Helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible
I just finished my annual speed-read of the Bible, so the contest I announced on December 28 is now closed. Two brave souls read the entire Bible and finished before me, winning a copy of Knowable Word and their choice of study Bible. May the rest of the year be filled with more fruitful time in Scripture for you!
Two of my daughters are 18 months apart in age. And Little Sis wants to try everything Big Sis does. Big Sis reads a book; Little Sis wants to read the same book. Big Sis plays a sport; Little Sis wants to try the same sport. Papa hurls Big Sis into the air during a playful tussle; Little Sis demands fellowship in behurlment.
Little Sis spouts her “Can I try?” mantra like a doll with a pull string, and her repetitive, invasive pushiness tempts most of her siblings past the brink of annoyance. Honestly, I’m tempted to be annoyed by it…until I remember how biblical it is.
The second stage of training a Bible study apprentice is “I do; you help.” In this stage, you invite the apprentice not only to watch you lead but also to lead along with you. You give the apprentice real responsibility, which is hard to do.
AlmazUK (2009), Creative Commons
But as you let that leash out, you run the risk of the apprentice coming up with ideas. And the apprentice may want to carry out some of those ideas. And some of those ideas will be dumb.
Let’s say you are God in the flesh, and you can master the elements of nature however you see fit. You are special, and there is nobody on earth like you. Though most human leaders feel indispensable, only you truly are indispensable. You can do things nobody else can do. In fact, you must do things nobody else can do.
So you go about your business, proving you are the Son of God and preparing to die for the sin of the world. And one night, during the fourth watch, you do the impossible, striding across the sea as though it were a stage for one of your grandest pronouncements: “Take heart; it is I.”
And suddenly, from the cheap seats, a pipsqueak chirps: “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” Yeah, he’s your top guy. Yeah, you’re training him for leadership in great things. You’ve let him begin to help with your ministry. But he’s still a pipsqueak, and it’s still a dumb idea. Shoot it down. Now.
“Come.” (Matt 14:25-33). What?!
My point is that none of us can out-risk Jesus. Unlike us, he would have succeeded by letting the world revolve around him. Of course, he did exactly that, after a fashion (Col 1:16-17). But unlike us, he quickly drew others in and relied on them to assist in the work. He had the courage to set them loose and let them try things.
He wouldn’t let them exact vengeance (Luke 9:51-56), and he never tolerated idleness (John 4:27, 35-38). But he constantly let them try things.
Jesus knew he was in control and could turn their mistakes into something beautiful. Our hope is the same: Jesus is in control and can turn mistakes into something beautiful. His resurrection guarantees his plan to make all things new, so we don’t have to fear failure on the part of immature or inexperienced apprentices. When we believe this good news, we’ll find the courage to let them try, and occasionally fail.
I’ve written before about how we must learn from the Bible before we’re qualified to teach it. Seminary professor Dan Doriani has similar thoughts. He writes to pastors, but his words apply equally to Bible study leaders, Sunday school teachers, and parents.
I especially appreciate the section where Doriani explains the stages of a ministry leader’s devotional life:
As we spend more time in ministry, we’ll be tempted to separate our study from our own application. We must not do this. We must keep pushing ourselves into that fifth stage.
Doriani’s article is worth reading for anyone who feels the tension between “ministry prep” Bible study time and “personal devotions” Bible study time.
Peter Rasmussen (2014), Creative Commons
In family life, we call them helicopter parents, because they hover close and swoop in when their wards need rescue. They keep younglings caged and well-padded. They argue over grades with college professors. They sit in on job interviews. They expect daily phone calls and pre-decision consultations.
And these “helicopter parents” run rampant also in Christian ministry. I confess: I am prone to be one of them. But by way of contrast, let me tell a few stories.
I know one guy who served the Lord in a previously unreached part of the world. This community tolerated monotheism, and some folks had been influenced by Jewish ideas. But they had never heard of Jesus or his saving work until this man arrived. His ministry got kicked out of its meeting place several times. He made a remarkable number of enemies. He was even abducted and brought before the local judge on charges of anarchy (thankfully, he was acquitted). But he stayed there for a total of 18 months, preaching and making disciples. When God called him elsewhere, he left a thriving church with regular worship services, a reputation for strong teaching, and a group of pastors and elders to shepherd them.
