How to Teach a Bible Study Lesson

Shortly after becoming a Christian, I realized the importance of knowing how to teach a Bible study lesson. Like most, I wanted to grow in my relationship with God, so I began attending Sunday school, Bible studies, and a few other small groups. Even though each study was helpful, only one of them challenged me to my very core. At the time, I didn't know why this teacher was different than the others, I only experienced his impact in my life.

Over time, as I myself began to teach, I realized that challenging and developing listeners' beliefs, thoughts, attitudes, priorities, values, and actions requires more than providing information and explanation. Instead, it involves integrating different teaching principles throughout the Bible study, many of which are not easy to see at first. For the casual observer, an effective Bible study looks just like any other Bible study: people arrive, sit down, listen to an inspirational Bible study, leave, and over time, their lives change.

Seems simple enough. However, what they don’t notice is how the Bible study teacher integrates teaching principles throughout the entire lesson. When a teacher knows how to teach a Bible study lesson, the teaching principles are invisible and the Bible study just works. When a teacher does not know how to teach a Bible study, the teaching process comes to a grinding halt.

So, let’s look at how to teach a Bible study. Here we will look at the seven teaching elements that should be in every Bible study that has transformation as its main objective. For a fuller discussion of each teaching element, please see the second book in the Teaching To Transform Not Inform series. It covers these teaching elements in-depth, why and when you should use them, and how they will impact your listeners. Each book in the series builds upon previous ones and discusses additional teaching principles along with methods and techniques you can use to integrate them into your lesson.