Growing an adult Bible study class is not easy, but there are some simple steps you can take to help grow your class attendance. These few steps have helped my class more than double in just a short time. I hope these tips will help your Sunday school class grow as well.
Make your lesson active not passive. Adults like to participate in the lesson just like kids do. If your style is to talk and everyone just listen you will have a difficult time attracting people to your class. I like to quickly give a brief synopsis of the lesson and then start getting people interested in the lesson by asking questions. I want each person in my class to feel important and they will feel important if their opinion is being heard. Try to focus on one or two questions per lesson. Make it a question that really doesn’t have wrong answers.
Find people to help you take care of the needs of each class member. I have care group leaders whose job it is to take care of five or six people. The care group leader will call each person each week to encourage them to come to class or to find out why they haven’t been coming to class. Sometimes the class member has some problems and the job of the care group leader is to see if they can help. People want to know that they are needed and that someone cares for them, so make sure you take care of the people who are already in your class.
Grow from within. It is a lot easier to get current class members to find other people to attend your Bible study. Each week I encourage my class members to invite others to our class. Have them make a prospect list and take them out to dinner and have a discussion about who are on their list. Getting people to just write down a few prospects is a big step in growing your Sunday school class.
There are many ways to grow your Sunday school class. The above tips do work if you will just try them. Have fun!
I guess that for many people, even people of faith, the prospect of learning to study the Bible leaves them with a lot of questions — and perhaps the foremost question is: Why even bother? There are a lot of things that we need to do in our lives every day — and the Bible was written a very long time ago. There are a lot of different opinions about the meaning of the Scriptures — so many different denominations and sects — why even make the attempt? That’s a good question, and I think that it deserves a solid answer. In this article I would like to outline, rather briefly, some of the reasons why we should take time to study the Bible.
The Bible’s Uniqueness
The first thing that I want to say is that the Bible is an absolutely unique piece of literature. No other writing — or to be more accurate, a group of writings — is like it. Among all the literary productions known, it is an extraordinary piece of literature — something that can be enjoyed solely for its literary merits. Many people have learned to appreciate the majestic beauty of the Psalms, or the exciting drama of the stories in the historical books, or the stunning statements of the prophets. And many people read the Bible this way — they appreciate it, and are perhaps inspired in some general way by its teachings. But there is much more to the Bible than this.
The Bible: a “Revelation”
For those people of faith who consider themselves a part of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Bible is much more than a collection of masterful writings — we believe that it is a special message from the creator of the universe to the human race. Both Christians and Jews believe that the Bible contains authoritative teaching about God — and Christians, in particular, believe that the teaching of the Bible points us to personal salvation and eternal life through the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. This is a part of what we mean when we say that the Bible is a revelation from God — it speaks as an authority (for some of us the ONLY authority), and we trace in its message the call of God our lives — to hear and to obey His teachings.
Why Not Just Read the Bible? Why Take the Time to Study It?
That being said, the next question is this: why take the time to study the Bible in depth? Why not just read it — perhaps a little bit every day? In fact, many people do — I do, and I recommend you do the same. But frankly, reading in this way has limitations: when we are reading large sections of the Bible, for the most part we will simply be skimming off of the surface meaning. We might as well face facts: in order to get a real handle on what God is saying to us, we must take the time to study the Bible — just as we would study a mathematics or history or science textbook.
For many people this activity sounds like it will be very boring. Frankly, in order to become a serious Bible student you and I will need to take the time to study the Bible in an organized, systematic manner — and it will require consistent, sustained effort over a period of time. But I’m here to tell you that whatever effort you must put forth will not be wasted — as you take the time to study the Bible systematically each day, you will not only get to know these writings better, but you will also be learning more about the God whom, we believe, wrote it.
The Key to Spiritual Growth
Why is it that if we take the time to study the Bible will come to know the Lord better? Because the Bible is God’s revelation of himself! When we get to know His word, His message, we’ll be getting to know him — and that means more than just knowing something about God, it means that we lack surely come into a closer relationship with our Creator! This means that serious Bible study is in fact a major key to growing spiritually.
This Will Impact Your Life
You believe in God? Good — but if you ever wondered what His will is for your life? Have you ever thought about whether your life has an ultimate meaning or purpose? Studying the Bible will help you to get answers to these questions. I have noted in my own life that Bible study helps me to come to know God better — as I come to know God better I am encouraged to be more obedient and carry out His will in my own life. When I do this, I will begin to draw even closer to God — and the result is that I will have an even stronger desire to obey him and learn more about him. This, in turn, will feed my desire to learn even more about the Scriptures — this becomes a repeating pattern which can have dramatic impact on the course of our life.
Why take the time to study the Bible? Because it is the world’s most unique piece of literature. Because we will never really understand it unless we study it. Because it is the key to spiritual growth. And because when we become consistent students of God’s Word, our life will be impacted forever.
When I taught a class on how to lead Bible studies and teach in a group, the biggest push-back I received was when I promoted writing out – in full – your lesson for the week. People objected that writing out a lesson would squelch the Spirit of God and would make the lesson mechanical.
After having led adult Sunday School classes and small group Bible studies for over fifteen years, I disagree. Instead, I have found that thorough preparation – including writing out as completely as possible everything you want to say – brings only benefits to the group or class you are leading. And that holds true regardless of whether the class is more lecture-oriented or more discussion-oriented. Here are three areas that benefit significantly from taking the time to write out your lesson:
1. Content
Writing helps you focus your lesson and achieve your goals. It requires you to define your main point and decide how to explain it, support it, illustrate it, and apply it.
Writing out your lesson ensures that you have enough content to fill the allotted time. You won’t have to suffer the embarrassment of being done with your material and still have 15 minutes of dead time to fill, nor will you find that the bell has rung and you have 15 minutes of material still to cover.
Teaching is about expounding on points, not just stating points. It’s one thing to say “God calls us to forgive others.” It’s another to talk about the reasons we resist forgiving others, the process of forgiveness, and the benefits of forgiveness. When you write out your lesson, you can carefully develop all aspects of your main focus.
Since you know the points you want to cover when you write out your lesson, you can also prepare effective handouts and note-taking sheets to help the participants engage with the material and remember it.
2. Presentation
By writing out your lesson, you can learn how to pace yourself. You will see in black-and-white where you are spending most of your time, and what points need to be strengthened.
You will not find yourself groping for words, forgetting your points or sub-points, or faltering to make transitions between sections.
If you find that some portion of your lesson has taken longer than you planned and you are running short on time, a written lesson will help you evaluate faster what to eliminate and still achieve your goals for the session since you can literally scan the remainder of your content in a few seconds.
3. Discussion
Written lessons help you determine where to intersperse discussion to keep people involved and engaged.
By writing your lessons out, you are also able to guide discussion more effectively. Instead of asking “What do you think? Does anyone have any input?” – which can open the door to absolutely anything – you can ask targeted, well-crafted questions that lead the discussion in order to support the focus and goal of your class.
When you develop a written lesson, you are more likely to realize ahead of time where people might have questions – and prepare for them.
A written lesson will also help you recognize and derail tangents as soon as they happen – whether it’s you who are tempted to go off on a rabbit trail, or whether someone else is veering off during a discussion time.
When you consider the benefits, the time and effort it takes to write out a lesson becomes an investment that you can’t afford to be without. Rather than squelching the Spirit of God, God is able to move more powerfully in the hearts, minds, and lives of others because of your thorough preparation. And rather than make the lesson mechanical, your preparation sets you free to be at ease during the class – to lead and teach with confidence.
© 2008 Paula Marolewski
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