Creating Experiential Bible Classes
When it comes to training others to learn to teach and minister within their congregations, it’s important to think about the process that we use. The concept of “Say, See, Do” is one that works particularly well within a church setting. Ministers are often encouraged to take a young congregant with them on hospital visits and as they do ministry, so they can mentor them in the hope that they might replicate that ministry themselves. Experiential activities have proven to be an important piece of spiritual development.
When it comes to the Bible classroom, there are also tools that can be used to create activities that are more experiential in nature. Any time we can incorporate outside voices and activities, that’s important. This could involve assigning experiential activities, encouraging students to do outside interviews and report back on them, or making teaching instructions more practical in nature. In my Introduction to Theological Research class, I assigned my students a couple of early writing assignments that they will likely be called upon to do in their future ministries: a bulletin article and a blog article. This was the first time that many of these young men and women had written one, but they showed a great deal of familiarity with it. For years I have been assigning students to write a proposal, a testimony, or a Bible study, or to design an event. I have done this knowing that, when they are called upon at church to do one of these, the familiarity of having done it in a classroom may give them some confidence and skills to complete it in real life. For some of my classes, the jump from theory to reality has occurred in ways that are encouraging, as I have had a chance to see new ministries begin after a student took the time to lay it out on paper and then decided to move to implementation.
Educators have long been familiar with the concept of a flipped classroom as a teaching tool. I have employed this method in a few of my classes when it comes to teaching additional material, books, and even sections of story and prophecy to explain. However, my all-time favorite assignment has been having students in my Old Testament Survey class come up with a plan for teaching one of the Minor Prophets. These classes are typically large, so I have subdivided them for group work a few times through the semester. As we approach the end of the semester, we delve into the Minor Prophets. My approach has been to teach each of these books, typically spending 1-2 days per text. Then, every small group is assigned one of them, and they come up with a plan on how to teach it. The creativity that is shown by each group is always impressive. This past semester we had teaching styles ranging from creative lecture approaches to discussion-based lessons to a puppet show for younger children. When the groups have the opportunity to focus on one section of Scripture (or in this case a short book) with the end goal of having to explain it, they have to grasp it at a deeper level. I still remember some of the assignments that were given to me in college classes, and I feel a sense of familiarity that I wouldn’t have otherwise. For example, I was assigned to analyze Mongolian using phonetics, and I’ve always felt a sense of nostalgia and familiarity towards it even though I do not know that language.
In a church setting, similar types of educational tools can be used to encourage students to feel confident in sharing their faith and being active at church, and to help them develop a vision for where they may fit in. Getting students actively involved in the teaching process not only gives them a chance to get to know the topic a bit deeper and helps them answer their own questions, but the active nature of it can make Bible class something they do not want to miss. We often speak of mentoring in the church, and developing successful mentoring programs can be tough, especially post-COVID. The most successful type of mentoring is going to be when it happens organically, when mentoring and discipleship are so much a part of the fabric of the church that they occur seemingly naturally. Anytime something looks natural, that generally means there must be a great deal of advance planning in place. Working experiential and flipped-classroom techniques into the Bible classroom is a great way to build mentoring opportunities into an educational program.
