How to Know Whether Your Bible Study was a Success

I want to believe that what I do matters, especially when I’ve put in much time and effort. Don’t you?

And when we lead Bible studies, our common temptation is to measure success in all the wrong ways:

• Did a lot of people come? Is the group growing? (Acts 19:29-41)
• Was the meeting exciting? (1 Kings 18:28-29)
• Did I faithfully speak the truth? (Job 5:8-16, quoted approvingly by Paul in 1 Cor 3:19)
• Did I follow all the steps and have the right interpretation? (Luke 10:25-29)
• Do people feel close to each other? (Gen 11:1-9)
• Are defenses being lowered? (Gen 3:1-7)
• Are people learning? (2 Tim 3:6-7)

Bernard Goldbach (2011), Creative Commons

When I call these the “wrong ways” to measure success, I’m not suggesting any of them are bad things. Merely that they are not the main things. If these things happen, then praise God! But unless the main thing happens, the study was not yet a success.

The main measure of success

What is the main thing? I addressed it early in this series when I explained the main reason to attend a Bible study. I now return to the same goal for evaluating success:

As a result of the study, do people know God better through his Son Jesus Christ?

If you remained faithful to the truth, there’s a good chance you led them to the one who is the Truth. But if you didn’t incarnate love in the process, you made much noise without making an impact. That’s not success.

If a lot of people came and felt comfortable with each other, but their affections and lives weren’t conformed further to Christ’s image, you may have merely accelerated their slide into hell.

If very few people came and you’re patting yourself on the back for standing fast as one of the only truly faithful ones in the land, it might be time to work on sweetening your speech and adding persuasiveness to your lips.

If people learned a lot, terrific. Did the increased knowledge increase their love for God and bolster their commitment to submit to Christ the Lord?

Yeah, but how do you measure it?

You may commit yourself to helping people know God through his Son Jesus Christ. It feels great to make such a commitment, but it still feels vague and idealistic. How do you know whether it’s happening? What is the visible evidence of such success?

In his book Growth Groups, Colin Marshall gives the following diagnostic indicators of a healthy small group. These indicators are most helpful when we remember they are secondary. That is, they don’t define success; they show that success is possible. If these indicators are present, the group might be healthy, and we can get close enough to people to evaluate their progress in knowing God. If these indicators aren’t present, the group is probably not healthy, and we probably can’t get close enough to people to know.

1. Ownership: each member belongs to the group. People have commitment to the group and concern for the group’s welfare.
2. Participation: high levels of involvement in discussion. People prepare for the meeting, engage with the discussion, and/or interact deeply with the text.
3. Openness: honesty in self-disclosure. People feel safe to celebrate success, confess failure, and commit to personal change.
4. Service: each member using their gifts. People trust each other and all pitch in. They don’t rely on the leader to do all the work.
5. Achievement: the group goals are being achieved. People pray and work to the end that they would know Christ more and that others would come to know Christ.

I appreciate Marshall’s diagnostic, because it gives me a way to measure the overall health of the group. But, as with a healthy human body, it’s possible to look healthy on the outside without truly being healthy. But with ownership, participation, openness, service, and achievement, our chances are good of peeling back the layers and captivating people’s hearts.