Beginning Experience Beginning Experience teams are transitioning now to offering the Beginning Experience Weekend program using materials that have been recently updated. The Beginning Experience Weekend Manual for Presenting Team and the Beginninng Experience Weekend Manual for Coordinators guide presentation of the ministry’s core grief resolution program. The materials are available under contract to Beginning Experience teams only.
Materials for teams in the Asia Pacific and Britain and Ireland regions are currently being reviewed by the respective Regional Boards for a “spelling, grammar and idiom.” Those boards will make any adaptations needed for ease of use in the countries they serve. The new manuals will be a feature of the 2013 Regional Conferences those two areas.
The Manual revisions have been a long time coming. The process began with a quesitonnaire sent to all teams asking for their experience with the previous material–what was clear, what was not, what seemed dated, and what should absolutely be kept. Recent grief process research was reviewed.
The next step was a half-day interactive workshop at the 2006 International Convention, with groups of team representatives addressing these questions more definitively. After a major portion of the material was re-written with these suggestions in mind, teams reviewed the draft material at a following convention and had their sugestions incorporated into the final edition. This process was repeated when the remaining materials were re-written.
A workshop at the 2012 Convention and several webinars introduced teams to the revisions in the program. This new version is more user friendly for teams of peer ministers as they prepare to present the program to their brothers and sisters in Christ who have experienced the end of a significant relationship.