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3 Gifts to Encourage Bible Study

December 15, 2014 By Ryan Higginbottom

People buy Christmas gifts for different reasons. Parents choose a special toy to bless their child with genuine delight as they play. A wife selects socks for her husband because she is tired of seeing him pad around the house with a big toe peeking through his threadbares. A teenage boy purchases a gift card for his older brother because, well, he needs to get him something.

FutUndBeidl (2012), Creative Commons License

Gifts With a Purpose

A courageous few will buy a gift to encourage a behavior or habit in a friend, in a loved one, or in themselves. Gym memberships, spiral planners, and alarm clocks may all fall into this category.

Perhaps you know someone you’d like to encourage in the Christian life. There’s no better way to grow as a Christian than reading and studying the Bible. Here are three gift ideas to consider if you want to encourage Bible study. (Be sure to read all the way to the end, because you will see a gift idea that requires you to spend exactly $0.)

A Bible — Perhaps this is obvious, but it is difficult to study the Bible without a Bible. Though there are an abundance of Bible resources available in online and mobile formats, some people prefer to have a hard copy in their hands. Also, some may be reluctant to write in or mark up a Bible that has sentimental value. So why not give a Bible expressly for the purpose of Bible study, and with this give your friend permission to dig into the Good Book with ink and graphite?

There are thousands of Bibles available online. I won’t give a specific recommendation (though commenters should feel free), but consider these factors as you make a purchase: pick a good translation (ask a trusted friend or pastor, or ask me in the comments), make sure the font is large enough for comfortable reading, and consider how much space is available in the margins. (I realize there is much more I could write about how to choose a good Bible to study. Look for an upcoming post discussing just that!)

Bonus suggestions — Here are some smaller, stocking-friendly suggestions that pair nicely with the gift of a Bible: a notebook or special pen for Bible study notes, colored pencils for marking up the Bible, or fun post-it notes to mark out significant passages or hold longer personal commentary. None of these are necessary for personal Bible study, of course, but I’ve found that when people enjoy the tools they are using, they are more likely to pursue the related activity.
A book — For most Christians, lack of personal Bible study is not due to the absence of a Bible. Far too many Christians have dusty, unopened Bibles propping up other books on their shelves. These Christians need to be persuaded that personal Bible study is necessary and that personal Bible study is doable. We should not leave Bible study to the professionals — to preachers and authors of commentaries. God intended his word to be read, known, and studied by all his children. In fact, this is how he delights in making himself known to us!

If only someone had written a book as an introduction to a solid method of Bible study! If that book taught readers the Observation-Interpretation-Application method of Bible study, such a recommendation would be even more appropriate on this blog. If only such a book were widely available and inexpensive! If only such a book had easy-to-find cover art — we could put it in the sidebar of every page on this blog!

(Two notes: I must point out that this recommendation is not being written by Peter. He is far too modest to claim that his book is outstanding, so I’m doing it—not because he wants me to, but because I really think it is great. Second, there are other fine books written to instruct readers in Bible study. The point here is to find a trustworthy book that points people back to the Bible and equips them to study the Bible on their own.)
An invitation — Perhaps you want to give a gift but your budget doesn’t have much room this year. Or maybe you just want to give the most personal gift on this list. Consider inviting a friend to study the Bible with you! I’m not speaking of starting a Bible study group (though we have resources to help you with that). What if you simply met with a friend once every week or two to study a portion of Scripture? Pick a book of the Bible together, set aside an hour, and dig in! This could be a low-stress way to sharpen your own Bible study skills, encourage your friend in solid Bible study methods, and deepen your friendship, all at the same time.

Any one of these gifts, given in the right spirit and within the right relationship, could provide just the spark that a friend needs to know God better. What suggestions do you have for gifts that encourage Bible study?

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My New Cohort

December 14, 2014 By Peter Krol

In my effort to become all things to all people (1 Cor 9:22), I’m pleased to announce that I’ve discovered arm-twisting to be a viable strategy for persuasion. My dear friend Ryan Higginbottom has succumbed to my righteously coercive tactics and agreed to become a co-contributor to this blog.

Like Baruch, who blogged frequently with the prophet Jeremiah (Jer 45:1), Ryan may be tempted to believe the Lord has only added to his pain. Joining with me may make him weary with groaning, until he finds no rest (Jer 45:2-3). But, as with Baruch, Ryan may yet find his life as a prize of war for all his toil (Jer 45:5).

