I’VE BEEN THINKING … how a small Bible study group changed my life! I was a sophomore at UC Berkeley when a friend, Arba Hudgens, who lived in my dorm, invited me to his Bible study group. It was in that setting with this group of young men my own age where I first thought seriously about the person of Jesus Christ. It happened naturally, week by week, as we read together from the Bible. The narratives about Jesus in the New Testament, letters by St. Paul, or Psalms … the Jesus I was meeting through these texts gradually won my respect and then captured we need to look first at what is happening in the sentence. Next we look for the meaning and implication of what we have just read.
Bible study should always be friendly and open to honest questions and opinions of each person present. This openness includes hearing early conclusions and a full range of questions that need more information. The very best moments can happen at just these intersections.
Most exciting is that moment when the reader is reading a sentence and just a few seconds before anyone says anything there is a breakthrough of discovery and the text becomes clear to me or to one nearby; it is that instant of wonder that dawns on me: “Yes this is it, I see it for myself!” In matters great and small, such a moment can happen when a textual passage or letter from the larger book called the Bible my faith. I met Jesus in the Old Testament by anticipation and in the New Testament through witness to his life and ministry, death and resurrection. For me the decision to trust in Christ happened in simple steps. What was most helpful was that we just read the Bible as we would read any other book. What happened is that this first-century text pointed in one way or another to its living center; Jesus Christ. He did the rest.
Since then Bible study has been a part of my life: study by myself as well as study with others in small or large group settings. The Bible study I am describing is that openness on our part to reading a sentence in a biblical text, and to listening to what it is saying in its own terms. The goal is to listen and allow the sentence of a teacher or the description of an event to naturally unfold, then to allow the sentence to make its point.
When I look back on that small group and ask why it was and is so helpful, I see some reasons: First, the group that took me in was amateur in the best sense. We only needed a readable English translation of the Bible, and then we were able to share together our own reactions, thoughts and even theological interpretations. The mix of eight members in the group in itself afforded a safety net against careless and extremist interpretations.
I learned that the best methods for Bible study among a group of friends are the least complicated ones. To begin, a reader reads aloud a sentence or two. Then the members ask the obvious inductive questions: who, what, why, when and where? Because in Bible study we need to look first at what is happening in the sentence. Next we look for the meaning and implication of what we have just read.
Bible study should always be friendly and open to honest questions and opinions of each person present. This openness includes hearing early conclusions and a full range of questions that need more information. The very best moments can happen at just these intersections.
Most exciting is that moment when the reader is reading a sentence and just a few seconds before anyone says anything there is a breakthrough of discovery and the text becomes clear to me or to one nearby; it is that instant of wonder that dawns on me: “Yes this is it, I see it for myself!” In matters great and small, such a moment can happen when a textual passage or letter from the larger book called the Bible is opened in front of my eyes.
The Bible study groups that I played a part in brought me friends who have enriched my life. It is a very good side effect. C.S. Lewis describes many of the friends he made in similar fashion with the phrase,
“What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”
EARL PALMER is senior pastor emeritus at University Presbyterian Church in Seattle.
