- February 16, 2011
- 12 Comments
Do we need to get more serious about Bible study? (Bible Study and the Church – Part 1)
The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate.
From Barna’s study of people in churches:
“As the two younger generations (Busters and Mosaics) ascend to numerical and positional supremacy in churches across the nation, the data suggest that biblical literacy is likely to decline significantly. The theological free-for-all that is encroaching in Protestant churches nationwide suggests the coming decade will be a time of unparalleled theological diversity and inconsistency.” (italics added)
Five years ago my response to this would be to say: “We need more/better/deeper Bible study!’ But – now I’m not so sure…
So a little about me: I grew up a nominal Roman Catholic (going to church with my parents and daydreaming for 58 minutes until I got to leave). Read the Bible a only handful of times in my life until I came to faith in college through a group of Evangelical friends who loved me around a lunch table every day. Their love + God’s Spirit + repentance = major conversion experience. And about 20 seconds after I became a Christian I was in a bible study – and I’ve been in (at least) one ever since.
In fact – every church I’ve either attended or been on staff at has emphasized “the Bible”: Walk Thru the Bible, teaching through books of the bible, lay theological training on the bible, Sunday school classes on the bible, expository preaching on the bible, etc.
My first question – Is my experience an outlier? Those of you who grew up in church or attend/work in churches now: Do they emphasize the Bible? Teach and talk about the Bible? Help you have quiet times, devotional times, and studies on the Bible?
The people I’ve talked to in my small Evangelical world would say, “yes,” but I’m open to hearing other experiences. In the churches I’m aware of, everything seems to begin and end with “knowing your Bible.”
And this is reflected in the larger Christian sub-culture: Every year there’s a new translation put out to increase bible knowledge and understanding (and I’ve only included those here that: a- were put out in the last 10 years and b- I suppose will have an audience with Evangelicals…am I missing any?):
I’ve heard the average Christian has 9 Bibles at home…NINE…no wonder it’s the bestselling book of all time…we have more Bibles in more hands and homes RIGHT NOW than at any other time in the history of the Church. We’ve spent the last 500 years or so of Protestant-dom emphasizing learning, reading, and knowing your Bible - BUT – research indicates we know it less now than ever before.
My second question: How can this be?
If we’re studying the Bible so much as Christians why aren’t we learning it?
How many more Bible studies will it take to become theologically literate?
Does it seem to anyone else that we’re always learning but never coming to a knowledge of the truth?
I have some thoughts on this – and in the coming weeks I hope to begin a conversation here on why we find ourselves so biblically and theologically illiterate. But right out of the gate I want to make this suggestion:
How we study the Bible significantly impairs our theological and biblical literacy. Thus, getting MORE serious about “Bible study” may not be the solution…and it may be part of the problem.
Are you still reading? Or did you open a new browser window to report me on a heresy watch blog?
(It may be time to read my disclaimer. Every question and idea we kick around in this series should be read in light of the disclaimer.)
But right now – because I hope this blog will be collaborative and communally-driven – I’m interested to hear others experience on the churches you’ve been at: Have they focused on Bible studies? Expository preaching? Emphasized knowing scripture and theology? Or – have i just attended and been on staff at outlier Evangelical churches? And – in your corner of the Christian world – do you see this phenomenon of low knowledge of theological and biblical content?
In future posts I’ll flesh out a bit more why I think more Bible study won’t solve this problem….
Categorized: Bible Study Tags:
At the first of the year I was so burned out by studying to prove Theological frame works and certain Doctrines, I simply stop reading the Bible and started reading gardening books….I felt so much better.
So this year I started reading the Bible from Revelation to Genesis. Weird, but that is me.
I have really enjoyed it and have been refreshed. And now daily there is something I want to share with others….in some form or another…just the freshness of it.
I want to go back when in my earlier years, I loved reading the Bible…God’s Story, God’s Directions, and God’s Community.
If something pops up that looks like some sysmatic theological insights ( because someone used that verse ) I might make a note….or maybe not….I really want to see what I am reading as content in the context of those recieving it.
I am think……I am going back to KISS….Keep it Simple Stupid !!
good thoughts Matt. I often hear adults bemoaning the lack of biblical literacy in the younger generations, specifically the ones who grew up in the church. Ironic, I suppose since most Sunday school curricula focus almost exclusively on cognitive apprehension of biblical material. It seems to fit your premise here, and it would be interesting to hear thoughts on how this conversation plays out in the context of raising children in the community of faith.
Would love to hear your thoughts on that as we move ahead, Adam. I believe the way we teach/talk about Scripture to our kids is vital…But as a dad of a 2.5 yr old I’m kinda learning as I go. Later in this series I’ll talk a bit about the ways in which we motivate kids to read Scripture and how this has a profound impact on their imaginations and character. Chime in on your thoughts too!
