Leading a Bible study: Part 5

We are now drawing to the end of my suggested Do’s and Don’ts of leading Bible study (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3  | Part 4). Let’s pick up where we left off yesterday..

DON’T: Shoot people down
Sometimes you’ll ask a question or someone will be sharing and they will say something which is just objectively incorrect.

Love is patient, love is kind, …

The instinct of the Bible nerd is to rip it to shreds.

Stop.

Take a breath.

Now do it gently. Here are some good ways to begin:

“hmmm…I’m not quite sure about that, doesn’t the Bible/Catechism say that….”
“I can see why you might say that, but I don’t think that’s quite right…”
“Maybe I’m misunderstanding you, but…”

DON’T: Be afraid to state or ask the obvious
Be careful about the level knowledge you assume to be present in the group. It is safer to assume that people know less rather than more. There is a real danger in assuming too much. If you do this, some members will become utterly confused and disaffected.

For example, if I were leading a Bible study on the Ten Commandments, I would ask the following questions:

“Who was Moses?”
“Who are the people he’s talking to?”
“What is Sinai”?
“What were the people doing in the desert?”

If everyone knows the answers to these questions then you can move through them swiftly. However, asking these questions can gently benefit the members of the group who don’t know the answers. These people may be too afraid to ask questions for fear of “looking stupid”. As their leader, you can save them this embarrassment by asking those questions out loud yourself.

It’s also particularly important to make sure that everyone understands the terms used in the passage, as Scripture often contains words which we do not typically use in everyday speech, such as “Advocate”, “propitiation”, “begat” and “mammon”.

DO: Establish context
Related to this, I usually try and bring up the question of context as early as possible in the discussion:

What happened prior to this passage?
What happens after this passage?
Who are the people mentioned?
Where does this take place?

These are questions that you should be able to answer following your preparatory study. Understanding the context will help everyone understand the text itself.

DON’T: Feel the need to cover every little detail
This suggestion is one which I personally struggle with a lot. If you have done lots of study and preparation for the Bible study, it can be very tempting to try and impart to the group EVERYTHING you’ve learned. You must resist the inclination! If you don’t, you’ll have problems. The discussion will lose momentum and you’ll probably end up overloading many of the group with too much information. Dial it back. Share things as appropriate.

Thanks for sticking with this! I’ll do the final post in this series tomorrow. As always, feedback in the Comment Box is appreciated!