How can Bible studies be made more engaging & interesting?

[Bootstrap]

The Bible Project videos are a great overview of the Bible from many perspectives, and they teach a lot of things most Christians do not know. They connect a lot of dots, and they are short and engaging.

https://bibleproject.com/

They also have podcasts, which are much longer, and classrooms. I have been listening to the podcasts for years. This year, their focus is on the Sermon on the Mount, and I was surprised how much I still had to learn about a passage I have studied many times and read many times in Greek.

I think teaching the basic attitude of receptiveness, curiosity, and humility before Scripture is also important. That God has something new for us whenever we turn to it. That the Holy Spirit is not a fossil buried down deep somewhere.

[Praxis+Theodicy]

Very few churches are sitting down with the Bible, and reading the New Testament together, and making adjustments in their practices and lifestyles based on what they read together. Most Bible studies are just reconfirming what is already believed and practiced and making excuses for what is not.

I think this may be one of the reasons that Bible studies such as Sunday School classes might sometimes not appear to interest many of the attendees. The underlying attitude is that nothing much that is new will really be unearthed anyway.

What can be done, or what are some of the things that should be in place, for a Bible study to be interesting and engaging to those attending?

Let a Bible study have consequences. Start with the question, "What can we, collectively, know and start proclaiming about God and His work in the world after this study?" "What can we learn about what we should be doing/doing better from this passage?"

Too often, Bible study is an end to itself instead of a means to an end. Same with personal Bible reading, preaching, "quiet time", etc. These are all tools for shaking us into Christlikeness, but until we are able to express our Christlikeness in shoe leather, all these tools feel like worthless exercises. They are encouraged as a thing Christians ought to do, as if that is the end all, be all of what it means to be a Christian. But they are not.

Encourage Bible study as a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Some people will instantly lose interest, and some people will suddenly gain interest and become more engaged and interested.

[JohnL]

Some of the best Bible studies I ever attended took place outside of Sunday school in small groups that met in private homes. People felt like they were on equal footing to share their perceptions of the Bible passages. They were much more engaged in the discussion.

Sunday schools are okay but it seems like they were attended by parents who had dropped off their children for their classes and wanted and came for the snacks and coffee while waiting for their children's classes to end. Maybe breaking into smaller discussion groups would help but the parents tended to cluster with each other and talk about anything but the lesson.

[Bootstrap]

I like to divide a Sunday School lesson into three phases:

1. Observation - what does it say? Who, what, when, where, why, how? What surprises you? What feels uncomfortable? What is hard to understand? How are people relating to each other and God? What would it be like to be in that scene? Spending lots of time here tends to remind us that there are new things to discover.
2. Interpretation - what did it mean to them, then? Not to us, now, but to them? How did they respond? What did they learn, how did they grow, what did they have to entrust to God while feeling vulnerable? What do you think that was like for them? What values does that show?
3. Application - how do we apply that to ourselves today? For instance, we don't care who is circumcized, but how would we apply the values we see in Galations to our own congregations?

I think I spend about 1/2 of the time in observation, 1/4 of the time in interpretation (you can't interpret what you haven't seen), and 1/4 of the time or less in application. Sometimes, people come back the next week with thoughts about how to apply the text that came to them during the week.

InterVarsity has good materials for this kind of inductive Bible study. It takes time for the teacher to prepare - but so does any Bible study that is going to be engaging.

[JohnL]

Not sure if it's useful but I found the book we used in the Bible study I mentioned. It's named Romans Commentary by Harold S. Martin.

[Valerie]

My memories here took me back decades over a variety of Bible studies. As far as how can they be more engaging, I found the leaders who asked questions helped people engage more, and the home groups seem to help that-
To be more interesting seemed to happen where the Bible study leader had more historical background to help with context.
An atmosphere where people feel free to share understanding of Scripture and how they've applied it in their lives always interests me too Also an atmosphere where people feel free to ask questions to gain more understanding.

I also enjoy homework from Bible studies

[cooper]

I've had two experiences with Sunday school in conservative Mennonite contexts. My primary experience is at an ultra-conservative Mennonite church that used Rod & Staff curriculum. This was more catechesis than Bible study. The second experience was at a church that just used the Bible for Sunday School. The church had a lot of gifted, mature teachers and usually, the discussions were stimulating. One time, we were studying John 7, and the teacher talked about the story of the woman caught in adultery and cast questions on it being part of Scripture. The bishop disagreed with him.

This type of thing is why Sunday School is so structured and unoriginal. Many churches would not be able to tolerate missteps/questions like that. Contributions are unoriginal because participants don't want to walk over any trip wires. Sunday School was a Protestant innovation after all. There's a (legitimate) concern that if unstructured would import Protestant theology and biblical criticism into the church. I think the structured nature of the average conservative Mennonite Sunday school is a feature, not a bug.

[barnhart]

Interesting observation Cooper. If long term stability is the prime directive, it would make sense to close down on independent thought.