Rethinking Adult Bible School

I love Bible school. I love teaching, and I teach both Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights. On Sunday mornings I teach a class for 35-50 year old adults (or a little younger, or a little older…you know how adult classes are) in a classroom. On Wednesday nights, I teach a general auditorium class, in which members range from young adults through some of the eldest members of our congregation. Each of these classes is a joy–but a challenge– to teach.

As one who teaches, I try to look not only at what we need to study, but also the best way to teach those things. This article is meant to show three common practices that could be holding back our adult Bible classes. These are not “problems,” but things we often do just because we always have done it that way.

Practice #1: Lecture only classes

This is one of my own problems. As a preacher, it is just easy to prepare another “sermon” and just deliver another speech on that week’s material for the class. Sometimes, this is a great way to present the material in a class, but we who teach adult classes need to look at other ways to present the material. The simple question needs to be, “What will be most effective?”

If nothing else, question and answer can be used. And make the questions open-ended. Foster discussion. Often, this will teach more than much of what you had prepared!

Also, though, look for other ways to teach. In recent months, I have used audio recordings, YouTube clips (short ones), handouts, PowerPoint, and a few other things to help teach certain lessons. We praise those who teach children’s classes because they are able to be creative to get the point of the lesson across. When we teach, let’s look for as many ways to get the point across as possible.

Again, lecture is okay, but we do not need to do it every week, and never have anything else occur in our classes.

Practice #2: 13-week quarter after 13-week quarter

I have written a 13-week book for Junior/Senior high students. I have ideas for other such books, and I think this system works quite well. However, as we have adult classes, it often takes more than 13 weeks to really dig deeply into the meat of the word.

Now, some who are reading this already know that I spent some two years teaching the Gospel according to John and one year teaching Revelation. It takes awhile for me to walk through a book, so what we try to do in my classes is vary the types of study, so that we vary the lengths of study, too. For example, after walking through the books of First and Second Thessalonians in my Sunday morning class for several weeks (I think about 4 months), we took just five weeks to have a short study on the family. It was not that family isn’t important, but it varied our study. We’ll come back to the family again sometime.

I am not saying that 13-week quarters are wrong, but we do not need to be so beholden to this way of structure that we fail to teach both the milk and the meat of the word.

Practice #3: Age-only classes

The young adult class morphs into the “used-to-be-young adult” class which morphs into the “not-really-young-but-we-still-call-ourselves-young adults” class, and so on. People stay in a class with the same people for 20, 30, 40 years…or more.

That’s not all bad, but what about this as an alternative. What about having classes that are more like college electives, at least a few weeks per year? Have a few members who are qualified to teach a particular book or topic, and then offer those classes for whoever elects to take that class.

“But what if no one comes to one particular class?” That’s okay! That teacher actually gets some time “off,” and gets to be a student in a class. After all, he’ll be offering the class again in the future anyway.

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These are not out of frustration. I love our Bible school program at Lebanon Road, but these are offered as a way to help us all think about ways to avoid “ruts” in just having Bible school the way we always have…just because we always have. No matter what, the focus needs to be on teaching God’s Word to as many as possible in the most effective way possible.

What are your thoughts on these suggestions? What suggestions do you have?