Small Groups | Knowable Word

3 Benefits of Small Group Bible Study

May 18, 2015 By Ryan Higginbottom

Billy MetCalf Photography (2012), Creative Commons License

Give a skilled trumpeter his horn and a solo, and he can pin back your ears or prick your heart. He can draw out emotions you’d locked away or inspire grand thoughts of beauty and grace. There is power and clarity in his notes. Now put that same trumpeter in a jazz band and listen again. As the instruments swell and fall in concert, you’ll hear a richness and depth that a soloist cannot produce on his own. It isn’t that the music is better; both can be profound and beautiful.

Without hours alone in the practice room, the trumpeter misses out on technique, skill, and precision. Without a band, he won’t learn to listen, react, follow, or lead. He needs both settings.

So it is with Bible study. The majority of your Bible study will likely take place in private. This is the necessary foundation for a life of loving God and living faithfully in the world.

But if you study the Bible only by yourself, you’ll miss the concert. Work on your breathing, perfect those scales, and come join the band.

Bless and Be Blessed

Here at Knowable Word, we want to help people learn to study the Bible. In a good small group Bible study, you will mature and you’ll have the chance to help others grow. It’s the best sort of two-for-one.

If you’re not already in a small group Bible study, consider joining one. I can think of at least three reasons.

Small group Bible studies help you study the Bible. We all need as much time with the Bible as possible, and a small group gives you extra exposure every week or so. Within your group you can (hopefully) find good examples of Bible study; this will accelerate your development and strengthen your OIA muscles. A good leader will ask questions that lead your group through the observation–interpretation–application process and help you to advance in each area.
Small group Bible studies remind you that you need other people. God has made us as relational, social beings who thrive in community. Because of our sin, relationships can be difficult, but without other people we shrivel up and dry out. We need contact with others from different ages and life situations to appreciate God’s faithful and diverse working throughout the church. I love listening to older saints recount God’s consistent companionship, encouragement, and correction over the years.
Small group Bible studies remind you that you need other people to study the Bible. I’ve written before that we need community to apply the Bible. But this isn’t just true for application. Fellow Christians also help us observe the important aspects of a Bible passage and interpret correctly. We need others to help us see what is true in the Bible—to sharpen, clarify, and correct what we think.

In the same way that you need others, others also need you. Armed with solid Bible study principles, you can serve as an example or mentor for others in your small group.

Finally, Bible study within a small group has a dynamic you cannot reproduce on your own. As you participate in discussion and share ideas, you take advantage of interaction, one of the distinctives of the setting.

Note: This is the first in a short-ish series of posts on attending small group Bible studies. If you have any related questions, feel free to toss them into the comments on this post. (We’ve already published extensively about leading Bible studies.)

5 Common Small Group Myths

December 17, 2014 By Peter Krol

At the Gospel Coalition, Steven Lee writes about “5 Common Small Group Myths (and the Truth to Help Transform Your Group).” He expands on the following 5 myths:

Myth #1: A successful small group will not be relationally messy.
Myth #2: Small groups exist for others to meet my needs.
Myth #3: Trust and transparency take many years to cultivate in a small group.
Myth #4: Small group members should become best friends.
Myth #5: Small groups should focus only on Bible study, not sharing sins or engaging in outreach.

I certainly struggle with #3, and I feel pretty guilty if #4 doesn’t take place. Can you relate with any of them?

The full article is worth reading. Check it out!

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.

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.

Matthias Media Home Group Leader’s Digest

October 15, 2014 By Peter Krol

I recently subscribed to the Home Group Leaders digest from Matthias Media. This digest is a free monthly email with practical tips and encouragement to those who lead small group Bible studies.

The September edition was quite helpful on a number of topics:

How to follow up with people whose attendance has been spotty.
How to develop closeness in the group outside of the Bible study meeting.
Why it’s important not to ask questions that leave people feeling like they have to read your mind.

You can check out the newsletter online, or—even better—subscribe! In the subscription options, just check “The Home Group Leader’s Monthly Digest.”

Ask Good Application Questions

October 10, 2014 By Peter Krol

This is a guest post by Ryan Higginbottom, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, PA. When he’s not solving differential equations or blogging at A Small Work, he loves spending time with his wife and two daughters. He also leads a small group Bible study for his church. If you’d like to write a guest post for Knowable Word, please see the guidelines page.

