The Realm of the Verbal Processor

Bible Study

I lead a LIFE Group at my church. That’s my church’s equivalent to a Sunday School class. My class is made up of married couples ranging from mid-20s up to mid-50s. It’s a good group of people.

In the last six months or so, I started thinking about what I wanted to teach next. What went through my mind at the time was if I only had one more thing to pass on to the class, what would I teach? It occurred to me that as a result of being in full time vocational ministry, I have had access to a lot of training in how to study the Bible that most people simply don’t have access to. I’ve had a Seminary level class on Bible Study Methods that was really really good.

I’m currently taking my class through a workshop style class studying the little book of Philemon. Below are links to a couple of files that we are creating as a class. They aren’t completely fleshed out yet…that’s part of the workshop nature of the class. They will get filled out more and more stuff will be posted later as we continue the process.

Philemon in the English Standard Version translation on BibleGateway.com.

Philemon Observation Chart. The purpose of this is to look at the Biblical text to note what it actually says and what you can learn from it. There is a lot that you can learn by simply reading carefully. Items to go in the observation chart include what you can learn from the text itself, footnotes, and cross references. NOTE: this does not include study notes, commentaries, etc. An example of a footnote is the notation in a couple of places that the Greek word “Onesimus” (the name of the slave in the letter to Philemon) meant “useful”. We spent three weeks observing. This chart represents all of the observations that we made in class along with some that I made on my own. The final list is 103 observations that we made on a little book that is only 25 verses long. Cool.

Philemon Book Summary – Final. This is designed to get you to summarize what the book and the individual paragraphs in the book are about.