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Wesley’s Method Part III: Form a Bible Study, Go Make Disciples
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October 15, 2021One of the staples of Wesley’s Method and the Oxford Holy Club was studying the Bible. It is often easily overlooked that John Wesley was a Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, teaching Greek as well as philosophy and New Testament studies. For Wesley, reading and studying the Bible meant reading and studying it in Greek, often in conjunction with commentary from Greek Church Fathers.
Bible study was also part of the original intention of Methodist Societies. Among Protestant communities, the idea of studying the Bible is rather obvious. It forms the majority of Protestant activities as Sunday School focuses on it, and often Sunday Evening and Wednesday Evening services are essentially adult Bible study times. Large churches may offer many different groups for Bible study and discussion with similar people. This is why many groups are often separated by gender or age in order to better facilitate conversation, dialogue, and community. Catholic parishes, however, have in large-part not caught on to this. Many parishes offer Religious Education classes for children to receive First Communion and Confirmation, and they offer RCIA to initiate adults into the Church, but they tend to be sorely lacking in discipleship making activities like Bible studies.
Sometimes parishes (and Protestant congregations too) will offer a youth group and might offer an adult group, but it’s in the category of “young adult” where many people fall away. For those who are not college-bound, there is no option because they are deemed too old to belong to a youth group, but they do not feel like they fit in in the older crowd of adults who are their parents’ or grandparents’ ages. Care should be taken across the board to offer something for all young adults.
The Catholic group FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) is excellent for making these outreach groups and Bible studies in Catholic chaplaincies. They pay young adults to be missionaries who will be sent to a college in small groups in order to build up a chaplaincy program and to offer small groups that will develop discipleship. Without knowing it, they are using Wesley’s Method and succeeding with it. The problem, however, is that they are focused solely on campus ministry to college students, and there is no major alternative for adults of any age who are not students on a college or university campus.
Ordinariate parishes should form Bible study groups. There are a variety of resource options available from Word on Fire, Ascension Press, and Formed, as Catholic resources, or we might benefit from NT Wright’s Bible Study series, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, or even the Bible Project. Recommending Bible studies can be difficult because they will all come with pros and cons, and there will be different results with teachers and students as to what works the best for their groups. One recommendation though is to be sure to stick with the Bible and to read it. Don’t substitute it for another book or Church Father, and don’t spend an entire season talking about the same verse or two. Even if the group is just reading a chapter or two from a book and then discussing it for half an hour over coffee, that’s good! That’s how you build community around discipleship.
As Ordinariate parishes begin Bible study programs, consider reaching out to your fellow Catholic parishes and telling them about it because there may be a good chance that people there will want to participate. This was one way that the Methodist Societies formed early on as they brought people together from across all the parishes in a town into a single society for common prayer that then subdivided into smaller groups for Bible study. And in fact, this might be the easiest way of getting it off the ground with plenty of people for smaller Ordinariate parishes.
And don’t forget to build off the previous step of the Method and incorporate some form of common prayer to your Bible study!
Paul Caleb Roland is an Ordinariate Catholic who writes from Oklahoma.Related articles by this author:
What Methodist Patrimony Brings to the Ordinariate MissionWesley’s Method Part I: Frequent Reception of Communion and the Love Feast
Wesley’s Method Part II: Frequent Prayer and the Daily Office
Wesley’s Method Part III: Form a Bible Study, Go Make Disciples
Wesley’s Method Part IV: Fasting Wednesdays, Fridays & Other Times for Sanctification
Wesley’s Method Part V: Forming Small Groups for Discipleship
Wesley’s Method Part VI: Following Christ by Works of Mercy
Wesley’s Method Part VII: Singing and a Hymnal in Every Home
Wesley’s Method Part VIII: How Field Preaching Equips the Laity to Proclaim Jesus Christ
Wesley’s Method Part IX: Holy Conferencing, Revivals, and their Ordinariate Potential
Wesley’s Method Part X: How Lay Servant Ministry Can Grow the Catholic Church
