Description: Semper Blogformanda
Ages ago, while a young Christian in college, I attended quite a few Bible studies over the course of four years. Some were better than others.
The studies invariably fell into one of two categories. In the first type, one guy did a bunch of preparation; the rest of us, at most, read the passage and jotted down some thoughts or questions. There was always some discussion when we met, but the guy who’d prepared beforehand basically taught the rest of us. In the other type, the participants took turns leading, so that no one ever had to do much work. Usually, the leader would do some slapdash preparation on the day of the study; the rest of us, on a
The one-leader studies were consistently more profitable than the “egalitarian” ones, which – though they were more participatory – tended to leave us with much less actual insight into the meaning of the Bible. It’s not that I didn’t learn anything in them, I just didn’t learn much. Mostly, we shared whatever popped into our heads on the spot.