mbjones

We always start Discovery Bible Studies with prayer time (or at least a time designated for prayer-like activities). For one thing, it helps focus peoples attentions around Jesus (if they are praying) and opens their hearts to the community (if they are just speaking thanksgivings and needs). Also, a big part of what a Discover Bible Study is designed to do is seamlessly transform from a simple study to a simple church as people find themselves following Jesus, and if you want the DNA of prayer built into the church community, it’s necessary to start with it from the very beginning (even if very little “prayer” is happening).

The obvious question is how do you build this DNA into the community from day 1, especially if you are dealing with a group of people that have no concept of Jesus and prayer and talking to God? Forcing prayer is one option. It’s an option I’ve tried in fact but it doesn’t really produce fruit that is lasting — people are shy and nervous and unsure about talking to someone or something that they don’t even know.

So what’s a good way to do this? Just as in studying the Bible it’s best to have simple steps so that it is easily reproduced. There are three that we do to create an atmosphere of prayer within the DBS.

1. Share what you are thankful for. We start by getting everyone into an attitude of thanksgiving. Even if life is as hard as it could possibly be, everyone generally has something that they can give thanks for — be it friends and family, the beautiful, life or some unexpected blessing. By sharing these we actively engage in putting our hearts in a mode of giving thanks and, when the group is praying, we have a pool of items to praise God for.

2. Share what your greatest need is. Whereas thanksgiving is probably the best place to start, intercession is also a needed component of prayer. Building in a reliance on God and recognition that He is the source of all that we are early on sets a very good precedent. It also gives God an opportunity to radically show up and show Himself as real (in line with 1 Corinthians 2:4) through answered prayer. For example, I had the honor of baptizing a husband and wife on Easter that we have been doing a DBS with for about 2 months. On our first meeting, the wife had us pray during this time for her baby who was covered some scaly skin disease that did not look pleasant at all; God showed up and instantly started healing the child (by the next day the scaly skin was normal again). And that opened them up to a more in depth conversation about Jesus that led to them making the decisions that they have made.

3. Ask if anyone present can meet any of the needs expressed. God often moves miraculously; often too He uses us to be the answer to other peoples prayers. And if community is a value, we should be actively seeking to meet those needs expressed. As an example, someone we met in a DBS expressed the need of not knowing how to manage money. Because of that, we volunteered to spend some extended time with him sharing tip and tricks to manage your money (basically a modified envelope method) which he found really empowering and helpful.

Even if everyone isn’t praying on the first DBS, you as participant or facilitator can. If no one can meet the needs expressed, you can offer to lift those people up. After the fact you can meet with people to pray for them. As people grow closer to God and want to pray you are there to teach them and help see them grow in this (as well as Bible study).

Hopefully this gives a quick rundown on prayer and how it is incorporated into DBSs.

In my last Discovery Bible Study (DBS) post I talked about the role of the facilitating and how they lead not in the traditional sense but in inspiring and encouraging everyone to participate. In this post I want to begin to get into the meat of the DBS program.

We’ll do this by looking at the steps for Bible study first. There are other elements to the meeting besides just Bible study but this is what I’m going to focus on this post. The DBS is designed to be a very simple (and therefore reproducible) method that anyone can follow regardless of schooling and background. It’s designed in such a way that you don’t actually need a physical Bible. It would work just as well with an audio copy. It’s also not dependent on a trained scholar of some type. A group could be made up wholly of pre-Christians and still get very deep into the WORD of God. And this is what I personally like so much about it — it takes people quite deep into the Bible. A superficial overview this most certainly isn’t. Substance isn’t at any level sacrificed for simplicity (and I think the substance in these studies is often much more challenging than the substance I’ve experienced in churches in the states). There are 5 simple steps that we follow when we do this with people in the townships:

1. Reading the WORD.

The very first thing we do is read the Bible out loud. Often we read it more than once so that it everyone clearly hears. Sometimes we have everyone read it out loud. Reading out loud helps the words to sink into the reader and repetition makes it easier to remember for the hearers as well. And, when you take the other 4 steps into account, people often have read or heard the passage out loud 6 or 7 times. This makes it much more likely to produce lasting memory.

