Bible Story Jam
We’ve grown pretty accustomed in the church to having someone – usually a pastor – teach us what the Bible means. Maybe that’s during the sermon or, if we’re adventurous or have extra time on our hands, during the an adult education class.
But what would happen if we didn’t?
Don’t get me wrong – I think pastors are great. But I think we’ve sometimes let our pastors become kind of a crutch for us when it comes to reading the Bible. And I worry that over the long haul, we may actually lose confidence that we can read the Bible.
Which is where the Bible Story Jam comes in. What is the Bible Story Jam you ask? Easy. It’s a morning — I suppose it could be an afternoon, but this time it’s a morning 🙂 — where folks come together to gather in small groups, talk about a particular story out of the Bible, and then share our insights, our questions, what we noticed, and what we thought. That’s it – everyday Christians with little or no theological training reading and talking about what the Bible means to them. (What a concept!)
But it doesn’t end there. Because we’re going to tape these conversations and edit them together so that we have a video commentary of ordinary, everyday people talking about the Bible. And then we’re going to share those videos on WorkingPreacher.org, a site pastors go to to do sermon preparation work. Because this way thousands of pastors – and tens of thousands of their hearers – might learn from what everyday Christians see and hear in the Bible.
And who knows, maybe more and more everyday Christians will come to believe that they can read the Bible too, and understand it, and even enjoy it.
Below is our first Bible Story Jam video. It was kind of a dry run before we do our first whole morning Bible Story Jam and, quite frankly, the women who volunteered to help us blew me away.
Their passage was Luke 41-52, the story of Jesus as a boy in the Temple. As a preacher, let me tell you, I’ve never found that one very easy to preach. Not a whole lot happens, quite frankly, and I wasn’t quite sure how it applied to our lives. But after hearing these folks talk, all kinds of ideas started bubbling up.
And that’s what happens when we share our insights and questions: we have more, and then more, and then more, and then all of a sudden this Bible story is with us, helping us think about our lives even as we’re thinking about this story.
Because here’s the thing: anyone can read the Bible. Anyone.
Even you. 🙂
Note: 1) If you are receiving this post by email, you may need to click here to watch the video.
2) We’ve worked with a great team from Luther Seminary and Bethlehem Lutheran Church to pull off the Bible Story Jam. Thanks to them all, and special thanks to Ben Cieslik, pastor, dad, videographer, and editor extraordinaire.
3) Partial funding for the Bible Story Jam came from a grant to Luther Seminary from the Lilly Endowment.We are most grateful!
I LOVE this idea!Each week I spend an hour and half or so with some of my parishioners batting around ideas about Sunday’s texts – and very often my sermons reflect our conversations. These videos will add some richness for sure. Is there any chance you will have them “up” several weeks in advance? I try to plan ahead and this ( and your Working Preacher podcasts) would be even more helpful if I could get them 4 or 5 weeks in advance!
Thanks for the good work you do. We are seeing lives changed and your work so often contributes to that!
Blessings on you all
Marie
Thanks Marie!
We’ll try to get the videos up relatively early. We came up with the idea, frankly, only recently and the editing is labor intensive. At this point, we can get most of the commentary up well in advance but the podcasts and my columns tend to be more timely and deadline-driven. We’ll keep working at it! Thanks for your ministry!
What an amazing idea! I’ve got a lectionary study group which meets weekly … but something like this adds “fun” if that makes sense, and opens it up to a larger group. Just so I’m clear … the idea is to advertise it, have copies of the story available, and then let the folks go at it in small groups, and then come together in the larger group to share insights, questions, etc … is that right?
Who knows … it may even be fun! Gosh, imagine that!
David thanks so much for your ministry with your blogs. Please know how deeply it’s appreciated, and how it has renewed me in my preaching and presence.
Yme
Thanks Yme!
Because we’re trying to cover a few different texts, the groups will each have their own text and have a mini-Bible study. We’ll then interview each person in the group – with the next group near by – to collect their insights and then edit them together. You don’t have to do the video part, of course, but we wanted to share what we’re doing to remind us – and esp. our people! – that anyone can read the Bible with understanding and enjoyment.
The insights of these women are amazing! Shows the power of discerning the word in community – we can all learn something new when each person shares from their unique perspective and understanding and faith (and, yes, I was happy to hear that we are not the only family to have lost our child for a brief period of time in a public place). Thanks for sharing this great idea!
Wow! This is great! I’ve done this in a much simpler form and continue to be amazed and excited about what “regular” people (as opposed to us “irregular” clergy!) come up with. I’m inspired every time! I look forward to this series. God has much to say to us if we just listen to each other! Thanks, David, and all who are involved with the project.
What a wonderful gift in this Christmas season! I’m in my study here in England, the day after Christmas, preparing for my next sermon and found this so inspirational! Thanks for all that you do. Your work is much appreciated. God bless you richly!
great idea…but a variety and diversity of perspectives would be more helpful – all were white women. As a white female pastor myself, a multicultural mid rash would expand our understandings and sensibilities in the church, whatever our demographics may be.
This was excellent, I’ve watched three times now (when you posted here and when you posted it on workingpreacher.org) Could you say a bit more about process? How did you get the conversation rolling? It seems that the small group is helpful, because it allows one group to be the “expert” on a given text, but since everyone had the same amount of time on the text, there isn’t the expectations that it be well-researched, or whatever normally holds every-day Bible experts back (because many of the congregants in the congregations I pastor know their Bible at least as well as I do). However, I rarely have enough people in Bible study to break up into small groups…any suggestions for adaptation?
Thanks for your comment, Adrianne. We invited the group to read the passage aloud, talk about it, and then filmed each person sharing their insights and questions with the rest of the group gathered around the one being filmed in a semi-circle. But basically we simply invited folks to pay attention to 4 things: – details that stood out to them, places they felt invited to fill in the gaps with their imagination, insights that occurred to them, and questions that were sparked in them. These four things – details, gaps, insights, and questions – prompted a lot of great conversation.
That’s just such a simple way to look at a Bible passage – so often we try to ask complicated questions but with those four guiding principles I see how the discussion would flow even more easily – I’ll be trying it soon….
I like the improv nature of the work. Walter Wink would add Transformation of lives (potentially).
I really appreciate these videos and I can see the value of doing something like this in my own context (the congregation I serve, the synod we are a part of). Is there any conversation about opening up this concept to include videos from other places? If we did something similar and kept the production values at the same level of those you’ve posted, could they be included somehow in this series? Thank you for sharing this powerful resource.
We’ve been talking even this week about both trying to do this in a variety of locales as well as to offer a more in-depth set of suggestions of how we want about it so as to teach and share, in a sense, how to do this. I don’t know that the point needs to be getting a finished video up on our web page, but it could be to get one up on the page of your congregation and synod or even to create an independent site where we can collect such attempts and offerings. Thanks for the suggestion – we’ll keep thinking!
Love this
Simply amazing resource. Thank you!
Greetings! I’ve been reading your blog for
some time now and finally got the bravery to go ahead and give you a shout out
from New Caney Tx! Just wanted to mention keep up the good work!