writing bible studies

I have never given a sermon, I hopefully never will, but a sermon is essentially telling people what this passage of the bible means. The Holy Spirit helps the preacher to understand and to put it into words. Writing a bible study is different. It is working out what the passage means and then writing questions to assist a group to also work out what it means.

Bible study writing is safer, I think, because it is harder to accidentally teach heresy. However it does not make it easier. How to write questions to invite discussion on the right topics, not, for example, social lives. How to get a structure that helps the overall passage make sense, structure and I are not friends at the best of times. How to word questions to make them understandable.

Then leading the bible study is a whole other barrel of laughs. I have only led teens but the variety of bible knowledge, attention span, focusing ability, and ability to say something that may be wrong or only nearly write at the risk of being thought a fool, is the same as in an adults bible study. Adults may have a longer attention span then teens (or they pretend they do) but they also suffer from "what if I get it Wrong" disease. "Talking over the top of others" syndrome (I suffer from this a little), and the dreaded "I have spoken the correct answer so let us move on" difficulty. I have encountered all these and more while leading youth bible studies. The difficulty is to encourage the over confident kids to allow the less confident kids to answer, especially if it is an easier question. Not to say that quieter kids are less smart, it is just nice to give them a victory occasionally (this is where I struggle with the talking over the top of others thing).

I suspect that, while heretically safer to write a bible study then a sermon, there are more likely to be disputers in a bible study group then a sermon congregation if one begins teaching that Jesus and God are not even related, both are equally difficult to write. They are also both difficult to teach with, for different reasons.