I spent two summers during college as a pastoral intern. I enjoyed it, though the experience contributed to the realization that I wasn’t cut out for pastoral ministry. I knew my calling was different. Something I did during that time also taught me a lot about what Bible study wasn’t—or at least shouldn’t be.
One of the periodic tasks of pastoral interns was, unsurprisingly, preaching. We were allowed to pick pretty much any passage for a sermon and were given a generous amount of time to prepare. I had a couple years of Bible college coursework under my belt, so I wasn’t new to Bible study. The only instruction that was given to me was that preaching wasn’t teaching.
I understood the intent of the instruction: don’t turn the sermon into a classroom session. That’s good advice for several reasons. But it made the task incredibly difficult. I finally concluded that all I needed to do was go through the passage, make an observation here and there, and apply those observations to people’s spiritual lives—to our aspirations, failures, God’s forgiveness, and the need for consistency as followers of Jesus.
The formula worked wonderfully. I got a lot of positive affirmation from the pastoral staff and people in the pew. A couple days later, though, I had an epiphany that soured the experience but was just what I needed. I realized that I had preached a well-structured outline, not the text. Instead of really grappling with the meaning of the text, conveying that to people, and then drawing out lessons rooted in the text, I’d used the Bible to make people feel a certain way. They’d been challenged spiritually but hadn’t learned a thing about the passage. I had manipulated my audience when my job was to help them learn Scripture and respond to it in their walk with God.
Bible study shouldn’t be an exercise in being clever. When we look into Scripture only to jog our minds about what we’re doing right or wrong, or how someone else is pleasing God or not, we aren’t doing Bible study. Bible study should be about understanding what Scripture says and teaches. The Spirit will take the fruit of that labor and challenge hearts. We’re no substitute.