What does this mean for you, dear reader? You can expect to see regular posts from the good Dr. Higginbottom fortnightly, beginning on the morrow. If you’d like to learn more about this tall, dark, and handsome fellow, please refer to the About page. With a solid grasp of basic observation skills, you’ll have no trouble finding the relevant information you seek.

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Move the Group Toward the Main Point

December 12, 2014 By Peter Krol

The best piece of advice I received as a beginning blogger was to make sure each post had just one main point. I’ve not always followed the advice perfectly, but I’ve generally seen greater success when I do.

The same goes for Bible studies. Have you been part of a discussion that felt directionless? Have you tried to lead a discussion without being sure how to rein things in? You know you’re there to study the Bible, but how do you balance flexible compassion (giving people freedom to speak what’s on their hearts) with intentional leadership?

The difference often lies in having a clear main point to work toward.

This isn’t the place to explain how to come up with a strong main point. I’ve done that in my series about how to study the Bible and with these 3 skills. I’ve argued that the main points are the ones worth fighting for. In this post, I’d like to show how to lead a group toward the main point.

The Main Point about the Main Point

One principle drives me: If (what I think is) the main point is truly the (biblical author’s) main point, then I should be able to trace a path from any observation of the text to that main point. Therefore, I don’t need my group to follow exactly the same path to the main point that my personal study followed. Therefore, I don’t have to force the discussion into a certain rut, exhausting the group members and guaranteeing that I will remain the authoritative guru who has all the answers. People will never learn Bible study on their own that way.

czechian (2010), Creative Commons

An Example

Let me illustrate. In a recent small group meeting, we studied Romans 2:1-16. My main point was: “God’s wrath is revealed against moral, upright people who cannot practice what they preach.”

The chief observations that had led me to that main point were:

Romans 2:1 contrasts with Romans 1:29-32. Paul shifts from those who approve of evil behavior to those who disapprove of it.
Repeated words: practice, righteous, condemn, does, law, judge/judgment.
Paul’s use of Psalm 62 in Romans 2:6.

As we got into our discussion, however, group members mentioned few of my observations. Other things in the text affected them.

Romans 2:4 describes a lack of repentance as contempt for God’s kindness.
Repeated contrast between Jews and Greeks in Romans 2:-16.

One woman got particularly hung up on Paul’s claim in verse 11 that God shows no favoritism. “If he shows no favoritism,” she remarked, “then why does Paul keep saying ‘to the Jew first, and also to the Greek’!?” Others jumped in to assure her that Paul gives Jews first dibs on both reward and judgment, but she still struggled with the supposed claim to impartiality.

I could have tabled the discussion to get them back to the observations I thought most important. But the discussion was so juicy, and the members were forced to dive into the text to answer each others’ questions. I didn’t have the heart to cut that short.

But my key principle kicked in. If I was correct about the main point, I should be able to steer us in that direction even from this discussion of God’s impartiality. When I thought of it that way, I could celebrate my loss of control, and guide the group gently to the main idea. It wasn’t difficult to ask why Paul is so committed to clarify God’s impartiality. God’s wrath plays no favorites! He’s just as mad at the “good” people as he is at the “bad” people! All of them need the gift of his righteousness.

A Few Suggestions

Ryan Higginbottom already covered some of this ground in his excellent guest post on asking good interpretive questions. Here are a few of the skills that have served me well.

Come to the meeting prepared with a clear direction (a strong main point for the passage).
Hold your pathway to that main point loosely. Let the discussion take on a life of its own.
If the group sees things you hadn’t considered, be willing to reconsider what you thought was the main point.
Keep asking “why?” questions until you help the group arrive at a clear main point.
State the main point simply and clearly.
Connect it to Jesus and move into application.

People need you to lead them. They need your help to learn these skills. So please lead.

Don’t lead with such an iron fist that the discussion becomes an exercise in reading your mind and feeding your ego. But lead in a way that inspires them with confidence to continue their study on their own. Your leadership will thus become far more effective.

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The Bible Study Tim Keller Never Forgot

December 10, 2014 By Peter Krol

Last week, Collegiate Collective published a guest article I wrote about campus ministry entitled “The College Ministry Method that Should Never Change.” College ministry must constantly change to keep up with cultural trends, but in the article I write of the one thing—study of the Bible—that must never change lest ministry lose its moorings.

