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Seeing with new eyes
Teaching the Bible is a hard task. It takes hard work, keen eyes and thick skin. But when people give substantive feedback and encouragement, there are few things more rewarding. Of all the topics, books and sections of Scripture that I've taught through, there is nothing that elicits substantive response more than Biblical Theology.
For various historical and theological reasons, there has been a great lack in this country of teaching the Bible as one book about Christ. Thankfully, this is beginning to change. For, when people come to understand the great storyline of the Bible, it is like they are seeing the old book with new eyes. They get excited about reading Scripture and discover that books like Leviticus and Nahum are relevant after all.
Matthias Media has two resources that are excellent at instilling these new reading eyes in people. The Bible Overview is a Biblical Theology course easily adaptable to almost any type of teaching situation—Sunday School, small group, youth group, seminar, and even a sermon. Further, it has a section that teaches people how to read and understand Scripture for themselves.
Second, Full of Promise is a study in the Interactive Bible Study series. It is one of our most popular resources for the reason mentioned above—people are awakened to the fact that all the Old Testament books have one storyline that connects them.
One way to implement these tools is to start off running The Bible Overview. This gives a broad-brush overview of the entire Bible. During the class, keep an eye out for those who really are getting it. Take a few weeks off and then encourage those people to join in on a more detailed study of Biblical Theology using Full of Promise. This will flesh out and reinforce the ideas brought up from The Bible Overview. (And, if they are really keen on learning more, you could consider reading with them Graeme Goldsworthy's According to Plan or Vaughan Roberts' God's Big Picture.)
The people who are excited and enlightened by these resources are your prime candidates for leaders of classes and Bible studies. Encourage them to lead their friends through the same process. Lord-willing, it will not be too long before a solid core of people are teaching the great story of the Bible in hopes that others may have eyes that see.
