How to Use These Notes

These notes are designed to give you, a Bible study leader, confidence to lead your group through a series of Bible studies.

Understanding the Passage

You are facilitating the group discovering the Bible for themselves. As such, you need to be clear what you think each passage is saying. You won’t be giving the group all the answers, but you need to know when the discussion is on-track, and when you need to encourage group members to look more closely at the text and evaluate what is being said.

A significant proportion of these notes is therefore given to explaining the text. There is an introduction, to give you a handle on how the book as a whole functions. Each week’s notes set the passage in its immediate context, pick up allusions to the Old Testament, and explain the passage section by section.

This is not a replacement for a fuller commentary, but aims to get you to the heart of the passages quickly, explaining trickier details along the way.

Summarising

Having understood the passage, you need to prepare to lead a Bible study. Summarising what the passage says and does is important, so you can react quickly to keep the discussion going in the right direction. Each study contains a one paragraph summary of the message of the passage, the theme of the passage (what it says) in a single sentence, and a suggested aim for the study (what the study sets out to achieve) also in a single sentence.

Bible Study Questions

There are then 2 possible sets of questions for each Bible study, depending on whether you wish to lead a discussion study or a structured study. There is a separate page on this website to explain the two types of Bible study, and these notes are included in each On The Trail study guide.

The notes for each study include a number of launch questions (so you can pick one), and a number of linear questions (so you can work through them all). Choose the kind of study you want to lead, and use a launch question or the linear questions as appropriate.

As a hint: Don’t try to use multiple launch questions for a linear study. The questions aren’t designed for that, as each question will spark too big a discussion and the study will then lack overall coherence.

Don’t try to use the linear questions to launch a discussion-type study. The questions aren’t designed for that, as each question will only focus on one portion of the passage or one theme.

Applications

Application is very important: A Bible study needs to land in everyday life. “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (James 1:22).

The notes supply a list of possible applications for each study. This is not intended to be exhaustive. Each passage applies in many ways, addressing the way we think, speak and act. Don’t expect to uncover all the applications every week. The group will touch on some, spend much time chewing on others, and miss yet others entirely.

The purpose of giving you a list of applications is to help you have as much possible application in your mind as possible. You are a tour guide for this part of the Bible. You want to know where the best vistas are before the group starts to explore, so that you can point things out as you go.

I almost always find that group members find applications I’d never thought of, and so help me as the group leader to apply the Bible personally in fresh ways. The ones supplied in these notes are really just to give you ideas to get you started.