Bible Enjoyed
BibleWhat would a "Bible Enjoyed" Course look like? The idea is for something basic to help people learn to feed themsleves and take responsibility for their own spiritual growth. A step on from Discipleship Explored, but easily accessible to all and designed to get people excited about the Bible rather than just technically able with it. Maybe something that is as applicable for a believer who has been stalled for a long time and has lost their spiritual sense of taste as for a more recent believer who doesn't know how to take the next step.
What would you give them? Why not post your bullet point list as a comment and let's swap lots of ideas. If you want to know where this discussion started see the previous post on where the plateaux come in the Christian life. Where is it that people tend to stall and how do we help them move on. I noted there that a key factor is to help people move from being fed by others to feeding themselve. Dave Bish's contributed a thought about something a bit like a cook along show - "come with me and enjoy the Bible with me as I enjoy it" kind of thing.
The floor is yours...
Reader Comments (7)
Maybe I have overdosed on Christian hedonism thinking, but would one of the first sessions have to be on how God is the Gospel and offers Himself in His Son as our chief Delight.
Then once people are stoked up on how amazing God is... bam ... He reveals Himself through His Word....
Then people would be rightly excited about enjoying the Bible and are more willing to learn how to go with Bish on a food course/travel through the panaroma of glory etc
Just a thought...
Hmm something I have been pondering for a while... It would be good to have proper engaging creative material to help people get into the Bible for themselves... With good ideas.
So instead of an academic learning course. How's about one with
Story time. - Telling some of the stories in the Bible around the fireside (or BBQ if it's summer),
Character of God time - grabbing a passage and seeing what it tells us about God, getting out the coloured pens and pencils and writing stuff.
Drawing time- Drawing/imaging a passage.
Writing in your own words time- Working out what it says.
Looking at the characters, what are they thinking/feeling?
Reading random bits you've never read before time.
Going through the history of Isreal and fitting the bits together, most of the OT scares or confuses us cos we don't know how it all works together... I spent YEARS asking my Brother over and over again, so which prophet goes where? When did the Kingdoms divide? What about Chronicles? Don't take it for granted that people know even a tiny bit of Isreal's past.
Reading passages until you cry time (not as emotional manuipulation, but ask people to go away and read Isaiah 43:1-5 until they cry, being aware it may take a year of reading it everyday... Pablo Martinez suggested this in a seminar on identity once... genius, this stuff has to affect our emotions and affections..)
Anything to get people reading and engaging for themselves with what is going on, without the sense of the 'right' answer, but more of jumping into the text and swimming around in it for a while. It was hard in the job i've just left to say how you engaged emotionally with what was going on in the text in case you were wrong on a technicality... Technical discussion of a text seemed more important at times than how God was affecting your heart.
Better engagement with how what the passage says relates to life right here and now, in the workplace, in my hearts desires, in what I want more than anything else.
More awareness of the shape and character of the Father, Son and Spirit as they interact and speak to us, knowing God being pretty much the key that unlocks my pride, my self centredness, my shame and guilt, my loves and my passion. Really anything that gets people swimming in God as they read the Word will be genius.
Maybe the point isn't to 'get people excited about the Bible' but rather to expose people to the wonder of reading and engaging with it for themselves, and watching the results as God speaks to them.
I like the cook along analogy but the real enjoyment comes from cooking yourself, from making the mess and getting it wrong and right as you try it out. So really anything that does that, that helps people take some of the Bible, wade around in it for a bit and gets them doing more than giving pat answers is good, but I guess that needs creativity in approach... And trusting God to speak His truth, He is clear on the stuff He needs to be clear on and sometimes we can be a bit twitchyly concerned with the 'correct answer' (apologies for my postmodern leanings...)
Have you read Eat this Book by Eugene Peterson? V good for this kind of stuff...
Also introducing the idea that they don't have to get the right environment to 'study' the Bible, but loving it as part of life, reading it with friends, being natural about opening it up, reading it on the loo, but that will come with more just reading it and engaging with it and being turned upsidedown as God changes them through it.
