The months of February and March are typically marked in the church by a season called Lent. Lent is that 40 time period that takes us from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Lent is a time of thinking, praying, and being a little more contemplative. Churches add worship services on Wednesdays for an extra time of gathering to remember all that Jesus did for us.
As a pastor, I’ve typically served churches that have done this very thing – gathering on Wednesdays for midweek Lent worship. The services have always looked the same too. We start with a song, read a reading, pray, a short message is preached, sing another song and then go home. All in all it is a mini version of what we do on a Sunday. But this year we’re doing it different.
This year, instead of a message being preached, we’re facilitating a conversation about a new set of Bible verses each week. We turn to the section of the Bible. I read it aloud and everyone follows along in their own Bibles. Then I turn the group loose to interact with the text. We’re using this as a time of training one another on how to eat all the words of the Bible. Kind of like teaching a child how to use their fork and knife, except here we’re teaching how to use the bible and some of its tools. Here’s what it looks like.
Know your tools
The first thing we do, before being sent off to work on some study questions, is unlock a tool. Better yet, we show how to use the tool that’s already in our hands a little more efficiently. You see, your bible is a great tool to access all of the goodness of God. But the problem is that many people don’t know how to use it to its fullest. So this Lent we’re giving people some fun tips and tricks for how to use the Bible to its fullest.
Throughout Lent we’re asking everyone to bring their bible to church. And I don’t mean bring a phone with a Bible on it but an actual paper Bible (yes they still make paper Bibles). The paper copy has some fun little extras inside that many might not be aware of! The goal is to help you learn how to best use your Bible so you can get the most out of it. And a side benefit is that you won’t have to rely on me to do the work for you because you’ll know how to dig into what the Bible says. The goal is simply to empower you to become obedient to God’s words, to eat on your own, to become mature in your following of Jesus.
This week we looked at the simple things. These tools are nothing earth shattering, but they’re really great things that can help a person in their study of God’s word. Our two tools this week were the little section headings and those mostly overlooked cross references.
The point of the headings in your Bible is to help you better navigate through reading. They weren’t part of the original text. They were added as little tools to make reading the Bible easier. We used them to help track down the same passage in multiple books of the Bible.
The second tool we highlighted was the use of cross reference notes. These are really useful additions to the Bible to help you see how the rest of the Bible talks about a given topic. If you trace those cool cross references around the Bible, you could gain a significant insight into what the Bible means when it says a given word or phrase and why it might be important still today.
Talk about it.
After we read the text and introduce people to the tools available to them, we literally turned them loose to answer a few simple questions and have a healthy discussion about what they read. It was totally different than anything we’ve done before, but it was great to watch and even listen to the various conversations happening. A normal worship service is so one way and the congregation is largely quiet. The style we are using through Lent is very much like what the New Testament book of Acts describes when the church was first formed.
I’m not sure what your routine is with the Bible, church or Lent; but it’s ok to try something new. It’s ok to do things a little differently in an effort to gain a little deeper understanding. The focus of the church should really be about raising people up and empowering them with the right tools to be able to grow in their faith on their own.
It’s called discipleship. It’s what Jesus commanded the church to be about in Matthew 28. It wasn’t a suggestion or a good idea. It was a command. It was a command given to the disciples to make more disciples. Not to the pastors. Not just the apostles. Not just the seminary educated *because they didn’t have seminary educated people back then! It was for the everyday follower of Jesus who was being transformed by the renewing of their minds.
So, what new approach can you take to your time in God’s word that will stretch you and allow you to feast on what God has put in front of you?
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