What a privilege it is to be involved in Bible ministry on a regular basis.
Being a staff worker with uccf:thechristianunions gives me this privilege all the time.
One such example was last week, when my colleague, Hamish, and I spent a day training the Relay workers from out regional team.
We started after lunch with 2 sessions: One on basic Bible handling, looking at the author's purpose, context and structure tools (as they are described in Digging Deeper by Andrew Sach and Nigel Beynon). The other giving them time to put those skills into practice by working on some passages in teams of 3 then presenting their findings and an outline to the whole group. We purposely chose passages which studied in isolation from their context would not make complete sense, or lose their thrust.
The evening was then spent chilling out together with a little bit of healthy competition thrown in for good measure in the form of Cranium!
The following morning we embarked on a new set of sessions which Hamish and I had decided to introduce this year for the first time. We decided to specifically look at handling the Old Testament and how it is about Jesus. The format was the same, teaching of skills and helpful stuff about ways passages can point to Jesus. Then we gave them passages to go away and study and present their findings.
What was encouraging was that while some of the Relays had done a lot of Bible handling before, all of them seemed to really benefit from the concentrated time spent thinking and discussing together. The OT stuff stretched us as well as them, which is always a good thing. Hopefully we all will grow in love for Jesus and the word as we see it hanging together so wonderfully.
Final thing to say is, if you are a final year student, or you're wondering what to do when finishing university in a couple of years, why not think about Relay (see video below) and you too could enjoy some wonderful fellowship and excellent opportunities to sharpen one another through studying the Scriptures and discussing how best to understand it.
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