2. Everyone retells the passage in their own words.

The first step gets people to digest the WORD of God and this step insures comprehension. If someone can retell the passage clearly in their own words, you can bet they have at least a basic understanding of it. This is something to have everyone in the group do — it’s another opportunity to rehear the word and meaning is fleshed out as everyone verbalizes it in their own words (although a retelling and not a meaning is what we are go for here — meaning will be discussed as a group in a later step). If you are able to put it into your own words you are also more likely to remember it and, for accountability purposes when you ask people to tell someone about the passage, they can do it anywhere they are at regardless of if they have a Bible on hand. In “closed” situations where Bibles are scarce this is also very important for people as it helps equip them to be able to recreate the Bible on their own.

3. As the passage is being retold, asks the group if people are missing anything.

This step is done hand in hand with #2 as people retell. Putting the retellings to the test of the group insures accuracy and that people are drawing a right understanding. It also gives another opportunity for the WORD to be heard as people go back to the text to explain what others might be missing.

4. Break the passage into chunks and look at the specific meaning.

This is the step that dives us into the meaning. The facilitator breaks whatever passage is read into small chunks and the group discusses the meaning of each. The chunk could be a verse, a phrase, a sentence or a paragraph — essentially anything that’s smaller than the passage itself and gives you ample room to talk about all the different meanings within the text. Generally a phrase or a sentence works best but you might have to do more than that depending on time. For a group getting started, they might not know where to begin with discussing meaning so a few questions that I have found helpful are:

• What does this phrase tell us about God?
• What does this phrase tell us about man?
• What is God asking us to do or obey in this phrase?

There could be many other leading questions as well that gets the group to dive in and discuss.

Here it is very important for the facilitator to keep people on task. It is in this step of the process that you want to make sure that not one person is dominating the discussion or completely checking out of it. Also it is very, very important to keep people in the passage at hand, allowing no outside wandering. For non-Christians cross referencing and other such things aren’t something they know about so this generally isn’t an issue but when you deal with people that have some exposure to Christian culture they might try to wander all over the place introducing all sorts of confusion. It’s important to let the text at hand speak for itself. If anyone at anytime tries to say something thats not in the passage read, ask them where in the passage it is and if they can’t show you remind everyone that the focus is just the passage read. As Bible studies become churches, they can begin to compare and do broader comparative studies as they become equipped to deal with such things.

5. The obedience step.

Step 5 is really important. It’s in this step that we let the WORD of God sink from our heads into our hearts. When we don’t just hear it but actively choose to obey it — that’s when it changes us. And so, we ask everyone to be silent and think of all that we talked about throughout the DBS. We ask them to think specifically about one thing that God is highlighting to them that they can be faithful in obeying. We generally give them a minute or two to think about this and then everyone shares that one thing with everyone else. If everyone shares, there is accountability — they can check up on you throughout the next week or at the next meeting. Responses can be varied and that’s ok. What is important is that people are hearing from God through the Word and putting it into practice in their lives. One of our teachers told us of a Bible study he was in where the passage was Genesis 1. One guy mentioned how convicted he was that his horses where God creation and that he was exercising poor stewardship by beating them while other people could mention completely different things.

Choosing Passages

It may not be apparent from these steps but this is a long process. A selection of 10 verses could easily take you an hour or more to get through. As such, it’s generally best to select passages that are 10 verses or less. They should contextually go together (ie, you shouldn’t rip verses out of their context). If you need to go through a longer passage, it can span a week or more and that’s ok.

For groups of non-Christians (or people whose spiritual state we are unsure of) we tend to sequentially go through what we like to call God’s story: Creation, Rebellion, Sacrifice, Return, Commission. We also have a longer list of passages that takes them through the Old and New Testament that culminates in presenting a decision to chase after Jesus (it takes 20ish weeks to get through though — something that’s beyond our scope currently). As groups are baptized and become churches there can be a little more freedom in choosing passages and letting them discover church life and the Christian life as the dive in but we have lists that will take them through this as well.