Matt, I think I know partly where you’re headed. I would suggest that *not* studying the bible isn’t helping. And I would ask this question from church history: why did so many reformers spend so much time on scripture translation into mother tongues? Agree that how we read is tremendously important. I probably disagree slightly that getting more serious about bible study impairs our theological literacy. Depends what you mean by “more serious.” Personally, I think we’re facing a giant cultural shift away from reading texts, and personally I think it’s a huge problem. That shift away from reading affects churches like many other cultural shifts do. We may have to adopt practices that the church has used in the past when trying to catechize illiterate christians. I still think that reading texts is very powerful.
Hang around, Brian. I hope to get to those questions and clarify as we move through. But for now…I want to know if my “take” has any merit: Do (like I assume) most Evangelical churches emphasize knowing the Bible? If so, why don’t we know it? If more Bible study (as currently conceived in most churches) could solve the issue of biblical illiteracy, shouldn’t it have done so by now?
Of course – If my experience is not the norm, then most churches aren’t prioritizing Scripture and teaching on the Bible – and then my questions are starting with the wrong presumption – that’s what I’m hoping to hear about in this first post.
The Word of God reveals the Triune God, Man, and Satan. Consider Christ as the Word of God and The Bible as the Word of God. What is the difference? Genesis says or God said, “let there be light…” So The Word of God reveals a Speaking God. The Word of God reveals His speaking. Do we listen to this speaking God and what He has to say? Or do we just formulate ideas, concepts, opinions about this Speaking God? Does God speak as the Logos, the constant Word of God and the Rhema, the instant Word of God. What is the revelation of God? Is it only the Bible itself?
Hey Matt – I am really excited about this & looking forward to how all of this will shake down. A few thought/questions that I have is:
1. How should we think through studying/reading the bible so that we can grasp the meta-narrative of then bible.
2. How does our understanding of the meta-narrative shape our imagination so that we live by/in that story.
Again, really looking forward to this discussion.
Bryan –
Yep. That stuff is hugely important…two of the books that have impacted me the most in terms of how I understand Scripture have been dealing with exactly what you’re saying. I hope to get to the problem of “sound-bite” Scripture reading – how that keeps our noetic structures unchanged…how we tell ourselves whatever story we want about what we read. I know you’ve read lots of Vanhoozer – I really like his metaphor of the Bible being our “divine script” that re-scripts our lives according to God’s story (that’s a loose paraphrase) – Would love your thoughts when we get there…
I specifically want to explore: How does reading scripture not as an “owner’s manual” or “principles for living” but as “God’s script for our life” change the way I receive and integrate it?
Great questions, Bryan.
My experience is that people outside the church tend to know less about the bible than the general culture used to, especially compared to 50-100yrs ago.
My experience of church in the past 25yrs has been that we are rather selective about which scriptures we talk about. We tend to read only the encouraging parts. If there are parts about suffering, anger, abuse, killing, or revenge -these are largely ignored and skipped over. We seem to want to perpetuate the “happy all the time” mentality about being a Christian, which in my mind is NOT what the scriptures present. Books that talk about the silence of God, or questions of suffering are rather unsatisfying and superficial.
My experience has been that our church culture has been compartmentalized both from within and without. There is an effort not to be political or factious in the name of unity or love, but in the end what happens is that we make our faith irrelevant to real world problems. We create this disconnect between what we think we believe and what we live. Real world problems need real confrontation in order to have real solutions. Conflict opens up opportunities for forgiveness in ways that demonstrate real love. Forgiveness is hard work.
The compartmentalizing keeps us from wrestling with our faith. We want this neat little package that makes our lives easier. We don’t have go through the messy process of being creative. We are afraid to take chances. We want to be in control.
Bible study in churches is often a desperate attempt to hear from God when we have closed off hearing from him in the rest of life. God does speak to us through the Bible and there seems to be a correlation between having knowledge of the bible and revival. But those who study the bible without letting the Spirit guiding their actions seem to harden their hearts.
I would like to see more people outside of the church know more about the Bible. I would like to see those inside the church wrestling with what they know about the Bible and how it influences their actions. You don’t have to know much before you have to do a lot of wrestling.
“Bible study in churches is often a desperate attempt to hear from God when we have closed off hearing from him in the rest of life.”
Ooooo…Maria. Good thoughts! This above sentence actually gets at one of the reasons I’ve started this series…
If you gave a Bible to a person for the first time in their life, how would you tell them to read it?
How would you lead a congregation to read the Bible, knowing that not all will come to a Bible study class?
Is the Bible instructional, informative, life changing?
If this is the jumping off point in teaching the Scriptures…..how is that to be done?
2 Timothy 3:16: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness
I think the “lack of biblical literacy” is a VERY new concept. Who ever measured such a statistic more than 50 years ago?
I also think that many of today’s “bible studies” are really just “prayer groups.” So that’s a bit problematic as far as increasing biblical literacy, although the “prayer groups” are certainly beneficial!!
Lastly, too many “bible studies” are led by lay people (like me) and aren’t really accurate, rather just based on opinion.
There’s my two cents… I like this blog string and the accompanying comments! Looking forward to reading more thoughts and updates.