Welcome to the most uncomfortable part of your small group Bible study. Regardless of how energetic the discussion has been, getting personal will be hard work. Your group may float on the momentum of observation and interpretation like a shiny soap-bubble on a breezy spring day, yet that bubble can pop as soon as you transition to application. Safety and abstraction give no further covering. You’re asking people to reshape their thinking and their lives according to the Word of God, and such requests normally feel uncomfortable.

Serge Melki (2010), Creative Commons

But don’t shy away from the discomfort! When you discuss the work of God to conform us to the image of Christ, any tension you feel is evidence of progress. When you lead your group through the awkwardness, your courage will be infectious.

Lead the Group in Application

First, apply the text to yourself. A leader who hasn’t already made personal application from the text is like a skinny chef, an unkempt barber, or a disheveled tailor. If the text hasn’t changed you, you’ll have little capital with which to invest in others’ change. In fact, the areas where God’s word has most powerfully affected you will likely be the ones that stand out the most to your group. So, as you plan your study, apply the Bible to your own life. Build such application into your preparation.

Second, ask a general question. In my small group, I usually transition to application with a generic, open-ended question: “How can we apply this text?” On this fishing trip, I wait five seconds before cutting bait. I’m looking for any pointed, clear work of the Spirit, because sometimes God will bring conviction and insight for change to the mind of a group member as we meet. I don’t want to bottle that up, but to allow room for spontaneous eruptions of confession and grace-dependent plans to change.

Third, ask specific questions. This work is hard but good. People don’t often respond to big, broad questions but need help to consider specific applications. To stimulate your preparation, consider the two directions and the three spheres of application. Additionally, consider applications for individuals as well as for the group and/or church/ministry as a whole. You won’t have time to touch on every area of application every week, but make sure that you balance the categories over the weeks and months so the group doesn’t list too much in one direction.

Case Study

Consider an example. Last week I suggested the following as the main point of Isaiah 25:1-12:

Praise God! He will swallow up death, and He gives us glimpses of that now.

Here are some potential application questions that flow from this main point:

How could you live as though God will swallow up death? What gets in the way? What glimpses do you now see that can remind you of God’s victory?
What opportunities do you have to speak about God’s victory over death? To your children? To your neighbors? To your coworkers? How do they view death? What glimpses of God’s victory might they now see?
If God will swallow up death, how will that affect our approach to risk-taking? What keeps you from taking risks? How can we help each other take God-glorifying risks?
How can we remind each other that God will swallow up death? To what “now” glimpses can we point?

Final Thoughts

Here are some final ideas to help you ask better application questions.

Questions belong to you; conviction belongs to the Holy Spirit. By all means, study, think, and pray in your preparation. But remember you cannot convict sinners of their sin. The Holy Spirit holds this job. Your job is to ask questions that lead to applications of the text and to share how God has changed you through this study. You must labor in faith, knowing that you can plant or water but that God causes the growth. (1 Cor 3:5–9)
Be specific and personal in your questions. As the members of your group get to know each other, you will start to know where others battle against sin. So, as the moment allows, you can ask specific application questions that tap into the group’s shared history. “Jane, a few weeks ago you mentioned that you often don’t know how to offer hope to your coworkers. Can you think of a way to bring the truth from tonight’s passage to anyone specifically?” Be sensitive to personalities and confidences, but leverage this great benefit of a small group: giving and receiving help in targeted, personal, specific ways.
Ask honest questions. If you ask a question and it is clear to your group that you are expecting only one correct answer, you’re not encouraging discussion, and the group may feel manipulated. See how the group responds to suggestions, but leave room for the Holy Spirit to push the changes through.
Connect your application to Jesus. Too often Christians leave Bible studies in a rush of grit and determination rather than a dependence on God’s grace. Though a burst of adrenaline may enable you to push a car for a few feet, that’s no way to cross the country. We need Jesus’ life and death for us all the time, both for forgiveness when we fail and for strength to obey. And as the group leader, this must sink deeply into your heart so you can guard your friends against the let’s-go-do-this-woo-hoo application fever.

What have you found helpful in regard to asking application questions in Bible studies?