One of the nice things about this process is that people can do it on their own. It’s actually a quite challenging Bible study tool and one that’d I recommend everyone give a try sometime. Obviously there will be differences if you are doing it by yourself (writing a retelling instead of verbalizing it for example) but its worth it.

I’ll have more on DBS’s soon.

I’ve written at quite some lengths about the small Bible studies we are starting and encouraging in our outreach time but have yet to spend much time actually describing what that looks like. I keep promising it and so this will be the first (of likely many) post to tackle that subject.

I’ll preference this by saying this method is called “Discovery Bible Study” for a reason: it’s designed to be simple enough for anyone to lead and deep enough that it draws non-believers into obedience to God. It’s actually simple enough that even a nonbeliever can lead it (and in CPM situations this is more often than not the case).

And it’s the role of the leader that I think deserves first mention.

The Facilitator

In truth — facilitator is a much better term then leader. They aren’t leading in any traditional sense; rather their role begins and ends with providing direction in keeping the conversation going. There are three things in particular that are worth mentioning.

1. The facilitator is not there to preach or teach in any way, shape or form. They just facilitate conversation. Pushing their opinion to the exclusion of other opinions or dominating the discussion is definitely out of the question. Participation is definitely acceptable (and encouraged!) but their voice counts the same as all the others.

2. The facilitator is there to insure that participants stick to the passage at hand. The idea with Discovery Bible Study is that participants are generally nonbelievers and have little to know exposure to Jesus so this is generally not an issue. It starts them out recognize the authority of scripture and it’s importance. Where it becomes problematic is when you get Christians in that group (or people with nominal knowledge of the Bible). They “hyperlink” and bring in verse and such outside of the scope of the passage at hand. Sometimes they might relate but it often only succeeds in confusing someone who is just beginning to discover Jesus. Another goal with sticking to the passage at hand is that you teach good Bible study habits. From the beginning they learn the importance of studying complete passages and not (as all too often happens) ripping verses out of their context to (often) say something that the Bible actually doesn’t. And if this is done right, from the very first study you build into the group the DNA of obedience to God and His Word.

3. A good facilitator also keeps his eye out for over-talkers and under-talkers. Just as you don’t want any one person dominating the discussion, you also don’t want any voice being left out (or drowned out). The facilitator, when he sees this happening, can politely (yet abruptly) silence the conversation (*”That’s really a great thought. Juli what do you think.”) In the same way he can gently nudge those that aren’t talking to speak up and share their heart. A good bit of the meat of Bible study comes in the group interaction; if you don’t have this, it’s less likely that people will be impacted as they should be.

Church Planter As Facilitator?

Ideally, the church planter (US!) should not be the facilitator. The process (described in coming notes) is designed in such a way that the facilitator can learn along side everyone else. Being a nonbeliever (or not) doesn’t disqualify from this role as the group is not yet a church. Not only that, you want people from within the context you are ministering to feel empowered to do this themselves. Ultimately, they are the ones that will reach their culture better than we ever could. It’s good to get them started in such a way that they are empowered to do that from the get go.

In some circumstances, it might be for the church planter to facilitate. When that happens our role isn’t any different than above. Not only that, we have to pay special attention to the mandate NOT to preach or teach. As I said, it’s called discovery because people are discovering Jesus. It’s not about us preaching or teaching our opinions at them. This is particularly hard to do and is a reason for the church planter not to facilitate. Instead, though, we can ask lots of questions and get them thinking about scripture critically.

If we facilitate, we also have to deal with the hand off. We can’t lead forever; at some point local leadership must take over if the group is to survive. If this is done from the start, it never actually becomes a big issue.

Honestly though this is something we are still trying to work out. The rhythm I am finding myself in is facilitating the first meeting and then getting our key man (or woman) — whoever introduced us to the group — to facilitate from then on; my role then is to simply show up, help when necessary and encourage and mentor burgeoning leadership.

Look for part two soon, hopefully as early as tomorrow. It’ll go into further detail of the structure.