Ooo I love the Bible... Because it helps me encounter God- and that's my last point in this rambly mess of a comment. Bible reading/study etc needs to lead us to the Author. At the end of each session of the course should be times to engage with God, times to talk, to respond, to be lead to the One who wrote it all so we could be in relationship with Him. Helping people see that purpose... all too often I've seen people want to be in relationship with God without the Bible. It just ends up with us making up God... A course helping people see that we relate to the God who has revealed himself to us, to who He really is in His Word. The best place to drink in the wonder of our Maker and His crazy love for us is in His Word. (oh and a small beautiful valley in the Lake District) That's when it becomes the best book ever. When we are led to our Friend, Our Saviour, our Lord, our Maker, our King and our Father.
End of ramble.
I guess you'd want a combination of:
- stuff to thrill the heart with God's majesty and knowing him better thru his word
- some skills so people can get tasty meat out of their personal times in the Bible (some of my home group say they struggle to feed themselves just because they don't understand it)
- people sharing encouragement, testimony and personal experiences to build each other up in this
John Richardson suggests in his little book "Get into the Bible" that many Christian plateau in Bible reading because they don't grasp the big story of God's salvation in the Bible - maybe you could go thru this with a specific focus on God's word as a way of helping people to love God and his word more? e.g. 1) Creation by God's word, humanity to live by God's word, the results of rejecting God's word; 2) God's promise to restore his people and his faithfulness to that promise to Israel, redeemed people living by God's word as shadowed in the law; 3) the result of Israel rejecting God's word and God's calls to repentance and continued promises thru the prophets; 4) Jesus fulfilling God's promises, living by God's words himself and giving life thru his words; 5) God's word creating, growing and shaping the church as we wait for all his promises to be fulfilled in the new creation.
I haven't read it yet but I'm looking forward to getting into Christopher Ash's book on Psalm 119, "Bible Delight". Maybe stanzas of Psalm 119 would help model love for God and his word and provide a way in to various skills we might need: e.g. vv1-8 and seeing Bible reading as a delight not a duty; vv137-144 and God's word reflecting and revealing his character so reading every sort of literature in order to see and savour Him more; vv89-96 and God's word being the principle behind the whole world leading into a discussion of how to bring the whole of life under his word; vv97-104 and the wisdom we gain from his word, thinking about how to apply and obey what we read; vv65-72 and the link between affliction and love for God's word; vv145-152 and hoping in God's promises and the role of prayer in feeding on God's word etc
Psalm 119 has a lot about affliction weaved in with it's delight in the word - there must be a link between our Western Christian comfortableness and our lack of hunger and delight for the pure milk of the word...
Anyone read that Christopher Ash book - sounds interesting.
You'd have to have Psam 119 open somewhere in Bible Enjoyed.
Among other things...
Give them someone (and elder Christian (i.e. a seasoned Christian - doesn't have to be older)) to study the Bible with. The 'student' can then learn to enjoy the Bible as they see the struggles, pain and suffering the elder person goes through in their walk with Christ.
As the person above said, they will then be "expose[d] to the wonder of reading and engaging with [the Bible] themselves".
hmmmm... good question. We've had a discipleship group meeting as our homegroup for the last two years. We've covered Matthew, Acts, Romans1-8, 1 Corinthians and a Bible Overview in 8 sessions.
For Matthew and Acts we watched the DVD's which are word for word presentations of the text and acted out. So it wasn't in depth study but it did help engage with large chunks of the text and to get our heads around the Gospel as Story/Narrative. For Romans 1-8 and 1 Corinthians we have studied the text together with a 'no question is a stupid question' and 'no response will be judged' encouraging honesty and also fostering a 'Scripture is our authority' ground rule as we look at the text.
The Bible overview is essentially about helping each of us to understand the whole story of God's plan; understanding how the Bible tells that story (esp in the order of OT and NT books) and discovering the beauty and the depth of it.
I don't know if this answers the question asked; but the thing which taught me to love Scripture is Scripture itself, or rather God using His Word to convict and encourage me, cast me down in my pride and raise me up in my brokenness. What taught me to love Scripture was meeting with others older than me and younger than me in the faith (as well as in life) who loved this book (in truth a library of books) and taught me to treasure it as the treasure trove of knowing God in Christ Jesus through and in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Meeting with God, in His own Words, taught me to love the Bible. I don't know if we can condense it in a course - but rather in every course we do; let it speak and shout and display the Glory of The Godhead as His Word.
I think i would be great if the course included:
a) The members of the group reading large chunks out loud with feeling.
b) Periods for meditation and prayer on significant single verses, this can be modelled by the course leader.