Did you hear that? This guy trained and launched leaders from unbelief, through conversion, and into competent shepherding in 18 months! If someone new came to my Bible study, I might not even let them lead a prayer time in 18 months. I care too much to allow such reckless indiscretion.
Another fellow in my acquaintance focused on itinerant ministry. He gathered a few trainees about him and poured himself into them, while he hit the preaching circuit. I was amazed by his ability to turn absolutely anything into an object lesson. He coached, explained things, served people, and let his apprentices participate and practice. Within a few years, he began booking his apprentices to preach on his behalf.
While I appreciated the multiplying ministry, I also had significant concerns here. A few of these apprentices didn’t yet have a clear Christology (doctrine of Christ). They hadn’t gone to seminary or received any other formal theological training. But this missionary was convinced their syllabus for learning needed a good proportion of teaching to help them progress faster in their training. It was pretty risky and almost created a disaster.
Why is it so hard for me (and perhaps for you) to let people go, to send them out and let them try their hand at ministry? Why do we hover, hang on to responsibility, and pass things off with stalwart reluctance?
Of course, there are many possible answers. But the main reason for me is that I fear failure. It’s the same reason I hated group projects as a student. It’s why I carry burdens I don’t need to carry. It’s why I find it easiest to do something myself.
Can you relate?
One of the best ways people learn is by feeling the pain of their mistakes. If we are serious about training others to lead Bible studies (or do any other kind of ministry), we must take risks. We must launch apprentices quickly, bring them back to debrief, and send them out to try it again. We need to give them real authority to try things. We must be okay with imperfection. We have to make peace with some people’s needs going unmet while the apprentice figures out how to meet them. We can’t jump in and fix it.
We should be okay with mistakes in the Bible study, mistakes in the small group, mistakes in the pulpit. We should never hammer ministry apprentices for trying and failing, though we might need to admonish them for not really trying.
I was not ready to lead my first Bible study, but I needed that first one so the second one could be better. Someone trusted me enough to let me try it. If I were that leader, training up that younger me, I might not have taken the risk. But I praise God for the courageous leaders in my life, and I want to be more like them.
Postscript: I want my argument to be biblical and not merely anecdotal, so allow me to introduce my two missionary friends from the case studies above. You may find them in Acts 18:1-18 and Luke 10:1-24.
Last week, Al Mohler wrote about “The Scandal of Biblical Illiteracy,” where he proposes a connection between biblical illiteracy and moral decline. If we think Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife, how will we learn from their destruction?
We will not believe more than we know, and we will not live higher than our beliefs. The many fronts of Christian compromise in this generation can be directly traced to biblical illiteracy in the pews and the absence of biblical preaching and teaching in our homes and churches.
Mohler challenges us to recover vibrant Bible teaching at home and in church. We must know the word if we are to apply it to all of life. Though Mohler’s tone may be alarmist, he offers helpful insight. As you read, just remember that widespread biblical illiteracy provides some opportunities we wouldn’t otherwise have: If people don’t even know what the Bible says, they may be less likely to presume what it means. And that means the truth must break through fewer defenses.
A church with a healthy Bible study culture is a blessing to members and visitors alike. Though all aspects of a church contribute to this culture, the sermon is among the most noticeable.
by William Hamilton (1788), license
Evaluating the sermon in this context demands that we move past the good-or-bad question asked over bowls of Sunday soup. How can a sermon help create a Bible study culture?
In evangelical churches, the sermon is the centerpiece of weekly worship. Singing, giving, praying, testimonies—these are often seen as appetizers before the main course.
Without minimizing other elements of the worship service, the sermon is critical. For thirty or so minutes, God’s gathered people focus on hearing and understanding his word. The way the preacher handles the Bible communicates the church’s values and shapes the culture.
At Knowable Word, we’re committed to helping ordinary people learn to study the Bible. We rarely target preachers. But as preachers prize God’s word and encourage its study, “ordinary people” will flourish.
So, a word to non-preachers: This post is for you, too! Through the sermon, you can recognize a church with a Bible study culture. You should also find ways to pray for and encourage your preacher(s).
Enough jibber-jabber. Here are nine strategies for a sermon that can help create a Bible study culture in your church.
Many thanks to Peter for his help with this post. He uses the categories in point 5 but does not claim them as his own—he has seen them in places like the Simeon Trust.