In our second week of CPx, we had a guest speaker come and spend several days laying out a method and structure for church planting simple churches in such a way to spawn movements. He started by digging into the “Great Commission”:

Then Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Matthew 28:18-20

To do this we broke it up into specific commands contained within it and juxtaposing them with what the western church tends to do.

Go!

The first command we see in the great commission is to GO! It is a commissioning requiring movement and not one designed to feed into our tendencies toward complacency. More often than not, our tendency as a church (universal) is to stay. We’ve fine tuned the process, in fact, and church is little more than an event or club we head to one or two days a week. The greater body of believers has little to no sense of going in their lives. I read a stat some years ago that said that over 95% of Christians, after having been a Christian for 7ish years or more, knew zero non christians. That’s incredibly sad to think about — Jesus explicitly commands us all to go to them, yet we choose to stay while the world goes to hell around us.

We also tend to mix up the GO! command with a COME! command. We require attendance to do something as simple as sharing the Gospel. It wasn’t ever about attendance in Jesus and Paul’s time, as we see in the book of Acts. Paul and the disciples showed up in synagogues and other third spaces, going directly to the people rather than making the people come to them.

In traditional church settings we also have a tendency to send others rather than ourselves. We miss that the command to GO! is broad and extends to us all. And so, we get these people called missionaries and send them to the ends of the earth (which is awesome — don’t miss the point!). People everywhere need Jesus though, be it an office place — a health club — anywhere else you can think of. Moving far away isn’t an automatic. More often than not, we are called to GO! right where we are at. I had just as much a responsibility to share Jesus where I was before coming to Africa as I do now that I’m here.

Another tendency in some church settings is also isolation. We insulate ourselves with people that are just like us and stay in our own little shells, never coming out to GO! as Jesus commands.

Make Disciples!

The second command is another very important one — Jesus commissioned us all to go and make disciples of Jesus, teaching them what He has taught us. But does the western church do this? If we took a serious look at the church landscape, is disciples what we would find?

More often than not it isn’t, particularly in the American context. We make consumers much more often than disciples. Reducing the Gospel to a simplistic transaction has instilled it with the same value as that of buying expensive computers. We find something we like and tend to stay loyal to the brand but if something new or cheaper or in some way flashier comes along — it really isn’t anything to switch. Much about the seeker and attractional models tend to reinforce this. They are built around entertaining and capturing attentions and get flashier and crazier and more gimmicky with each passing year. Anything to get them in the pews, though, right?

And speaking of that, all to often discipleship gets lost in the quest for crowds and numbers. If we draw them in by the drove, week after week, that must be good right? Well, Barna research would tend to indicate otherwise:

• Fewer than half of all adults can name the four gospels.

• Many professing Christians cannot identify more than two or three of the disciples.

• 60 percent of Americans cannot name even five of the Ten Commandments.

• 82 percent of Americans believe “God helps those who help themselves” is a Bible verse.

• 12 percent of adults believe that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife.

• A survey of graduating high school seniors revealed that over 50 percent thought that Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife.

• A considerable number of respondents to one poll indicated that Billy Graham preached the Sermon on the Mount.

• Six out of ten Americans reject the existence of Satan.

• Four out of ten Americans believe that when Jesus Christ was on earth He committed sins.

• Five out of ten believe that anyone who is generally good or does enough good things for others during their life will earn a place in Heaven.

• Four out of ten believe that the Bible, the Koran and the Book of Mormon are all different expressions of the same spiritual truths.

• Seven out of ten born again Christians said they do not believe in moral absolutes.

• Only one out of ten Christians base their moral decision-making on the principles taught in the Bible.

Those stats speak volumes to me about the nature of discipleship within the American church. We are great about making members though. And programs. And events.

Of All Nations!

The third command is really an extension of the last — and its the drive to go and disciple not just individuals but nations. All to often its about the individual and not the nations — the object we are going after is much grander than we might necessarily think.

When brainstorming the common approach to discipling nations, we discussed the tendency for discipleship to be homogenous (we go to the “same”) rather than being heterogeneous (intentionally going to the “other”). I think this begins to get at the heart of incarnational living — Jesus is for all tribes, tongues and people. It is our job to take Him to them, bleeding His life, death and resurrection into the cracks of their culture. In this way, entire cultures can enter into the kingdom of heaven.

