Teamwork

I'm heading out in a few minutes to do a study retreat for the day with our Senior Pastor and a couple of pastors from a church in a town not too far from here. We've started doing some sermon planning together, and get together once every couple of months to study together. The recent "Divine Intervention" study in Malachi is the first study we've done that way, and we think it will be even more effective in the future.

The way it works is this: we each are responsible for studying the book of the Bible on our own prior to our time together. Generally, that means we have done a rough translation from the original languages, have an outline for the book, and a "big idea" of what the main thrust of the book is. Then when we get together, we spend some time in prayer before sharing what we've each come up with - mainly the things that stood out to us, big challenges or questions we still have, major section breaks in the book, and keywords, thoughts, and ideas that we each feel point to the "big idea" of the book.

After each of us has shared a little about our own personal study, we settle on how many weeks we're going to need, and which verses we'll teach each week. Then we start at the very beginning and work our way through the book. For each section we work to come up with a section title and outline, and we talk through any problem passages or key ideas that come out in a section. At the end of our time, we put the whole thing back together and try to come up with a title for the series, though sometimes it strikes us much earlier in the process.

I look forward to these days more than almost any other workday throughout the year. There's something about studying the Bible as a team that is unbelievably exciting. These are guys who are the real deal, but who are very different. We each bring something different to the table, with the end result being that we get further in one day of study together than any single one of us would have been able to get in a month.