Bible Study and Teen Bible Study covering the same biblical topics. We sincerely hope these updates to our cherished Baptist Training Course curriculum will assist you in your Christian education endeavors. We are doing our best to carry the torch of Baptist training among our churches, and we pray you will take advantage of these updated materials in your church.  

Respectfully submitted, 

Mark Clements 

Editor in Chief