A little book is making a big impact on the discipleship of new believers.
“First Letters: Basic Truths for a New Believer” by Larry Hyche is a plainly written Christian primer that explains the basics of the faith. Designed for someone who has little to no church background, the 72-page volume is becoming recognized as a valuable tool for communicating Christianity in simple terms.
The book originated with a series of letters that Hyche, a youth minister at the time, handwrote to a new believer. Each letter was written with the expectation that a related conversation would take place with a trusted Christian friend after the recipient read it.
“This journey started around 1999 when the Holy Spirit put on my heart that the personal connection of discipling was missing,” said Hyche. “I had never discipled anybody one-on-one, so I went to the pastor and asked to disciple the next person to get saved at our church.”
Danny
That next person was Danny, a former gang member who had recently moved from Virginia to Alabama to live with his grandmother. Before coming to Alabama, he had been involved with drugs as a user and a seller, and he had even tried to kill some people.
“Danny gave his life to Jesus, and I’m like, okay, that’s awesome,” said Hyche. “But at the same time, I’m thinking, ‘Oh no, Lord, what do I do?’ This guy’s background was completely opposite of mine.”
But when Hyche introduced himself to Danny and asked if they could get together and talk through what it means to be a Christian, Danny agreed. Hyche hit upon letter-writing as the way to proceed.
“I handwrote a letter to him once a week for six or seven weeks that gave him one of the basics of what it means to be a Christian — what church is, what prayer is and how to pray, who the Holy Spirit is, what salvation is, what baptism is. I couldn’t take it for granted that he knew about any of those things,” said Hyche.
“I was floored when one day he said, ‘Man, I take your letters, and I put them on my dashboard, and I read them during break or at lunch.’ Here was a young man who didn’t know anything about Jesus, and he was soaking up everything.”
Intentional discipleship
The two met weekly for seven weeks at a sandwich shop and walked through the letters together.
“He had questions, of course, and we never ran out of things to talk about,” said Hyche, “so we ended up meeting for over a year. That’s why in the back of the book, there’s a list of other topics in case a mentor and new believer decide to keep meeting.”
Hyche saved transcribed copies of the letters and over the years used them with his students. And in the process, he learned that while new believers obviously need God’s Word, they also need mentoring relationships with seasoned believers.
“I believe we as a church kind of falter with new believers,” said Hyche. “We’re not as intentional with them as we should be. We’re all so busy now and tend to ignore the relationship factor.”
When the state student ministry office decided to take its Speak conference on the road in the form of one-night Speak tours, Hyche realized a follow-up plan appropriate for students might be useful. He offered to put his letters to Danny in book form, and the offer was gladly accepted.
“We printed them in-house,” said Hyche, who now serves as a state missionary in the office of global missions focusing on men’s spiritual development. “I also wanted to use the letters for men’s ministry and to make them available to anybody, so we ended up putting them on Amazon. We also recently learned that ‘First Letters’ will be translated into to Spanish soon, which will allow us to reach out to new believers in the Hispanic community.”
Practical tool
Josh Meadows, a state missionary serving as a strategist in student ministry, distributes copies of the book at Speak tours to youth pastors and to every person at each event making a decision for Christ.
“This is one of the most practical follow-up tools for a new believer,” Meadows said. “I can’t keep them. Over and over youth pastors ask me, ‘Where can I get these?’ They tell me it’s the best resource they’ve found for discipling new believers, so I keep ordering more.”
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