I got the idea for the article from an interview Tim Keller did with Bible Study Magazine, where he described one particular meeting he’s never forgotten since his undergraduate days:

Keller describes a retreat where InterVarsity staff worker Barbara Boyd gave the students 30 minutes to list 50 observations from a single verse: “And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men’” (Mark 1:17). After 10 minutes, they began to feel saturated, but she encouraged them to press on. When they regrouped to share their findings, they could not believe how many jewels came from this single mine. “Boyd closed her exercise by asking the students how many of them had found their deepest insight in the first five minutes of thought. ‘No one had,’ says Keller. ‘And I’ve never forgotten that.’”[1]

Have you ever been in such a Bible study?

If you’d like to read my full article, check it out!

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[1] Bible Study Magazine, Vol. 5 No. 3, March/April 2013, pp. 12-13.

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Women of the Word

December 5, 2014 By Peter Krol

I once had the privilege to meet with a reasonably well-known man who edits Bible study curriculum. My chief questions for him were: What is your vision for publishing Bible curriculum? Why do you think we need more curriculum, instead of simply greater Bible literacy? How do you avoid creating a dependence with your subscribers, such that they turn to you and your materials instead of going directly to God’s Word?

Now, I may have caught this fellow on a bad day. And our appointment was cut a little short due to factors outside of his control. So I don’t want to blast him for a single conversation. But I must admit I was terribly disappointed that he had nothing for me better than, “The curriculum helps people.”

I pestered him with follow-up questions. Helps them with what? Helps them how? Why must we produce more and more curriculum that only decreases people’s confidence in their ability to read the unmediated text of Scripture? But he confessed to having no answers for me.

A Very Different Answer

Some time later, I came across a guest post by Jen Wilkin about this very problem: training Christians (especially Christian women) to rely on commentary and Christian books more than the Book of books. I couldn’t be any more delighted by her thesis.

I explored Ms. Wilkin’s website and discovered that she, too, wrote her own Bible study curriculum. I couldn’t see how that practice fit with the point of her article, so I contacted her directly to ask her the same questions I had asked the first gentleman. Her answer was far less pragmatic than his and came pregnant with a compelling vision:

I write curricula with the intent of training women how to use the tools…At the beginning of each of my studies I tell the women that, while I hope they will learn the book of the Bible we are studying, my greater hope is that they will better know how to handle their Bibles on their own once we are finished.

Eventually, I hope my women will rely on a curriculum less and less, having learned by repeated use how to ask good questions and honor the learning process on their own.

Here was something I could get excited about. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on Wilkin’s new book Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both our Hearts and our Minds, and Crossway was willing to provide me with a complimentary copy of the book in exchange for an honest review. I could not fault her intentions; would she be able to deliver on them?

Money Moments

I’m happy to say Wilkin does, in fact, deliver. Her little book is a powerhouse of training, inspiring and equipping ordinary people to study God’s Word. I benefitted greatly from this book, even though Wilkin’s target audience is Christian women. The only time I felt like she wasn’t speaking to me was in the last chapter where she gives counsel for women who teach women’s Bible studies.

Here are some of the many highlights that stuck with me:

Right thinking will lead to right feeling, not vice versa. Too many of us get this backwards.
“If Bible literacy is our goal, we need an honest evaluation of what we are currently doing to achieve it.” I’m addicted to what Wilkin calls the “Xanax approach” to the Bible: I feel guilty if my time in Scripture doesn’t make me feel better in some way.
The Bible tells one Big Story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. We’ll understand each passage best when we see how it connects to this larger story arc.
Finding historical background is not merely an intellectual exercise. Good Bible study depends upon it. And it can be fun!
The desire for instant gratification is mortally dangerous to our Bible study. Sometimes we get nothing at all from a single reading session. We need to have more patience over time to see the benefits.
“It is good for us to earnestly attempt interpretation on our own before we read the interpretations of others. And this means we must wait to consult commentaries, study Bibles, podcasts, blogs, and paraphrases for interpretive help until we have taken our best shot at interpreting on our own.”

Some Caution

I have two minor differences with the book worthy of comment.

