Group Bible Study

11.10.2008

My friend and I have been kicking the tires on a plan for the next time we lead a bible study. Some notes here. Pretty basic stuff - We're under no illusion that we're "doing something new" except with regards to our personal experiences. In both of our past groups our personal bible study practices have been all but absent when it comes to participating in a group study. Our unspoken way of thinking has gone "well a group study is a completely different animal then personal bible study and so it should be approached in a completely different way as well." We are wondering if that is (or I should say has to be) necessarily true though.

So we're imagining what it would be like to go through a group study slowly, carefully, focusing on vocabulary, being careful with importing things, not making sub points the main points, working through propositional relationships, etc. We threw down some notes and took the baby for a spin (with my wife, him and I.)

It went pretty well. My wife was some what uncomfortable at first. "Why do you take the passage to mean that?" . . . "No, I wasn't asking you to restate how you took it, but why you took it that way honey." The endeavor was undertaken with gentleness and kindness and patience and in the end we all attested to leaving the study with not only a clearer picture of what God was saying in the passage, but also of having been affected by it.

So that was good and we are going to kick the tires some more. The biggest hurdle we believe won't be having the study be fruitful for those who already understand and embrace the Bible study methods and principles that we use, but that it will be convincing the uninitiated to give it a try in the first place.

Next pilot run should invovle someone who isn't obligated to follow me (i.e. my wife) :)