Teaching the Bible in Various Contexts

This article was first published in French at TPSG.

Earlier this year, my colleague at SOLA Debbie and I had the privilege of participating in an 8-week women’s cohort with TGC USA on how to teach the Bible. Our main objective was to glean pedagogical lessons from some of the most gifted and experienced women Bible teachers in the TGC network. Given that we at SOLA offer our own 6-week cohort on how to teach the Bible, this seemed like a worthwhile investment of our time and energy. 

The wisdom we learned was far more than I can cover in one article. One session that especially stood out is Jen Wilkin’s, entitled, “How to Teach the Bible in Various Contexts.” I would like to therefore pass on some of her most helpful insights, peppered with some thoughts of my own.

Consider Your Audience

Whether we teach a group of five people in our living rooms or 50 at a larger gathering, we should respect people’s time by beginning and ending on time. This is the first way to establish credibility. 

Beyond this practical consideration, we will address a group of five in a much more organic and interactive way than we will a group of 50. But even with a larger group, we want to be conversational in our approach. When possible, creating space for a larger group to break up into smaller ones will allow for much-needed discussion time. The size of the group will also affect the kind of questions we ask, as questions with longer answers are more difficult to include in a talk with a larger audience. 

Prioritize Bible Study

When it comes to the purpose for gathering, we need to make our intentions clear. We are meeting to study the Bible. If those attending are expecting a 15-minute devotion followed by 45 minutes of snacks and laughs, they may be disappointed to discover you prepared for an inverse scenario in the division of your time. 

When it comes to prayer, this may sound unholy, but sharing prayer requests can overwhelm the time that ought to be consecrated to the Word of God. Rather than allowing for a time of sharing, consider handing out notecards on which to jot down a prayer request. Then ask each person attending to pray at home that week for the person on their left. 

Employ an Interactive Teaching Style

I must admit that this point is a challenge for me. Most of the training I received in seminary and beyond focused on lecture-style teaching. Yet studies show that the more passive the learning environment is, the lower retention is. Jen challenged us, therefore, to consider teaching as a dialogical experience, whether we teach 5, 50, or even 5000.

Dialogical teaching creates an active learning environment. The way to do that in a larger setting is to imagine how you would teach the same lesson while seated in your living room. While you cannot interact with a large group in the same manner as a small one, you can still engage your audience by asking them questions from the text. For example, “What’s the next verb we see in this passage? Where have we seen it before?” Questions with short answers like these allow listeners to participate no matter the size of the group.

Ask Good Questions

We cannot overestimate the importance of asking good questions. This doesn’t come naturally, either to the Bible teacher or to the student. We as teachers need to sharpen this skill by developing curiosity. We will also improve in this area as we put ourselves in the place of our students and anticipate what kinds of questions they would ask, what objections they would raise, and what rabbit trails they might be tempted to go down. Only then will be we able to train our hearers in asking the right kind of questions, which they will then ask of the text as they study the Bible for themselves. The goal isn’t to simply supply the right answers but to develop the discipline of coming to the text with curiosity.

Our questions will fall into three categories: Observation, which some might consider boring and obvious; interpretation, which some might consider your job to answer for them; and application, which some might jump to prematurely if not properly taught.

Avoid Problematic Questions

Problematic questions can fall into one of the following categories. Firstly, asking questions with a yes or no answer doesn’t generally stimulate our hearers to much depth of thought. Similarly, the answer to some questions may be so obvious as to seem unnecessary to ask. If the answer to most of our questions is “God” or “Jesus,” we may need to consider composing better questions. If, however, the repetition of God’s name is of significance, that would be a good reason to inquire, “Why do you think that word showed up so many times in our passage?” 

Thirdly, we should avoid asking questions for which the student wouldn’t reasonably know the answer, an example being the nuance of Paul’s use of the aorist middle voice. And lastly, Wilkin suggests avoiding questions that require your hearers to divulge overly personal information. One way to facilitate this is by asking fewer questions about me/now and more questions about us/always (the Church throughout the ages).

Helpful Tips for Asking Good Questions

1. Let the Icebreaker Serve a Double Purpose

Lest we be discouraged by all the wrong ways we’ve been asking questions listed above, Wilkin proposes some helpful ways to ask questions. The first is to use ice-breaker questions to prepare your hearers for the study of the Word. I was happy to discover this method recently, as I was responsible for the icebreaker at our church’s women’s breakfast just before my friend Martha taught on the temptation of Christ. Rather than play an unrelated game to allow the women to get to know one another, I had all the women stand up and asked each one to sit down if she’d ever been tempted in the following ways: speeding on the way to church, or lying to a friend when asked if she looked good in a new outfit, etc. 

2. Ask Questions That Allow for Multiple Answers

Draw your hearers in by asking questions for which multiple answers are possible. For example, rather than asking, “Do we believe that God is wise?” ask, “Where in the Bible do we see clear examples of God’s wisdom?” 

3. Be Prepared for Wrong Answers

How do we respond when a student answers in a way that is in error? Wilkin suggests turning to someone else in the group and asking, “That’s interesting. What do you think, Evelyne?” Engaging other participants will likely result in another student answering correctly, at which point the teacher can say, “Good! I think you’re onto something here.”

4. Face Hard Questions

Some passages of Scripture will naturally raise thorny questions from our hearers. For example, as I have taught through the Psalms, I’ve had to wrestle with what we as New Covenant believers should make of the imprecatory psalms. We may wish to avoid these tough questions, but we owe it to our hearers to study the Scriptures well enough to address them with the help of the Spirit. 

5. Vary Your Application Questions

As a married woman with children, the most natural thing in the world for me will be to think of ways in which a text applies to other women in my position. Yet rather than speaking in terms of spouses and children, a wise teacher will ask, “How does the truth of this passage affect our primary relationships? If I took seriously Christ’s example of humility, what person in my life would most benefit from my putting his example into practice?” 

Moreover, most of us Bible teachers have pet application topics we return to often. But we need to discipline ourselves to vary the ways in which we apply the Word to our hearers. One way to do so is to think in terms of concentric circles: How can I practice this truth in my home, my church, my workplace, my community, and my nation? Another way is to ask how this truth changes the way I think, speak, or act.