Ask Good Interpretive Questions

October 3, 2014 By Peter Krol

But who do you say that I am? (Luke 9:20, ESV)

This piercing question follows a simple observation question (“Who do the crowds say that I am?”). Jesus requires his disciples to consider the popular answers (John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets of old) along with the witness of his teaching and life. Jesus presses them to make sense of their observations.

Eric (2005), Creative Commons

Interpretation questions provide an indispensable turning point for small group discussions. Though we must observe well, we must not stop there. Wise leaders challenge people to make sense of observation through vibrant interpretation. Thus, having seen how to ask good observation questions in a small group setting, we are ready to take the next step.

One key idea will help you learn to ask good interpretation questions: Work backwards. Plant your flag on the main point of the passage, review the trail you hiked to get there, and develop questions that will guide your group back to the summit.

Working Backwards

Since the chief goal of interpretation is to identify the author’s main point in the passage, we want to lead our groups to that end. Ideally, we want to be able to state the central theme in a single sentence.

Then it is time to work backwards. Which observations were most significant? Which questions directed me to the main point? Which questions were good but tangential? How does the argument of the passage flow from beginning to end? Which highlights will best serve the group?

Case Study

My small group recently studied Isaiah 25:1-12. I stated the main point of the passage this way:

Praise God, for he will swallow up death, and he gives glimpses of that future reality now.

How did I structure my questions to guide the group toward this idea?

Beginning with the first stanza, Isaiah 25:1–5, I asked observation questions that pointed the group to previous themes in the book—such as the destruction of strong cities—and to repeated words or ideas, like strength (Isaiah 25:2, 3, 4) and the “ruthless” (Isaiah 25:3, 4, 5). I also asked what this stanza teaches about God.

These conversations set us up for the following interpretive questions that led the group to the main point:

Why will the strong and ruthless people glorify God? How would such people glorify God? This question prods the group to see God’s victory being so complete that his enemies can do nothing but honor him for his strength. God is such a stronghold for his people that his enemies are in awe.
Why does Isaiah 25:5 refer to “the song of the ruthless”? Probably, the ruthless would sing when victorious; if God silences this song, it means he is weakening their military power.
Why do the verb tenses keep changing (past, present, future)? This question explores the relationship between what God has done and what he will yet do. Thus, arriving at the chapter’s second stanza (Isaiah 25:6–12), we’ll see the connection between God’s having defeated human enemies and God’s coming defeat of the greatest enemy, death. The “forever” tone of Isaiah 25:2 foreshadows the eradication of death prophesied in Isaiah 25:7-8.

Final Thoughts

Here are some final tips for asking good interpretive questions.

Prepare, but be flexible. By all means, prepare well. Study, pray, and trust God as you prepare notes to guide your leadership of the discussion. But be flexible as well. Multiple paths of observation can lead to the same main point. Remember that you are fallible and others may correct or adjust your interpretations if they can prove it from the text. You may have even missed the passage’s main point and landed on a sub-point! Don’t dismiss unexpected responses. Push your group’s collective noses back into the text, and if they see something you didn’t, be ready to learn and rejoice. This is part of the beauty of studying the Bible in a group.
Ask honest questions. This point is related to the previous one. Make sure that your questions are offered in a spirit of honest inquiry. Do you want to know how your group interprets the passage, or are you just waiting for them to catch up and agree with you? Be curious. Seek the truth. Remember that the Holy Spirit gives understanding in different measures and at different times. When you ask a “What did he mean?” question, be ready to listen for sensible interpretations, not just for confirmation of your own conclusions.
Take one step at a time. Figure out the meaning of one stanza or paragraph and then move on. You don’t have to survey the entire passage before discussing the component pieces. The themes from each paragraph usually swirl together in the same current to bring the main point to shore.
Avoid asking, “What does this mean to you?” Since God’s truth lies in the text and not (naturally) in our hearts, we can extinguish this tricky little flame for good.

What about you? What have you learned about asking good interpretive questions in a small group?

Ask Good Observation Questions

September 26, 2014 By Peter Krol

You’ve finished preparing, and you’re ready to lead your Bible study discussion group. The next few Friday posts will focus on the skills we need to lead people well through OIA Bible study in a group context.