Oversimplification. Wilkin covers a lot of ground with a very low word count. This fact occasionally leads her to oversimplify unhelpfully. For example, her discussion of literary genres contains little nuance and, without caution, may set some on false trails: “Historical narrative uses language to give a factual retelling of events. It intends to be taken at face value…Wisdom literature uses language to communicate principles that are generally true, though not universally true. Reading a proverb as a promise can lead to heartache and doubt.”
Cross-references. Wilkin puts more stock in cross-references than I’m comfortable with. She includes the looking up of cross-references as a critical step in interpretation, but again I think this approach can at times generate more smoke than light. The original readers of James didn’t have access to Paul’s letters to help interpret James’s letter (Paul’s letters weren’t even written yet!). I believe it’s more important for us to understand James in his own right first before we begin the work of connecting his ideas to the rest of Scripture. Accessing cross-references too soon can actually take us down the wrong track and cause us to miss the point at hand.

Conclusion

My minor differences shouldn’t dampen enthusiasm for the book. I’m happy to recommend it to you. I learned from Wilkin’s ability to communicate complex ideas in simple language. And she made a compelling case for the need of more women teaching women in the church. Women teachers have something to offer Christ’s body that no men can provide.

In my email correspondence with Ms. Wilkin, we joked that we must be twins separated at birth and that we wish we had crossed paths sooner. If you have been helped by this blog, you will find much of benefit in Women of the Word.

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How to Lead a Bible Study

December 3, 2014 By Peter Krol

For several months, I’ve reflected on many skills involved in leading Bible study groups. I’ve now arranged the posts into categories and created a table of contents for the series to make it easier to find stuff.

You can find the contents page in the top menu under “Leading” > “Adult Bible Studies”. I grouped the posts into the following categories:

Why lead Bible studies?
Getting the group started
Preparing to lead
Leading the meeting
Outside the meeting
Training others to lead

I haven’t yet completed the series, so I’ll keep the contents page updated as I go.

Check it out!

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What My 5th Child’s Birth Taught Me about Bible Study

November 28, 2014 By Peter Krol

…that I need to take a short break from blogging to care for my growing family.

As Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us, there’s a time to be born, and a time to die. There’s also a time for blogging, and a time to refrain from blogging. Lord willing, I’ll plan to be back at it next week!

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Keep the Context Front and Center

November 21, 2014 By Peter Krol

Last week, I read some amazing things in the New York Times:

The president’s announcement was the first official confirmation of his death.

“They were disappointed, frankly, that I didn’t have some breakthrough.”

Minutes earlier, she had fled there for safety as she called 911, telling the operator that her fiancé had thrown her on the bed and hit her in the face and head. She was two months pregnant.

Thousands of people attended hundreds of enrollment events around the country at public libraries, churches, shopping malls, community colleges, clinics, hospitals and other sites.

Are you amazed?

Enrique Burgos (2010), Creative Commons

The Problem

Though all these quotes came from a single publication with a single editorial board, they also came from a variety of articles, written by different journalists, and spread out over a few days. Each article had a different topic, designed for a different column, reporting on a different sector of the news. But my selection of quotations doesn’t really mean anything to you without more information. You need the context for each one to make sense.

Do you read the Bible like this? Do you find a remarkable sentence or two here and there, memorize them, and base your hope on them? You don’t read anything else in this way. Not newspapers, novels, letters, emails, blogs or textbooks. Sure, sometimes you’ll scan. Other times you’ll highlight key statements that you want to remember. But you won’t limit your reading to isolated sentences.

Do you teach the Bible like this? Do you string together verse after verse to make a point? It’s fine to do so, as long as you’re not doing violence to what those verses meant in context (Paul does it in Romans 3:10-18, David does it in 1 Chronicles 16:7-36, and Jonah does it in Jonah 2:1-9). But Satan can quote isolated statements from the Bible in support of evil intentions (Matt 4:6). Plenty of folks today likewise excel at sampling Bible verses to mix some truth with catastrophic error.

The Challenge of Bible Studies

In a Bible study meeting, you may have 30-90 minutes to dive into a particular text. You’ll look at the details, ask many specific questions, and try to make particular applications. As you work on a small portion of text, how do you keep the big picture (the context) front and center? How do you prevent the group from moving through one isolated text to another, week after week, without ever fitting them together?

A Proposed Solution

These suggestions are not the only ones you could follow, but they summarize what I’ve found most helpful.

