Last Saturday at 3 PM I gathered with nine students to study John 3:1-21. Seven of those students were part of WULF - Wash U's League of Freethinkers. With the end of the semester rapidly approaching and no guarantee that they would want to continue to study Scripture with me in the spring I gave three of their leaders the choice of which passage we would explore and they chose John 3 - Jesus and Nicodemus.
Needless to say as I stood in front of the group and shared some background information on the passage and the basic ground rules of inductive Bible Study I felt like I was about to be fed to the wolves. Facilitation wise, it was probably one of the most difficult studies I've ever led. They had a really tough time actually making observations and kept diving directly into interpreting the passage. After a couple of hours I was exhausted and unsure if any of the main points were coming across. In hindsight, however, I can see some of the things that were happening:
I would very much appreciate your prayers as I follow-up with the WULF students and challenge them to continue to explore Scripture with me this spring.
Needless to say as I stood in front of the group and shared some background information on the passage and the basic ground rules of inductive Bible Study I felt like I was about to be fed to the wolves. Facilitation wise, it was probably one of the most difficult studies I've ever led. They had a really tough time actually making observations and kept diving directly into interpreting the passage. After a couple of hours I was exhausted and unsure if any of the main points were coming across. In hindsight, however, I can see some of the things that were happening:
- A couple of the students were clearly wrestling with the idea that spiritual birth is something that comes from "above" rather than something we can manufacture on our own.
- The tension created by the location of a verse about God's love as it is expressed in sending Jesus (3:16) and a verse about the condemnation of those who persist in unbelief (3:18) evoked a very strong negative reaction from one student in particular. Again, this gave me insight into his spiritual questions and struggle with the Gospel.
- Several of the students thanked me afterward and expressed that they had never actually studied any part of the Bible.
I would very much appreciate your prayers as I follow-up with the WULF students and challenge them to continue to explore Scripture with me this spring.
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