On Thursday, I will upload the video of my interview with Garret Mostowski, a pastor in Detroit. When I interviewed him, he was a student at Princeton Divinity School, leading a weekly “holy reading” group at Trinity Episcopal Church in Princeton. Holy reading (aka lectio divina) involves listening to the…
Your teaching is probably incomplet
Back to Eden Sometimes, I begin my lessons with a quiz. I do this with stories that we assume we already know such as the story of Adam and Eve. Here are a few sample questions: The name of the man in Eden is… Adam Tarzan Dirt He is unnamed…
Why Aren’t We Uncomfortable with Jesus?
If we think about why Jesus was killed, we might be uncomfortable with him. We might be uncomfortable with his teachings. And, if we teach what he taught and lived (which got him killed), our class members might be uncomfortable with us. Do we dare? Let’s acknowledge that there are…
Charting the pilgrimage
One method of teaching that I like to do from time to time is a pilgrimage question. For example, recently, my lesson was on the Church. I asked class members to put a dot on one end of their paper that represented their birthdate, then another dot at the…
What’s Your Story?
There are five elements to a good story: 1. Characters 2. Setting 3. Plot 4. Conflict 5. Resolution How does this relate to our Bible Study class? Are we sharing our stories with one another? Too often, our sharing stops with the first three elements. For example, “My father…
No more “Sunday School answers”
Last week, our lesson was taken from Amos 8:1-14. As we neared the end of the passage and the lesson, we came to Amos’s warning that if the people did not repent of the way they were treating the poor, the land would suffer and their souls would suffer a drought. I…
