Gospel.com Blog

Have questions about the Bible? If you’ve never stumbled across a Bible passage that you didn’t understand, you’re the exception—with the thousands of people, places, events, and teachings scattered throughout the Old and New Testaments, it can be a challenge to keep it all straight. While traditional Bible studies are a good way to shed light on tough Bible passages, tracking down a Bible study that answers your precise questions isn’t always easy.

That’s where the Lockman Foundation’s Study Bible Forum comes in. It’s an online, interactive Bible study site where you can ask questions about specific Bible verses—and receive answers from other forum users. You can also look at what questions other users are asking, and offer your own answers or insights. It’s a bit tricky to explain, so we’ve put together a short video introducing the Lockman Foundation and demonstrating how the Study Bible Forum works:

Study Bible Forum is much more focused than most internet forums—it’s a place for Bible study, not general chatting. That makes it a great (and completely free) resource to supplement your regular Bible reading and study. Sign up for an account and explore it for yourself!

This week, we’re focusing on the topic of leadership. You can find a lot of leadership resources on our Leadership topic page; but we’ll also be highlighting a few good resources in more detail here on the blog.

So where to begin? “Leadership” is a pretty broad topic—in a Christian context, it can cover a wide variety of roles. There’s “official” church leadership—pastors, worship leaders, and other church staff. You can also lead a small group or a Bible study. And you can be a Christian leader outside the church grounds: you might have a leadership role in your community or your business, or you might just be someone that other people look to for advice and direction.

To kick things off this week, one ministry with a special focus on leadership is Officers’ Christian Fellowship. Many of OCF’s resources use a bit of military-specific language (it is a military ministry, after all), but I think you’ll agree that their leadership guidance is applicable to just about anyone. Here’s a quick tour of some of their free resources for leaders:

• Leading Effective Small Groups is one of the best primers I’ve seen on managing a successful Bible study group. It includes a great list of 20 ‘do’s and ‘don’t’s for a Bible study, and even a section on a touchy subject: how to deal with disruptive people in your Bible study. (It’s also available as a PDF download.)
• The 100 Days Bible Study is a great resource for Bible study leaders. It’s a 70-page document with short Bible study topics and discussion points covering dozens of topics. It’d be very useful for an impromptu Bible study, or for use when your small group needs something to talk about.
• Follow Me is a short essay that looks at the type of leadership that Jesus demonstrated, and offers ideas for emulating him.
• Eleven Bible studies about leadership, thoroughly addressing each of the traits that makes for a good Christian leader, from your attitude to your role to your vision for your group. There’s also an essay about Leading a Bible study which is essentially a shorter version of the longer essay we mentioned above.
• And if that’s not enough, OCF has many more articles on the topic of leadership.

If you’re a leader in your church community—officially or otherwise—take a look at these materials!

The ESV Bible Blog is regularly updated with good information the state and news of the English Standard Version of the bible. This recent post gives an interesting visual of how people keep up with their devotionals throughout the year:

As you can see from the below chart, a good number of people start reading their Bibles daily in January. The traffic tapers off until around March 1, after which it remains pretty steady for the rest of the year. We interpret this data to mean that if you can keep reading your Bible daily for another month, there’s a good chance you’ll stick with it for the rest of the year.

Do you find the Bible confusing to read? Why is the world’s most-read book so difficult to read and understand? Soulation has just posted some new audio resources to help you out. Listen to Jonalyn Fincher talk about how to read the Bible (part 1, 2, and 3). She starts by highlighting some of the common mistakes that people (Christians and non-Christians alike) make when reading the Bible, and goes on to give some solid advice for reading the Bible wisely.

And while we’re talking about the Soulation ministry, take a look at a recent Wall Street Journal article—about the “does God exist?” debate and the state of apologetics today—in which Jonalyn is mentioned:

Defenders of the faith are drawing crowds of thousands in person as well. Next month, the Southern Evangelical Seminary will host a National Conference on Christian Apologetics, which will include a special segment for teens. Younger people are some of the most avid consumers of apologetics texts, according to Christian author Jonalyn Fincher, who speaks to college and high-school groups regularly. She says that in the 20th century, Christians often reacted to science’s attacks on religion by “running away from culture.” But in recent years more Christians have begun to take the attitude, “If our God is the God of truth, what are we afraid of?”

Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, another apologetics ministry in the Gospel.com community, gets a mention as well.

We’ve talked a lot lately about studying the Bible—a recent post offered some ideas on how to read through the Bible in 2008 and before that we talked about the reading the four Gospels. Here’s another Bible study resource to add to the list: a large collection of Bible charts and studies at Uplook Ministries.

They’ve got charts outlining the contents of most of the Bible’s major books. Many of them cover fairly familiar territory (the Gospels, the Psalms, etc.), but for something a bit different, take a look at some of their charts for the more challenging-to-read books of the Bible:

• an overview of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible)
• a chart showing the connections between Ezra, Nehemiah, and Ruth
• a map of the people, locations, and events in the “minor prophet” books
• a chart outlining Job’s trials

There’s much more—take a look through and see what might be useful for you in your Bible reading!

Most Christians have at least attempted to read the entire bible in a year. For some it comes off without a hitch. For others (like me) it might start well, and then Leviticus comes along. With naive intentions of returning to those priestly codes, we jump ahead to Joshua. Somehow we never quite come back to finish them.

Or, we start in on the New Testament, hit Luke and all those parables coalesce into this massive story about a prodigal fish planting seeds underneath a camel. So, it’s back to Matthew again, and you’re a month behind.

Or, there’s the free-form approach–my personal favorite–where the tried-and-true interesting books are read in no particular order, which generally consists of a mix of Genesis, Job, John and James over and over and over.

We each probably have a story of failing at this bible reading thing, and that’s okay. But perhaps it’s time for a plan.
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The fourth and final Gospel account is the Gospel of John, written by the “disciple that Jesus loved”. John’s account of Jesus’ life and ministry differs in some interesting ways from the other three Gospels—the author has an eye for details that the other accounts leave unmentioned. It’s thus well worth reading, even if you’re quite familiar with the other Gospels.

A few links to help you explore this unique Gospel account: (more…)

In the 1930’s Helen Baugh hosted a dinner where the gospel of Christ was presented in a loving and relaxed manner to other women, after that first meeting the women asked if they could come back again the next week. The weekly meetings took off and soon Stonecroft Ministries was born. From those humble beginnings the ministry branched out to include Christian bookstores, tracts, and bible studies. Currently there are Stonecroft Ministries’ bible studies in sixty-three countries around the world!

Here are some informative pages from their web site:

An interesting set of videos about people’s perceptions of Christians from Stonecroft media.

Stonecroft daily news.

The main page for Stonecroft Ministries’ small groups. If you’re interested in joining a Stonecroft group they have a location finder here.

Main page for Stonecroft bible studies.

Stonecroft Ministries, “is a non-denominational organization that equips women to impact their communities with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, providing resources to enable women to connect with God, each other, and their communities.”

Yesterday we talked a bit about the Gospel of Matthew; today we’ll take a look at the second Gospel account in the New Testament—the book of Mark.

Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels. It is relatively fast-paced compared to some of the other Gospels, was written with a non-Jewish audience in mind, and describes the ministry of Christ all the way to his death and resurrection. You can get started reading it yourself (or listen to it in audio format) over at the Bible Gateway. Before you dive in, though, you might want to take a look at some of these resources to help you get the most out of Mark:

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This week on Gospel.com, we’re taking a look at the four gospels of Jesus Christ, and today we’re focusing on Matthew. For me the book of Matthew was the first book of the bible I ever really studied. By looking at the verses underlined in my aging NIV you can see what was on my mind during that time. Matthew is a book that is often cited as being written for the Greek Jews, and today it remains as one of the four gospels that show Jesus’ life to us. You can read the full text at The BibleGateway, or listen to it here. The International Bible Society has a concise introduction to the book that outlines the structure and history of the book. Additionally, Uplook Ministries has more textual/literary introduction.
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