Comments on: For The Record 2.0

By: ryan wentzel » Highlights 11-01-2005

ryan wentzel » Highlights 11-01-2005 — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 07:13:55 +0000

[...] Joe Thorn follows up For the Record with For the Record 2.0. I’m in agreement with much of what Joe has written in these two posts. [Tags: none] Filed under Highlights | [...]

By: Joe Thorn

Joe Thorn — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 15:21:40 +0000

You’re right Laurie. Sproul’s studies are great, and the Holiness of God in particular is excellent.

By: Laurie

Laurie — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 14:44:42 +0000

For what it’s worth — Ligonier Ministries (RC Sproul) has a number of good group study materials as well — you can get video or audio tracks to go along if you want, or you can simply use the book/study guide ($50 purchases unlimited copies of the materials for a group). I’ve used “The Holiness of God” with the college aged group and they enjoyed NOT being talked down to, yet being able to understand an issue they really hadn’t given much thought to before.

By: Joe Thorn

Joe Thorn — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 04:03:03 +0000

Thanks for the recommendations guys.

By: GeneMBridges

GeneMBridges — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 03:54:09 +0000

Been plugging this one for a long time:

You can only teach so much in one hour on a Sunday. The trick is getting your people to stay on the same page during the week.

I used Search The Scriptures, a book by IVP, edited by Alan Stibbs, first published in 1949 and still available. It’s an inductive format that takes the people through the whole Bible in 3 years. It’s written in Q and A format and is ideal for home study and group study. You can copy the week’s lessons for a class or, ideally, get them all to buy the book and use it.

A typical lesson involves you either hitting the highlights of the previous week’s lessons or, ideally, getting them to do short presentations for each other’s benefit and talking about what they learned during the week.

It usually involves them writing. The questions do not tell them what to believe, but they are pointed enough that they have to dig through the text in order to answer them. Using this tool, they learn to think about the text itself. You can either hit the hightlights, pick a particular theme from the week out to teach, or get them to do short presentations and teach themselves. In short, it’s highly adaptable. It includes some commentary notes in it to help them along, but those are minimal. It encourages them to apply the lessons through the use of rhetorical questions at the end of the objective portion. Most days, there are 2, never more than 3 questions to answer. Some questions will require a page or 2; others will only require a sentence or two. It just depends on the material. The important thing is that it gives you material from which to teach, and it keeps them all on the same page from week to week. It’s one thing to keep them on the same page from Sunday to Sunday, but to get a whole class to study the same thing every day from week to week and cover the whole Bible is quite a feat. It takes committment, and I’d encourage you to try it with a pilot group, but, in my experience, it works very well.

By: Puritan Fan

Puritan Fan — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 02:05:06 +0000

As an alternative or supplement to LifeWay, you might want to consider Regular Baptist Press. I have used materials (childrens through seniors) from them and have found that it generally is more in depth than much of the material on the market.

By: Bruce

Bruce — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 15:12:22 +0000

I use LifeWay strickly as a starting point to teach my young single’s class. But I constantly have to adapt, rethink, rework the material to make it even remotely relevant to 20s and 30s. I haven’t been able to find much of anything else out there. Any other help or directions would be greatly appreciated. We have a Sunday morning Bible study at the church (I hate the term Sunday School) and a Sunday night meeting at my house, so I’m needing two different lessons every Sunday.

By the way Joe, I really enjoy your writings.

By: Joe Thorn

Joe Thorn — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 14:20:13 +0000

Marc,

Lifeway is a ministry of the Southern Baptist Convention selling and producing a lot of teaching material and Sunday School/small group curricula.

By: Tim Etherington

Tim Etherington — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 13:53:49 +0000

One of the profs at Trinity, I think it was Osborne, said that 30% of your theology is wrong. The trick is figuring out which 30% it is.

You sound just like me in everything but the Lifeway part. I’m not part of the SBC and don’t know much about them. Other than that, I think we’re clones or something.

By: Marcguyver

Marcguyver — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 02:05:58 +0000

LOL, I don’t even know what the heck “Lifeway” is ???

I do like your comment about 600 being too big; although I might go even lower than that……say, however many you can fit in your home?