Pastor: Lead a Bible Study (and don’t try to be a life-coach, leadership guru, cultural icon, or church-growth celebrity)
Dr. Randy WhiteOne of the greatest blessings of my ministry has been leading Bible studies. I’m not talking about sermons (though I love to preach). I’m talking about nitty-gritty Bible study. Not the modern kind that is full of illustrations and applications, but the kind that digs to see more of the identity of the people involved in the story, the context, the location, the Hebrew or Greek word.I mean the kind of Bible study that is boring.Boring to many people, that is. Boring to
many modern church audiences who have cut their teeth on name-it-and-claim-it scriptural motivations and go-get-em-tiger manipulations that reek of multi-level marketing seminars. But to people who have grown sick of infant pablum topped with Cool Whip, these Bible studies are like water in a parched land.Here are eight reasons why you, Pastor, should lead a Bible study:
- You will grow more in your doctrine, faith, and knowledge than ever before.
- You will develop a congregation that is hungry for the Word, and such a congregation is much easier to please, lead, and pastor than a congregation that is fed by motivation and leadership technique (a.k.a. manipulation)
- Your crowd will slowly build, and your following will be committed. At first, you may lose people. If you keep it up, word will get out that you teach the Word, and you’ll begin building a solid and committed core that will not be driven by every wind of doctrine.
- You’ll be able to answer Biblical questions.
- You’ll be freed from the ministry of waiting tables. Your congregation will come to appreciate good Biblical knowledge, and will know that it takes time (lots of it) to be Biblically knowledgable. They will protect your study time by performing the needed tasks of church-life (as is seen in Acts 6).
- You won’t have to chase the wind trying to come up with new programs and options for mid-week gatherings. No more looking for the latest fad small group “Bible study,” then trying to get a “facilitator,” then putting out the advertising and the sign-up sheets. Instead, you’ll just have to say, “I teach the Bible on Wednesday night, you should come!”
- It’s Biblical. The ridiculous corporate model that has fed us such asinine ideas as degrees in “Pastoral Leadership” is just that: a corporate model. I’ll never sit through another leadership seminar in my life. Moses was pretty inept as a leader (couldn’t figure out that he should break them into small groups instead of having a line of people waiting to see him, a line that stretched around the mountain). Jeremiah failed his leadership class at the seminary. The Apostle Paul had a very simple leadership strategy: use words to persuade people, wherever he went.
- Your congregation (and your community) doesn’t need a “life coach.” They need Biblical knowledge. If they knew the Bible, you wouldn’t have to teach sermons on their purpose, priorities, perseverance, goals, discipline, vision and more. That’s stuff they would figure out on their own, because they would have e a foundation of Biblical knowledge. And for me (or you) to think that we can preach one sermon that hits the target for every individual in the congregation on the life issues they face, then we are sorely deceived.