1. Do a good book overview

When leading a study through a book of the Bible, I always dedicate the first meeting to a book overview. This overview gives us clarity on the historical context: author, audience, occasion, and structure. But more importantly, it enables us to discuss the entire book’s main point. For example, in my church small group, we’re studying Romans. Our book overview led us to a pretty clear main point: Paul wants to preach the gospel to those who are in Rome (see Rom 1:15-17).

2. Remind the group of where you’ve been

Each week, I make sure to summarize the text’s argument over the last few chapters. This enables us to situate the present text within the book’s flow of thought. For example, our last study in Romans 3:9-20 came as the climax to Paul’s argument that began in Romans 1:18. Before tackling Rom 3:9-20, we briefly reviewed the section up to this point: God’s wrath is revealed against the immoral (Rom 1:18-32), God’s wrath is against the moral (Rom 2:1-16), God’s wrath is against the outwardly religious (Rom 2:17-3:8).

3. Make sure to grasp the passage’s main point

It’s worth it to fight for the main point. By definition, doing so enables you to focus on what God considers most important. Incidentally, it also helps you not to get lost in the sea of sub-points and minutiae that so easily commandeer your attention. As you keep main points front and center, you’ll decrease the likelihood of missing the context.

4. Connect each passage to the book’s main point

Every week, as we study a new section of Romans, we ask, “How does Paul preach the gospel (good news) in this passage?” The key here is to take the passage’s main point and show how it advances the book’s main point. Of course, in Romans 1:18-3:20, there is not much “good” news yet. We’ve had profitable discussions about why it’s so important to understand the extent of the bad news before the good news will seem truly good.

5. End with a book review

A book review is just like a book overview, except that it takes place at the end instead of the beginning. When you’ve completed examining all the book’s pieces, take time to put them back together. You may even need to revise your overview in light of what you saw as you dug deeper through the details. So I find it helpful to dedicate an entire meeting to reviewing what we learned from the book, both themes and applications. This review may solidify the lessons and help people to remember them when they return to this book in their personal study.

Conclusion

When you lead people in careful, contextual Bible study, you’ll be amazed to see that some of your favorite memory verses don’t actually mean what you once thought.

For example, in context, Romans 8:28 doesn’t mean that “all things” you could ever experience work together for the “good” you might hope for. No, Paul is saying specifically that all of “our present sufferings” (Rom 8:18-27) work together for that single good purpose which God predestined from the beginning: that we might be conformed to the image of his Son (Rom 8:29). Romans 8:28 offers not so much an alleviating comfort as a promise of crushing, suffocating pain — albeit a pain that will make you more beautiful for having gone through it.

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My Love-Hate Relationship with Bible Study Tools

November 19, 2014 By Peter Krol

Last week, the Gospel Coalition published a piece I wrote called “My Love-Hate Relationship with Bible Study Tools.”

What if I were to ask you to solve 30 long-division problems? One thing, though: there’s no calculator. Sure, you probably remember how to do it by hand, but since you haven’t since childhood, you’re rusty. As a result, the whole idea seems a little threatening and needlessly difficult, doesn’t it?

Thanks to the blessings of the modern age, nobody does long division by hand anymore. We’ve become dependent on the tool. Why go to all that intellectual effort when you can punch a few buttons and have an answer at your fingertips in a matter of milliseconds?

I love that we have access to calculators. I don’t even mind that using them has permanently atrophied my math skills. But I refuse to let modern Bible study tools—as great as they are—do the same thing to my Bible study skills. I never want to become so dependent on these tools that I forgo the deep joy that comes from sitting down with a Bible, plus a pen and some paper, and simply digging in. I never want to pretend that reading the fruit of someone else’s Bible study efforts is the same as plumbing the depths of God’s Word myself. And no matter how biblically wise or learned I may become, I never want to train anyone to rely on me more than they rely on Scripture.

What’s more, I’m convinced that if the New Testament authors were alive today they would back me up: modern Bible study tools are a great blessing—but if you rarely or never study the Bible without them, you’re not only doing it backward, you’re seriously missing out.

The article then lists 3 fruits of personal Bible study and makes a brief case for the OIA method. If you’d like to read the full article, have at it!

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3 Disciplines to Develop Wise Speech

November 14, 2014 By Peter Krol

You’ve tasted and seen the effects of a wise leader’s words, and you want to be that kind of leader. You want to speak words that deliver, delight, gladden, and heal. You’d like to be able to defuse, persuade, inspire, and influence. You can picture leading such Bible studies, but you don’t know how to move in that direction. You see the potential, but you don’t know how to realize it.

