Introduction:

Best Weigh is a 10-week educational and evangelistic weight management program that is conducted in Seventh-day Adventist churches. In addition to nutritional and spiritual lectures up to half the session is spent in small groups that are facilitated by church members. Best Weigh was developed by Elvin Adams, MD with the help of others in the field of nutrition and medicine. Best Weigh is currently owned and distributed by Eric Nelson, MD. enelson06m@gmail.com

All Best Weigh Materials are Available on a USB Drive:

Helper’s Guide (A guide for each church member who is a small group leader.)

Participant’s Workbook (Each person who registers gets new handouts each session)

Nutritional Lectures (10 PowerPoint presentations)

Spiritual Lecture Outlines (Pastor’s Presentations)

Advertising Kit (Brochures, handouts, bulletin inserts, letters, spot ads, etc.)

Forms (Name tags, labels for Workbook and Helpers Guide, Registration, Progress Card, etc.) “Rachel’s Recipes” Handouts

Introduce Best Weigh to the Pastor:

It is important that the pastor be fully supportive of Best Weigh. There is a spiritual lecture for the Pastor to give during each session. If the pastor is cool on the idea or has other evangelistic activities on the calendar it is best to postpone Best Weigh until some later date.

Introduce Best Weigh to the Church Board:

Once Best Weigh has the support of the pastor it would be good to put it on the agenda for a regular Church Board meeting. Here Best Weigh can be introduced to the leaders of the church for their consideration and support. The Board may have suggestions as to when to start the program and how it would fit into the overall church calendar.

Introduce Best Weigh to the Church as a Whole:

This could take place on a Sabbath during the announcement period between Sabbath School and Church. Take a few minutes and describe Best Weigh. It is important to stress that Best Weigh is evangelistic in that it brings our neighbors and friends into the church and helps them with the real physical problem of obesity. Best Weigh introduces people to Jesus as the one who helps us change behaviors.

It may be appropriate to have the whole sermon for the day on healthful living and the responsibility we have to eat and live right in sight of God who is our helper in all things. At this introduction of Best Weigh to the church it is important to announce the date and time of the first organizational meeting. Ideally, this would be on the same Sabbath afternoon or during the coming week.

Stress with church members that the success of Best Weigh depends on the number of church members who volunteer to help. The number of people allowed to enroll will be limited to a

proportion of Best Weigh helpers. In other words, there is NOT an open enrollment for Best Weigh. People will need to register before the program begins to reserve a place in the program. If there are only 10 helpers for small groups, the enrollment will be limited to the first 35 who call and register. We don’t want to have people come to a Seventh-day Adventist church and not be able to get close to them by providing individual attention to their problem.

Organizational Meetings:

There should be three organizational meetings before the Best Weigh program begins. The meetings should be held once a week at the same time as the proposed Best Weigh program. If church members have trouble coming out at that time, it is likely they will have trouble coming out to Best Weigh. The first half of an organizational meeting should be spent in an interactive devotion and prayer. The second half in reviewing job descriptions and getting volunteers for each position that is needed to conduct Best Weigh.

If there is a shortage of helpers and jobs are unfilled it may be necessary to call specific individuals on the phone to see if they will help. If too few church members volunteer, you may have a very small Best Weigh program, or you may want to postpone Best Weigh until it can receive more support from the church.

First Organizational Meeting:

All should be welcomed to the meeting and open with a short prayer. There should be a short devotional. This should be followed by giving a reading assignment for the second organizational meeting. Each person should study several Bible texts that you assign, and each person should read the chapter, “In Contact with Others” from Ministry of Healing, p 483-496.

Each person should underline or copy the phrase, sentence or paragraph that gives them the most instruction on how to be kind and supportive of those who come to Best Weigh for help. At the second organizational meeting the devotion will consist of a roundtable presentation of the key thoughts identified by each person who completed the reading assignment. You may need to have extra copies of Ministry of Healing for those who do not have this book. Or you may make photocopies of the relevant chapters to hand out to those who don’t have this book.

Once the devotional has been completed there is time for a season of prayer. It is important to ask the Lord to begin to work on the minds and hearts of those in the community who would benefit from Best Weigh. Prayer should be offered for the helpers that they may be prepared to give unconditional love and support to those who come for help.

After the season of prayer, it is time to distribute the blank Job Description Entry Forms (see page 12 for a copy). Each person should have a copy. There is a copy in the Helpers Guide but those who aren’t going to be group leaders will need this list. You can briefly review the kinds of help that are needed. Following this blank form are brief job descriptions. Make copies of specific jobs for those who are new to Best Weigh.

It is most important, at this very first organizational meeting, to identify those who are going to be small group leaders. There should be two people assigned as group leaders for each group. It is best if a husband and wife NOT be assigned to the same group. If there were to be a family emergency, it might be necessary for the couple to miss a Best Weigh session. If the couple were in separate groups, the remaining group leaders could handle the group alone for one week. If the couple were leading one group, that group would be without familiar leadership for a session which may be disruptive.

It is important to stress that the number of community members assigned to each group will be limited to a maximum of 8 (eight) participants per group. This number is likely to decrease slightly over the first couple of weeks of the program to about 6 (six) participants, which is an ideal size for a small group.

Once again, the enrollment for Best Weigh should be limited to a proportion of church members who volunteer to be group leaders. The number of groups you will have during Best Weigh should be determined during this first organizational meeting. If you can recruit 10 church members to be group leaders, that would call for the formation of five small groups. If you limited each group to a maximum of eight community participants that would allow for a registration of (5X8=40) forty people.

Once you know how many people can be registered, you can use this number in your promotion of the program in the church and the community. Registration is limited in this example to the first 40 people who register for the program. You should determine who will do the registering of these people. What phone number will you use? If the number of registrants exceeds 40 it will be necessary to offer them a spot on the next Best Weigh program. Do they want to be on a waiting list to be notified of the next program?

The next most important task for the first organizational meeting is to determine what kinds of advertising should be done. In some areas print media are useful for advertising Best Weigh. Increasingly social media are effective means of advertising. Radio and TV advertising have usually not produced significant results.

Brochures should be printed that include the dates, limits of registration, the phone number or website for pre-registration and a map on how to get to your church. You may design your own brochure, but a Best Weigh brochure is in the Forms folder that can be modified to fit your situation.

Brochures should be made available on Sabbath for church member to distribute to their obese neighbors and friends. Send a letter to some of the primary care doctors in the community and enclose a few of your brochures. Doctors are a good source of referrals to weight loss programs. See the Best Weigh Advertising Kit for additional promotional materials.