This is one of those things that excites me quite a bit and really gets me going.

Baptizing in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit

Baptism is an important thing but it’s not THE thing. That’s Jesus. It’s not some magical or esoteric event either. Rather, it is a public declaration of who is lord of your life. It’s placing a stake in the grand that says, “my life now and forevermore belongs to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.” It’s also a symbolic act — an identification with the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Just as He died, was buried and rose again to new life, so we die to our old lives, are buried beneath the water, and rise again to new life in Christ.

That it is a command of Jesus just solidifies its importance (if its prophetic stance of identification and allegiance hadn’t already gripped you). But do we do this (and do it well)? Do we baptize into the trinity? It’s easy to say yes! But we often baptize into religious affiliations, into denominations and into doctrinal statements. They take prime importance and are the grid through baptism is decided and administered. I remember a friend some time ago discussing baptism in a church they were attending and it was all dependent not in the trinity but the particular doctrinal stance of the associated denomination. All to often we get caught up in those details.

Another trap that’s easy to fall into is relegating baptism solely into the realm of choice: it’s a personal decision and we can decide whether or not we do it or not. It’s true that salvation itself isn’t dependent on baptism. But Jesus is quite clear that it’s something we are to do, and probably as we are able to. It feels like their is immediacy in the words of Jesus — that’s it’s important enough to Him to command it and not just suggest it.

Teaching Them to Obey

This is one category that can raise some tempers. The question begs a close examination of the nature of the sermon and what it gets across. Thinking high level — what exactly do we teach? Perhaps getting more specific, does the sermon if that is your primary mode of teaching fulfill the command of the great commission to teach disciples to obey everything that Jesus taught.

That is an interesting question. In sermons, preachers have the tendency to just talk at people rather than teach them. I’ve sat through many lessons where the pastor gets up and passionately spends time going through this 30 minute lecture and I come out and 3 hours later have no clear recollection of what went on. Is that teaching? If there is nothing to obey and especially nothing of Jesus to obey, is that really fulfilling the command of Jesus? And this happens often week after week.

I’ve preached in a traditional setting once and found it to be a fascinating experience. I honestly much better like “preaching” in house church settings where it seizes to be about me on the stage with a headset and instead becomes all of us circled around discussing the scripture and coming up with real and practical ways of applying the scripture together in everyday life.

And I haven’t gotten into the content of a lot of sermons. Are they scriptural? I’ve heard way too many that read like a self-help/motivational sermon and NOT Jesus’ Words to obey in everyday life. Cultural relevancy and self-esteem all too often trump the Bible and sometimes (probably more than we are willing to admit) church culture trumps it as well (I’m thinking of all you Baptist who can’t do anything fun, like dance). I’ve also heard many that read like magic formulas to get God to obey us: say this prayer and the genie will grant your wish — do this thing and the genie will do this — and so on. That’s not teaching to obey all that Jesus has taught us either.

And we’ve got to be careful of the flipside of the watered down/neutered Gospel: teaching to know and not to obey. Knowledge is a seductive drug. It’s easy to get caught up in the knowing and having your systematic theology ducks all in a row. But if all we do is know and not obey, then it is no better to us and we ignore the teaching of Jesus.

I Have Commanded

I think we kind of covered this above but we have to make sure that we are chasing after Jesus and His Word while not getting caught up in man made dogma and doctrine and everything that the church commands (that Jesus often might not).

In looking at these verses, there is one other thing I noticed that I find important: the commands of Jesus in these verses are bracketed by the presence of God. It is with the authority of heaven and earth that Jesus gives this commission. It’s in this authoritative presence of the Word of God that it’s given and, as the verses end, it’s in His presence with us til the end of the age that we walk in them and carry them out.

I find it exciting and challenging and incredibly rewarding to be invited to partner with Jesus in seeing every tribe, tongue and nation come to know Him, as well as challenged to truly walk in His commission and not the world’s, or the some church’s or some man’s. After working it out, here’s to living it out…