Leo Reynolds (2005), Creative Commons
The second stage of training a new Bible study leader is “I do, you help.” When your apprentice is ready to help, will you have something for that person to do? Here are some areas to consider.
As you give your apprentices some responsibility for the group, they can feel more ownership and demonstrate faithfulness. And as they show faithfulness in small things, you can entrust even greater things to them. Helping with logistics may involve recruiting, hosting, communicating, advertising, bringing a snack, or planning a group activity.
Your goal in training a new Bible study leader should ultimately be to raise up a new shepherd of God’s people. So apprentices will learn much by learning to help you shepherd people. Apprentices can help shepherd people during the meeting: Asking good questions, encouraging quiet people to speak, or following up with prayer requests from previous meetings. They can also help shepherd people between meetings: Calling folks in the group, meeting with them for lunch, or connecting with outreach contacts. Ministry experience will help apprentices learn to lead better Bible studies.
Include your apprentice in your Bible study preparation. Though you could get it done faster by yourself, apprentices won’t learn unless you let them in. Meet with them before the meeting to go over the passage. Show them how to observe and investigate the text. Give them a voice to help shape your main point and craft specific applications for the small group.
After the meeting, ask your apprentice how it went. How clear was the study? What was helpful or unhelpful? How were people responding? What was good? What could be better? What could we do to follow up on things that were said?
When leading a group, it’s great to have some help from an apprentice. This means we have to ask for help. But sometimes we fail to think of how apprentices can help because we’re too busy keeping all the responsibility for ourselves. So the main idea is to give apprentices real responsibility. In the next post I’ll expand on why it’s often difficult for us to do this.
Unlocking the Bible has a stimulating reflection on “The Not-So-Quiet Quiet Time,” where Colin Smith warns we should spend more time listening to God than listening to our own hearts.
It has become common among Christians to think that listening to God means being quiet and listening to our own hearts. But here’s the problem with that:
God says, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8).
If you believe that you listen to God by listening to your own heart, then what have you done? You have put your own heart in the place of God. If you make an idol of your heart, that will inevitably lead to a life of following the impulses of your own heart.
And who knows where that will lead you?
It’s worth considering: During your “quiet time,” whose voice do tend to listen to?
The rest of Smith’s article is worth reading. Check it out!
While the children’s book market offers a number of beautiful, theologically rich, and gospel-centered volumes, Mark’s Marvellous Book by Alan Mann offers something I haven’t seen before: A children’s story Bible driven not by topic but by the text. Mann presents Bible stories from Mark’s Gospel with clarity, precision, and a simplicity worth imitating. If you want to learn how to teach Bible stories to your children, read this book to them and learn to do what Mann does.
Mark’s Marvellous Book has 18 chapters, each focusing on a single episode in the life of Jesus. Each chapter has:
Perhaps you see where I’m going: Alan Mann gets the main points of these stories! And he centres his storytelling around those main points. (Dear fellow North Americans: Please don’t be put off by the anglicized spellings of words like centre and marvellous. This book will serve all English-speaking families.)
Since Mann doesn’t cover every episode from Mark, I felt a little misled by the advertisement labelling this book “A commentary on Mark for kids.” Yet the book still won over both me and my two young daughters. I could barely get the book away from them so I could finish reading it for this review.
The physical volume meets all my standard expectations for a children’s book: strong cover, good binding, shiny paper, sturdiness to take a beating. I’m grateful to Christian Focus Publications for providing a review copy.
I hope we see more books like this in the future. Mann has a great thing going here, and I would love to see similar storybook Bibles that expound texts with such skill.
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The Proclamation Trust recently posted a short piece asking whether the average Christian receives too much Bible teaching these days. Author Tim Ward questions whether our distraction-prone culture has led us to move so quickly from one teaching event (or recording) to another, and whether we might benefit from more time to meditate on each passage before moving right to the next.
In this aspect of our lives we have probably been more deeply shaped and trained by the distracted and distracting culture of our day than we realise. If I’m going to help any other believers around me let any parts of God’s word sink deep into them rather than simply letting lots of God’s word just wet our skin, I’ve got to be fighting against this cultural habit in myself.
Some good questions, I think. Check out Ward’s full article. I’m curious to hear what you think of it.
