6 Shifts To Go From Preaching To Facilitating Bible Study

As I've mentioned in several other posts (like this one), we don't do traditional preaching (a sermon/lecture) as much as we have Bible studies during the service. Facilitating a productive Bible study requires a different approach than preaching. 

A pastor I know well--who has a sincere love for God and for his congregation--decided to include this Bible study idea in some Saturday night services. We set up the round tables. He prepared a study with handouts that had questions on them. And then he proceeded to preach a sermon, week after week, with people sitting around round tables and taking notes on the handout.

He loved the concept of getting his people more engaged, but he didn't know how to shift out of preaching mode. He didn't understand the six shifts he needed to make from preaching to facilitation:

Preaching	Facilitation
Goal: Communicate truth in a memorable way	Goal: Encourage everyone in the group to talk about the truth in the verse
Your Words: Make Powerful Statements	Your Words: Ask Stimulating Questions
Flow: You decide final point before you start, then lead them to that thought	Flow: Stimulate them to come up with ideas, then summarize their thoughts
Skills: Organizing your thoughts logically, finding and using illustrations well, choosing words well	Skills: Reading the people in the group, asking neutral, open questions, summarizing others’ thoughts well
Initiative: You are the first to speak—you speak the most	Initiative: You are the last to speak—you speak only when required
Success: Measured by the quality and quantity of your content—what you say	Success: Measured by the quality and quantity of the discussion—what others say

  

What mode is your default mode? What shifts would be hardest for you to make?

How To Immediately Double--Or Triple--Your Teaching Impact

How many of the 52 sermons you hear each year can you remember? How about last week's sermon (a week before yesterday's sermon)? What were the three points your pastor shared two sermons ago? Three sermons ago?

You're not the only one coming up blank.

A majority of pastors put in 10-20 hours a week preparing those sermons. But only a very small percentage of what is said will be remembered even two weeks later.

Professional educators often use a graph such as this one (below), referencing Edgar Dale's Cone of Learning, to discuss how to improve their students ability to recall lessons.

Where is your church on this graph? How far down did you have to go to find your usual teaching approach?

Option 1: Work even harder to make your spoken-word-only presentation the most compelling and exciting spoken-word experience possible. Go for the full 20% possible (yes, of course the chart shows broad averages and there can be people who are exceptions).

Option 2: Change the format used and go from 20% on average to 50% on average, or even 80-90% recall--without a major change in content or charisma.

Think back about the experiences in your life you've grown the most from--that your remember most vividly. Taken a few seconds and list them. What type of experiences were they?

Remember, the Bible calls us to teach, not to fixate on one format of teaching. Jesus used multiple formats and so did the early church. We only got stuck on sermons in the middle ages.

If you have some input on teaching in your church, whether on Sunday or a side ministry (e.g. small group, youth group, etc), can you get all the way out of passive into active participation? If so, you could more than triple your impact. At the very least, what could you do to move one or two steps higher up the middle column of this graph?

What's the Point of Preaching?

Why do we teach in church? Why have sermons? If you don't know the purpose, then how do you know if you're accomplishing it? How will you know when you've been successful?

For many, the answer might be: The Bible commands us to do it, so we do it. That is true and important. But that's also unhelpful when it comes to evaluating how well it's being done. Maybe we could ask, "Why does the Bible call us to teach?" What is God's purpose for having teaching in His church? Some might answer: To inform and educate the people of God. But that's a circular answer. That's like saying we teach so people will be taught.

Here's my answer: We teach biblical truth so people will think and act more biblically--through the Holy Spirit for the glory of God, of course.

You know your teaching is successful when the people you teach are living differently. Put another way, we measure application, not awareness. Information is essential to growth, but not sufficient. People must translate your ideas in to specific changes in their lives (whether internal or external changes) for your teaching to be sufficient.

That doesn't mean every sermon has to be a topical, "4 steps to a better..." sermon. I'm a huge fan of exegesis sermons (where you go through a Bible passage line by line to see what we can learn). But whatever your format, your members need to have the chance to translate those biblical ideas into their lives--even if the "behavior" is better thinking. So, not only does your teaching need to at least finish in some tangible way, your people need the time to try to apply it in their lives before you dump the next big idea on them.

Are the sermons at your church more geared to be spiritually inspiring and impressive, or to help the people think through how they'll live differently in the next few days? How much time are you allowing for people to process the ideas being shared?