Leading a Bible Study Group

Here’s a conversation that Apostle Priji had with Ajin Abraham from Toronto, Canada, on how to lead a bible study. Do listen and let us know how do you do your bible study or if you have any questions, leave them in the comments on the YouTube video.

Transcript:

Apostle Prij: Welcome Ajin! Would you just want to say a Hi! to our listeners?

Ajin Abraham: “It is so great to be with you Priji and it is almost as if not a beat since we met up in Mumbai last. Good to be with you. I am sure you have a keen audience and I am happy and it is an honour to share whatever I have learnt and I am optimistic that it will bless the hearers.”

Apostle Priji: Amen. I know how the Lord has been putting on your heart to start these bible study groups and you have been learning scripture along with people there. You had this passion from a very young age. i have seen that in all of our conversations, i have seen in your lifestyle how you love the word of God, how you enjoy studying and memorizing the word of God, how you love to listen to the men of God. I would like to understand from your perspective what should be the goal of studying scripture? Is it just to preach, is it just to teach others, is it only to share a special quote or a revelation on facebook? What should be the real reason for every Christian to devote himself/herself to study the scripture?

Ajin Abraham: That is a great question and it is one I have thought of in a form or the other. I would say studying scripture is its own reward. Far too often the everyday person or pastors or ministers only look at scriptures as a means to an end. Either they want to share it with somebody, which is of course a great objective, but they then detach the application of scripture to themselves. I feel that you have to worry less about “what is this passage saying to me” and simply read scripture systematically wanting to know the God of the scripture. What is the purpose behind the scripture, what does the scripture say to its original audience? I heard this quote from a preacher “The first interpretation of a passage always belongs to its original recipient.” I think the mistake that we are all prone to making is that you read anything without being mindful of its context, you try to make it relevant to you. Scripture reading is valuable and meaningful only if it has something to say to you, only if there is something that jumps out at you, only if there is something that directly applies to a situation that you are going through. But I would like to think of scripture (and I think it is true) that it is hard work, you have to dig through the depths of scripture and sometimes all of its treasures are not instantaneously accessible to you. It take labourious work, you read through it systematically and over a period of time there are connections that become more obvious to you. I think it is a good principle to remember because none of us would approach any great work of literature or a textbook on quantum physics expecting to instantly get everything at the very first read. We expect that this is going to be hard and pains-taking work, we will have plum its depths for us to be able to lay a solid foundation. How much more true it is that of scripture, it is life long systematic study. So, it is important to start with the basics and expect nothing more than to understand the purposes that God wrote scripture to its original audience and of course we know that it has relevance and application to people across all cultures, times, and of course it will have very meaningful and deep things to say to our particular situation as well. But don’t start there and don’t limit yourself to only that expectation.

Apostle Priji: I think that what you said is many of us do limit ourselves to only sharing it to others or the need to preach or the need to teach someone else who is going through a particular situation and then we are searching through the scriptures just for an answer for that particular problem. Our study of scripture becomes limited. Rather than going into the scripture with an open heart and just allowing scripture to interpret itself and allowing scripture to speak to us personally first and mould and shape us. How important is it for us to really spend time in developing a strategy on how we study scripture; to carve out principles and practices and routines to study scripture? Because some of us are very spontaneous or random in our bible study. I believe that the Lord can speak to you personally from any portion of scripture. There is definitely the devotional aspect of reading the scripture where God can use certain things to speak to you. However, study requires you to be strategic and intentional and purposeful. I am just wondering how do you do it. What are your practices, how do you recommend others to study scripture for themselves, what ways can they be strategic and purposeful about their study?

Ajin Abraham: I think a lot depends on people’s individual backgrounds as well. I have had the great privilege of being raised in a solidly biblical church. From a very young age, I was exposed to what it means to systematically study the bible and why it is important. I had that habit early on. But I can totally appreciate when someone is new to Christ. I remember having a conversation with someone and they are “Oh, is that how the story ends?” They had not got to the end of gospels. It was remarkable for me to look at the gospels through the lens of someone who is reading it for the first time, who is newly born again. I would say that it is good to have a little bit of variety so that bible reading does not become monotonous. Above all else, commit to wanting to read scripture ever day. Every day you may not be able to devote time to a deep study, but that is okay. You know what would work best in your schedule. For me, because I had a very busy corporate life, I needed to find time outside of my daily end of the day or prior to beginning of the day scripture reading and that can be your light devotional reading, it can be a mix of Psalms, proverbs or even smaller passages from sequential reading. But you can reserve Friday nights, Saturdays for a more systematic study of the bible. The good thing is that there are so many helpful plans to help us. For example, a couple of years ago, i did chronological bible study. It is not basically the order in which the bible is compiled, but it is chronologically arranged. We have these apps an plans to guide us. I essentially used to read smaller passages daily but do a larger chunk of the reading on Saturdays and Sundays where I had the time to not only read through that passage but also to go through like a study bible and to read additional notes just to expand my understanding on the passage that I was reading. It is also important to have a goal to stick with. Bible in a year is absolutely helpful. But maybe you don’t want to do that year after year, maybe the following year is when you want to not really commit to the length of the study but rather just take a few books and commit to studying them deeper. I really enjoy that as well. I would pick the books of the bible that were my favourites Ruth, Esther, Jonah, and then mix that up with books from the New Testament as well and go through them a little more slowly. I would say find out what works for you, use 1 or 2 commentaries, good study bibles, I would recommend he ESV study bible, and then start with the bible in a year. But in the following year maybe you want to identify 1 or 2 bible books that really stood out to you as you were reading it for the 1st time and explore that a little deeper. I would say as supplemental reading always go through Psalms or Proverbs because there is something that is so universal about those books. You could always glean a lot regardless of the time, whether deep or light there is something about the Psalms that is incredibly refreshing. I would find a way to meaningfully read that in your daily reading scripture. I have also met people who have limited themselves to reading scripture 2 days a week. I would like to say that respectfully that is not enough. Because its not merely enough to help you glean anything meaningfully out of it. Remember what I said earlier, if you are approaching a great work of art, you know that is merely not enough. For you to be able to gain practical insights and to quench your appetite, whatever you devote your time on, you will develop a deeper appetite. If you restrict yourself to reading it twice weekly, then it is not a surprise that you are not minding your appetite fully. If you go through it systematically, commit to it, let it just be 15 to 20 minutes, or even 10 minutes, that is all your flexible allows, go through it daily as much as possible. You would find that your appetite is actually developing. You vented, sharpened it, you have a greater clarity with which to approach it the following week. I would say that like the daily touch point is as important as how deep you go.

