A teaching event on how to study God’s Word

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Update! The material for this teaching event is now available on Amazon. Too find out more, visit here.

There is nothing that makes my heart sing louder than grabbing a front row seat to watch women cultivate insatiable appetites for the Word of God.

It’s a scene I’ve had the privilege of witnessing many times in our growing church plant, and it’s one I want to see replicated a hundred times over as we continue in a women’s discipleship strategy anchored in biblical literacy.

Recently, we hosted a special discipleship weekend that was made sweet for several reasons.

Sweet Purpose

If you know my heart, you know I believe every women’s ministry event should feed into the greater discipleship strategy of the church. The mission of our church is to become a church planting church, but in order for that to happen, the women in our church must become disciple-making women.

Because God’s Word is foundational to the discipleship process, our event served as a training weekend on studying the Bible and using Bible study as a discipleship tool.

Our theme for the weekend was “God’s Word is Sweeter than Honey” taken from Psalm 19:10. From this rich Psalm, we spent two sessions on why we should crave God’s Word above all else.

These lessons were important for new believers as they grapple with questions concerning the trustworthiness of God’s Word, but they also served mature Christians well who easily forget the importance of cultivating an appetite for the Scriptures.

In our time together, we dug deep and asked some hard questions of the women. How often do they feed on the Bible? Are they capable of self-feeding or are they lazy eaters enjoying the table scraps from someone else’s Bible study? What are some key obstacles keeping them from consistently craving God’s Word?

On Saturday, we moved from the feast to the hands-on cooking lesson with three sessions dedicated to Howard Hendricks’ three-fold Bible study method: observation, interpretation, application. He outlines this method in his book, Living By the Book: The Art and Science of Reading the Bible. 

At the end of each session, the ladies worked through a specified passage, putting their new skills to the test. A discipleship leader sat at each table to guide new believers through the process.

While there are many fruitful Bible study methods, I chose to teach Hendricks’ method for our weekend event because its three steps are easy to replicate. Disciplers can take those three steps and teach them to another disciple.

Sweet Partners

Pulling off a weekend-long discipleship event is no small task, particularly for a new church. But we were blessed by a number of sweet partners in this endeavor, namely the women of one of our sponsoring churches, Hickory Grove Baptist Church.

HGBC sent a mission team to provide childcare so all our ladies could spend time being equipped. They donated door prizes and personalized gift bags filled with all sorts of goodies – a treat our church could not have afforded otherwise. When we gathered with them to stuff our goody bags, they told us how they had prayed for us by name in the months leading up to our event. Their investment was both intentional and eternal.

If your women’s ministry is part of a larger church, consider partnering with the women’s ministry of a nearby church plant. You have an incredible opportunity to pour into the lives of other women for kingdom purposes.

And while I led in teaching, this discipleship event was not a one-woman show. The women who comprise the women’s ministry at our church took the lead in promotion, decoration, and food preparation. Since Christmas, they have planned and prayed and prepared for our time together. They are my sweet partners in the gospel, and I am so thankful for them.

Who knew discipleship could be so fun!?!? Thank you ladies of Hickory Grove and Living Faith! I love ya!

Sweeter than Honey is now available as a paperback and for kindle! For more information about the book, visit the book page.

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