This first article is a guest post by Ryan Higginbottom, Associate Professor of Mathematics at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, PA. When he’s not solving differential equations or blogging at A Small Work, he loves spending time with his wife and two daughters. He also leads a small group Bible study for his church. If you’d like to write a guest post for Knowable Word, please see the guidelines page.

When reading the Gospels, have you noticed how often Jesus asks questions? His disciples must have been incredibly frustrated. They wanted answers; he served up another round of questions. Why? Through intentional interrogation, he often showed them to be asking the wrong questions entirely.

Tim O’Brien (2006), Creative Commons

Because Jesus bound up so much of his ministry with inquiries, Christian faith and discernment will lead us to develop the ability to ask good questions. Such questions (and willing answers, of course) are a key part of healthy marriages, vibrant classes, joyful homes, and thriving mentorships. But in particular, good questions are the engine that chugs effective small group Bible studies into the station.

The Function of Good Questions

Perhaps you’ve been in a Bible study with a skilled and wise leader, whose questions guide the group through the critical parts of a passage. You may not even remember these questions, however, since good questions are almost invisible. But without them the group would function like a legs-up turtle. These are not the clever, witty, eloquent questions of the orator or debater. They don’t draw attention to themselves.

Bad questions, on the other hand, are as subtle as a fire alarm. Instead of encouraging discussion, they shut it down. They interrupt the flow of dialogue and generate silence, while the leader squirms and the group members wonder what’s for dinner.

What is the difference between a good question and a bad one? What are some characteristics of good questions?

Observation Questions for Small Groups

The foundation of any Bible study lies with careful observation of the text. This is no less true for group study than it is for individual study. So how do we ask good observation questions?

Let’s take Acts 19:1–10 as a sample passage. Imagine you are preparing to lead a discussion on it, and you want to draw people out by drawing them into the text. Your questions will make all the difference.

Bad Observation Questions

What baptism did the Ephesian disciples receive?
What was the first thing Paul did when he arrived in Ephesus?
When did Paul move to the hall of Tyrannus?

Good Observation Questions

What experience of Christianity did the Ephesian disciples have before Paul arrived?
How does Paul interact with the Ephesian disciples?
How is the passage structured?

Though the bad questions require observations for answers, the dialogue goes no further. These queries focus on a single detail, and the group members serve only to fill in the blanks left by the leader, who diligently steers clear of the conversation highway. Let’s be honest: While this approach offers a safe and easy way to create an appearance of participation, it also safely avoids the powerful, spontaneous, and unpredictable work of the Spirit in the minds and hearts of others.

The good questions, however, encourage meaningful discussion and interaction, while still drawing out specific observations. They are more open-ended, enabling group members to pick up on the important features of a passage and leave the smaller details alone. These questions simultaneously engage the group and open the door to interpretation.

What about you? What are some examples of effective observation questions you’ve asked (or answered!) in a small-group setting?

Sample Launching Questions for Bible Studies

September 5, 2014 By Peter Krol

Stephen Crawford (2011), Creative Commons

Bible studies often begin well with a good launching question. When I prepare to lead, I usually prepare the beginning at the end. I like to know where I’m going before I decide which way to kick the thing off.

For those who like examples, I now spread a feast. Here’s a list of sample launching questions I’ve used in the last 6 months with (hopefully) enough context for you to make sense of them. The “Central Truth” was the passage’s main point that I wanted the group to see by the end of the study. The Launching Question was my very first question to begin the study.

Exodus Launching Questions

Context: church small group with a variety of ages and life situations among the members.

Exodus 3:7-4:17

Central Truth: God’s agents must share God’s heart for God’s people, but often they don’t.
Launching Question: How do you normally respond to the weakness or suffering of other people?

Exodus 4:18-31

(I can’t take credit for this one. My co-leader Warren Wright led this study.)

Central Truth: God prepares and provides for His servants so that they may be ready for service.
Launching Question: How does God prepare you for service? Or: How do you prepare for important events/actions?

Exodus 5:1-21

Central Truth: When God’s plan doesn’t match our plan, we usually look for someone to blame.
Launching Question: What would you like to see God do in our Growth Group? (Dream big!) What will you do if the group doesn’t meet your expectations?

Exodus 5:22-7:7

Central Truth: To know Yahweh as your God, you must experience deliverance and the fulfillment of his promises by the hand of his mediator.
Launching Question: What do you think it means to know God? How does one go about knowing God?