You’re not alone, and you don’t have to feel stuck. Proverbs describes not only the product but also which best practices will help you get there. The following 3 tips don’t include everything that could be said about how to become a wise leader. But if you give yourself to these 3 disciplines, you’ll quickly find, by God’s grace, you have something to offer. “The lips of the righteous feed many” (Prov 10:21).

Steven Shorrock (2011), Creative Commons

1. Listen more than you speak.

If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame. (Prov 18:13)

When leading Bible studies, your goals should be, first, to hear others, and second, to give an answer. Reverse the order, and you’re on the way toward shameful folly.

What does this mean? What does it look like to hear before giving an answer?

You care more about winning people than about being right.
You want to know what other people think more than you want them to know what you think (even when you’re the leader).
You learn how to ask good observation, interpretation, and application questions that stimulate discussion and don’t shut it down.
You create a group culture where crazy, even false, ideas can be freely spoken. Please note: This doesn’t mean you create a culture where crazy, even false, ideas are accepted. Loving people doesn’t mean compromising the truth. And loving the truth doesn’t require you to feel threatened by questions or objections.
You ask open-ended questions.
You avoid questions that have only one answer. Such questions are not really questions but mind-reading exercises.
You pay attention to what people say.
You reflect what you hear people say, rephrasing their comments in your own words. This reflection demonstrates that you understood the substance and didn’t merely catch the words.
You don’t answer every question yourself but toss questions back out to the group.

2. Draw others out.

The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. (Prov 20:5)

Listening is good. It’s an important first step. But if that’s all you do, you’ve got a support group or love fest on your hands instead of a Bible study. People are like wells, and your goal is to drop the bucket and scoop out their purposes. You want to help them understand themselves better than they did before. Once they do, change becomes possible.

Let me illustrate. One person leads a Bible study on Romans 3:9-20 and teaches the material well. He observes the text well and gets people looking up all the Old Testament quotes. He shows how these passages about Israel’s enemies are used by Paul to describe Israel herself. Even Jewish mouths are thus stopped, and the whole world is held accountable to God. The leader communicates a clear doctrine of human depravity, and he challenges people to trust in Christ and not themselves. They listen eagerly, happy to learn and grow.

Another person leads a study on the same passage, but does so through thoughtful questions, careful listening, and stimulating follow-up questions. He covers the same content as the other leader, and he gets people talking about the topic of depravity on their own. One person mentions an obnoxious family member, and the leader asks her how that relationship has colored her view of the world. Another person challenges the doctrine of depravity, and the leader—who doesn’t jump on the objector with immediate correction—asks more questions to understand why it’s so hard to swallow. Another participant confesses feelings of guilt whenever the topic of sin arises, and the leader sensitively coaxes further context-appropriate detail from him.

When you actually understand why people think what they think, you’re in the best position to convince them to think something else. When you understand why people respond the way they do, you’ll be able to connect the dots for them so they can repent and choose different responses in the future. If you don’t scoop out the purposes in their hearts, you’ll end up with a group that agrees with what you’ve taught, but doesn’t understand how to make specific changes to their lives. The result? Very little change in their lives.

3. Sweeten your speech.

The wise of heart is called discerning, and sweetness of speech increases persuasiveness. (Prov 16:21)

If you listen and draw others out, the time will come for you to speak. And you don’t have to say much, because your words will weigh far more from all your listening and investigation. But it’s a good time to remember the age-old adage that has inspired many a fledgling leader: “You’ve done well so far, but don’t screw it up.”

When the time comes for you to speak, it’s not a good time to criticize people who aren’t in the room. “I can’t believe how wrong all those Arminians [Calvinists, Baptists, Presbyterians, whatever] are…”

It’s also never a good time to scold a participant, belittle one in error, or ignite a quarrel.

Instead, you have an opportunity to woo, persuade, and build trust. You get there by sweetening your speech. Give them reason to trust you and lower their defenses. During a Bible study:

“Other translations say…” is better than “You should get a more literal translation.”
“I can see what you’re saying, but have you considered…?” is better than “I disagree.”
“That’s a good question for another time. For now, what does the passage say?” is better than “Please don’t go off-topic.”

This is not mealy-mouthed refusal to engage in public discourse. This is not political spin. This is sweet, persuasive, winsome ministry.

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