We wrapped up our first eight week class last night and I was so delighted to sit at a table with ten people who know what to do next! A few have even teamed up to meet weekly and start with one book of the Bible at a time and go through it thoroughly.
We also read from an article by Jen Wilkin entitiled “Why Bible Study Doesnt Transform Us.” Here are a few excerpts but I encourage you to read the full article.
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? …
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.
The Xanax Approach: Feel anxious? Philippians 4:6 says be anxious for nothing… The Problem: The Xanax Approach makes the Bible a book about us.
The Pinball Approach: Lacking a preference or any guidance about what to read, you read whatever Scripture you happen to turn to… The Problem: The Bible was not written to be read this way. The Pinball Approach gives no thought to cultural, historical or textual context, authorship, or original intent of the passage in question. When we read this way, we treat the Bible with less respect than we would give to a simple textbook. Imagine trying to master algebra by randomly reading for ten minutes each day from whatever paragraph in the textbook your eyes happened to fall on.
The Magic 8 Ball Approach: You remember the Magic 8 Ball—it answered your most difficult questions as a child. The Problem: The Bible is not magical, and it does not serve our whim. The Magic 8 Ball Approach misconstrues the ministry of the Holy Spirit through the Word, demanding that the Bible tell us what to do rather than who to be. And it’s dangerously close to soothsaying, which people used to get stoned for. So, please. No Magic 8 Ball.
The Personal Shopper Approach: You want to know about being a godly woman or how to deal with self-esteem issues, but you don’t know where to find verses about that, so you let [insert famous Bible teacher here] do the legwork for you. The Problem: The Personal Shopper Approach doesn’t help you build “ownership” of Scripture. Much like the Pinball Approach, you ricochet from passage to passage, gaining fragmentary knowledge of many books of the Bible but mastery of none. Topical studies serve a purpose: they help us integrate broad concepts into our understanding of Scripture. But if they’re all we ever do, we’re missing out on the richness of learning a book of the Bible from start to finish.
The Jack Sprat Approach: This is where we engage in “picky eating” with the Word of God. We read the New Testament, but other than Psalms and Proverbs we avoid the Old Testament, or we read books with characters, plots, or topics we can easily identify with. The Problem: All Scripture is God-breathed and profitable. All of it. Women, it’s time to move beyond Esther, Ruth, and Proverbs 31 to the rest of the meal. Everyone, you can’t fully appreciate the sweetness of the New Testament without the savory of the Old Testament. We need a balanced diet to grow to maturity.
Discipleship Defined
Why do these five habits of highly ineffective Bible study persist in the church today? Why does biblical ignorance continue to dog the church, despite the good intentions of leadership to obey the Great Command to make disciples? I believe the answer lies in our definition of a disciple. A disciple is, literally, a learner—one who follows another’s teaching. But the modern church has tended to define a disciple as a “doer” instead of as a “learner.” We have been asked to do service projects, join home groups, find an accountability partner, get counseling, fix our marriages, sing on the worship team, get out of debt, help in the nursery, hand out bulletins, go on mission trips, give to the building fund, share the gospel at Starbucks—but we have so rarely been challenged to pursue the most fundamental element of discipleship—earnest study of the Word. Yes, a disciple does, but we’re motivated to act by love for the God revealed in the Word. Stop waiting for your community of believers to call you to be what Christ already has. Be a student. Be a good student. Read repetitively and in context, line by line. Keep the God of the gospel at the center of your study. Strive for comprehension before interpretation. Give application ample time to emerge from a passage. Watch ignorance flee and transformation flourish. Study the Word. Master it, master it.
Jen Wilkin is a wife, mom to four great kids, and an advocate for women to love God with their minds through the faithful study of his Word. She writes, speaks, and teaches women the Bible. She lives in Flower Mound, Texas, and her family calls The Village Church home. Jen is the author of Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds (Crossway, forthcoming). You can find her at jenwilkin.blogspot.com and follow her on Twitter.