Exodus 11:1-12:28

Central Truth: All must know that Yahweh owns everything and remakes his creation at will.
Launching Question: What does it mean to “redeem” something? In ordinary usage? In the Bible? [I wanted to get at the idea of ownership.]

Exodus 12:29-13:16

Central Truth: Future generations must know that Yahweh owns the firstborn (=everything) and remakes his creation at will.
Launching Question: What is the most important thing you would like to be remembered for in the future?

John Launching Questions

Context: ministry small group with summer interns (all undergraduate college students). I felt like I could push the boundaries of social awkwardness just a little to make John’s points clear.

John 1:1-18

Central Truth: The eternal God entered human history to reveal himself so we might become his children, but our natural response is to reject him.
Launching Question: Let’s test the quality of your sex education: How is a baby born?

John 3

Central Truth: We must know two things to see and enter the Kingdom of God: 1) The Bad News: our need for rebirth, 2) The Good News: the arrival of a savior.
Launching Question: What happens when a willing couple can’t get pregnant? [Insert discussion of modern fertility treatment procedures and the understandable desire to make new births happen.] Why do you think people won’t accept Jesus’ message today? [Connect to our inability to force a new birth.]

John 19

Central Truth: The King’s work is complete.
Launching Question: Would you like to have a romantic relationship? Why? How else do you respond to your innate sense of incompletion or loneliness?

I invite your opinion. How could these launching questions be improved?

Be Sure to Begin Well

August 29, 2014 By Peter Krol

How should I begin this post? Should I ask a question? Tell a story about the last time I tried to create a clever introduction? Perhaps I must always make a broad and over-generalized but intriguing suggestion. Or maybe ultra-vivid, razor-sharp imagery will slice your jugular and capture your attention while your lifeblood slips through my fingers.

I have many options, but each promotes the same goal: hooking you early and giving you reason to read on.

Perhaps such a communication technique is a place where “the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light” (Luke 16:8). The secular world runneth over with advice on presentations, public speaking, dynamic teamship, and interpersonal communication; but many Bible studies are boring. And the boredom wastes no time to settle in. The first 5 minutes often signify what is yet to come.

Steve Jurvetson (2011), Creative Commons

In his excellent Growth Groups training manual, Colin Marshall recommends introducing Bible studies with a “launching question.”

A launching question should be:

• Purposeful—introducing the main ideas or applications that will be addressed.
• Interesting—engaging the group’s attention and arousing their minds.
• Easy—making them the experts so all can contribute early in the discussion.
• Open—with many possible answers.

There are two general types of launching questions:

• Topical—to raise the issues related to the goals of the study, by posing a dilemma or asking opinions.
• Textual—to raise an issue in the text being studied which will help to unravel the whole passage. (p.39)

While we don’t have examples in Scripture of Bible study discussions, we have plenty of examples of good introductions. They’ll mold our thinking as long as we don’t train ourselves to ignore them and move quickly to the “body” of the text. Here’s a sampling:

In Galatians 1:1-5, Paul introduces his key themes of apostolic authority and true gospel.
Matthew 1:1 insinuates that this Gospel will focus on Jesus’ Jewishness and kingship.
Daniel 1:1-2 exposes the book’s main idea early: Though there are earthly kings who wield power according to their own pleasure, there is a heavenly King of kings who decides what finally happens and what gets given into whose hands.
Psalms 1 and 2 provide context for the collection by bracketing a double blessing (Psalm 1:1, 2:12) around those who 1) delight in God’s law and 2) submit to God’s king.

What other biblical introductions motivate you to read on?

By beginning a Bible study well, we do the same thing: We give people reason to listen and take part. “But the Bible itself is reason enough to listen and take part. We shouldn’t have to try to make the Bible exciting,” you say.

And I say, “Right on. We don’t have to make the Bible exciting. But if we’re not careful, we’ll lead people to think it’s boring and irrelevant.”

That’s why the launching question is usually the last thing I do when I prepare to lead a Bible study. (See the 5th of the 5 practices for preparing effective Bible studies.) The goal of the launching question is not merely to capture attention; you could do that by painting your face and dancing in Gangnam style. The goal is to unleash the text and win people early to the main idea.

Therefore, before I can start the trip, I must know where I’d like to go.

« Previous Page