Written by: host
3/25/2009 7:00 AM 

Supplies: Bibles, 1 good study Bible, LARGE white board (or wall of newsprint), several markers. As available, other study resources.

Process:

1. Draw a line down the middle of the board from top to bottom. Label the left side Huh? and the right side Yeah!
   
2. Ask youth to write anything about the Bible they have questions about on the left side. There are no rules - they may write down biblical chapters/verses that puzzle them, concepts they don't understand (e.g. holiness), theological questions, or anything else they feel they just don't have a grasp of and which makes them say, "Huh?"
   
3. Simultaneously, have youth write things about the Bible they feel they do understand well on the right side. Again, there are no rules to how or what they should write.
   
4. After several minutes, let everyone just take a moment to read everything on the board. Then ask someone to shout out where they want to begin.
   
5. The process you'll use from this point will depend upon your own knowledge, comfort level, resources available, and so on. Essentially, your goal is to help them to realize they know more than they think they know  about the items on the left side, and to expand or change their understanding of those items on the right. This gives you an opportunity to clear up misinformation, teach youth to use study resources, provide contextual information which is critically important to a better interpretation of the text, give a progressive perspective, and make connections between items and existing knowledge. (The study Bible will help you to quickly provide interesting and new information.)
   
6. Continue with this process until all items have been discussed, which will likely take more than one session. And whatever "style" you use, be sure you keep it light and fun! But one caveat: be honest about what you don't know, and use the resource tools at hand to look at those topics together.
   

Because the items on the board are things they want to learn about, this approach engages youth in a deep way. (Of course, the method could just as easily be used with adults, particularly those who are newer to Bible studies.) I find youth are often most interested in learning about what they don't know about the things they think they know. For example, the last time I did this with a group of middle school youth, I introduced two concepts which are very important to understanding ancient Jewish culture: hospitality, and the honor/shame code (PDF download), both of which were new concepts to the group. We used those two concepts to explore and give depth to many of the items on the board. By the second week of the discussion, they were able to apply these concepts on their own, resulting in many "a-ha!" moments. And what teacher doesn't love to see more of those?

~ Tim Gossett

Trackback Print

Tags:

Categories:

Location: Blogs The Daily Voice Try This One (Wednesdays)