Apostle Priji: I liked the point that you said the more you quench your appetite, the more you eat, the more hungry you get, the more your appetite grows. That is so important because as children when we eat less, when we grow up to be adults our appetite is also very less compared to the other kids who eat like a lot in their childhood. When they grow up, their appetite is still a lot. Their hunger is very dependent on how much they eat in their growing stages. Like you rightly said, it is so necessary to eat the word regularly. There is definitely a big difference between how we eat the word, how we receive just an encouragement for us personally, how we study scripture. Like you rightly said, we may not get time to study scripture every day but we should still pursue that 1 or 2 days in a week where we could study scripture intentionally go deeper, look for references across, look for other people who have spoken or written about it and find insights.

Bringing this to the context that all of our audience today are people who are leading in their respective churches or small groups or services, how different is it when you are studying scripture alone compared to when you are doing it in a group set up. Because there is going to be time limitations, there are going to be people with different levels of growth and different journey that they have had in their relationship with God when they are studying the scripture, people who are not saved or people who don’t yet have the same revelation you have about the scripture may be in that group. What are some things you need to be aware of when you are trying to lead a bible study in a group?

Ajin Abraham: I am thinking of my own experience. When I came to Canada, I was actually looking for a group like this that would meet, of course friendships would be developed but have conversations run on the bible, and not finding anything like that, I prayed and decided to start one. I have been added for, I want to say a little over 3 year now. To your point, the group that shows up is a very mixed group. I know there are people in the faith who are much older, who know way more than I do, but there are also others who are biblical novices who are fairly new in their Christian walk and others who are there mostly out of curiosity. They come from a Hindu background. I also had someone come from a Muslim background, so they are curious. If I am speaking about the prophet Jeremiah or any one of the prophets or kings, David. How is that different from what the Quran has to say about the same prophet or king? Levels of understanding can vary and that may not be true for everyone of the groups that the pastors and the leaders that are listening to us right now might be a part of. Maybe you are doing a small group as part of your church, maybe it is a very doctrinally sound church. Maybe more or less everybody is at the same footing. Having said that, I think it is best to not assume the levels of understanding of your audience. Because even if everyone has been coming to the same church for years, for various reasons everyone’s understanding is going to vary. I think, I don’t know who said it, but they said “we don’t need new instruction as often as we need reminders.” It is never too often you cannot reinforce or repeat the foundations of our faith, the fundamentals far too much. It is good to revisit the basics. I think it is also helpful to be mindful of your audience, so you might have to tone up or down your message a little bit. The last thing that I want to say about having a bible study in a group setting is “not everyone is going to have an opinion,” because everyone possibly also comes from different nominational backgrounds and they are new to your church. If you are in a position of leading that group, then you have to be careful about respectfully how much of control do you want to yield to the audience. Because you don’t want to have your discussion go off in tangentially different routes. You will have to be the moderator who brings everything back to the center, brings everyone back to the theme of the discussion that is in front of you.

Apostle Priji: That’s very important. How do we prepare differently for different things; like taking a topic and the vastness of studying the entire book?

Ajin Abraham: It is a challenge that I face as well. Preparation is key. It is important to do historical and cultural study. Breakdown the book into background, key themes, lessons learnt, what it applies, how does it applies to us today and then stick to the script.
Preparation is critical; have a plan at hand. Delve into the material with a lot of prayer, but also leave room for some flexibility.

Apostle Priji: When you are studying in a group, a leader may have his/her perspective, and the leader may take time to share what he has understood. Any practical tips for our leaders to help their group to open up in the conversation and open up to the content?

Ajin Abraham: Pause, ask if there are any questions, observe. Ask them to open about something that they are experiencing or have come across in the culture today. If people are not responding ask them to ponder and come up with something that have to speak. Always ask the people to go back to the scriptures.

Apostle Priji: Different people have different ways to look at the same scripture. At times, bible study group has become a debate center. As a leader, how important it is for you to make sure that the discussion in your group doesn’t go out of hand, how can you still help your people to have difference of opinion and not lose the relationship because of arguments.

Ajin Abraham: Have a conversation without derailing the entire conversation. Allow the Lord to tone your personality so that you can be the right person to lead the bible study group.

Apostle Priji: Thank you Ajin. I hope all of our listeners and viewers are blessed.

You can connect with Ajin Abraham from the below links:
⁠Meet Up | Email |Facebook