"When all your favorite preachers are gone, and all their books forgotten, you will have your Bible. Master it. Master it." --- John Piper
I meet with women all the time who are curious about how they should study the Bible. They hunger for transformation, but it eludes them. Though many have spent years in church, even participating in organized studies, their grasp on the fundamentals of how to approach God's Word is weak to non-existent. And it's probably not their fault. Unless we are taught good study habits, few of us develop them naturally.
Why, with so many study options available, do many professing Christians remain unschooled and unchanged? Scripture teaches clearly that the living and active Word matures us, transforms us, accomplishes what it intends, increases our wisdom, and bears the fruit of right actions. There is no deficit in the ministry of the Word. If our exposure to it fails to result in transformation, particularly over the course of years, there are surely only two possible reasons why: either our Bible studies lack true converts, or our converts lack true Bible study.
I believe the second reason is more accurate than the first. Much of what passes for Bible study in Christian bookstores and church resource libraries just isn't: while it may educate us on a doctrine or a topic, it does little to further our Bible literacy. And left to our own devices, we pursue a host of unsavory (and un-transformative) self-constructed approaches to "spending time in the Word." Here are several that I encounter on a regular basis. Read more
3 comments:
Thanks Robin for posting this. Our church did the straight through approach the past couple of years (forty weeks for the O.T. and 40 weeks for the N.T.) which was very helpful to the small handful of participants (lay led, lay participants). The vast majority of non-participants and clergy could not be bothered or lacked the time, discipline, or motivation.
Bible studies are great. They help the spiritual person in his sanctification. The biggest problem that I have experiences with bible studies is that so often they fall from the level of a real study to a "I think this or that." A bible study really needs to be taught by a learned teacher. The R.C. Sproull studies are extremely helpful and memorable.
Adult Christian education was for a number of years my area of ministry. There are two basic approaches to the systematic examination of the Bible. The first approach is the inductive Bible study. The second approach is is the Bible class or Bible lecture.
In an inductive Bible study a small group of people uses the principles of Bible interpretation to determine the Biblical truth or principle underlying the text and its application to themselves. The Bible study leader facilitates the process, helping the group to learn sound Bible interpretation principles and apply them. This may include frequently prompting the group, "Now read that again. What does it say? Not what you think it says but what does it actually say." "What does the passage before it say?" "What does the passage after it say?" "What have we read elsewhere in this particular book, epistle, gospel?" It may entail frequently pointing out that the Bible contains only a small number of allegories and they are accompanied by their own interpretation. A major part of the Bible study leader's task is to help the group to read the text's meaning out of the text, not read their own meanings into the text.
I have also led so-called African Bible studies but they are not actually Bible studies but a form of lectio divina.
I believe that it is important for Christians to learn how to properly interpret the Bible. Folks who rely on their pastor or someone else to interpret the Bible for them can be easily led astray. They do not know when the person interpreting the Bible for them is twisting the text and reading a meaning into it.
In a Bible class or lecture a lecturer gives a talk on a particular text, drawing attention to its salient points, any distinctive or unusual features, and so forth. The lecturer may give a series of talks on a book of the Bible or a theme running through several books of the Bible or a specific doctrine of the Bible. He may provide the class with an overview of the books of the Old or New Testament.
The two approaches involve different kinds of learning. The first approach involves learning by doing. The second approach involves learning by hearing and may involve learning by seeing if charts, video clips, and other visual aids are used.
A well-designed program for raising the Bible literacy levels of church members and regular attenders and transforming them into self-feeders and for equipping small group Bible study leaders will use both approaches. It will include a class on basic Bible interpretation and a class on Scripture twisting, common mistakes in Bible interpretation, as well as overviews of both Testaments and individual books of each Testament. It will also offer inductive Bible studies. It will introduce congregants to the practices of Bible meditation and lectio divina. With such a program a church could train preachers at the local level.
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