About Bible Workbench
The Bible Workbench is a lectionary based life-centered biblical
resource designed for small group youth and adult education in
church and home, for individual study or as an aid to preachers.
One of the texts from the Revised Common Lectionary is chosen each Sunday. The exploration
begins with a discussion of what is happening in the biblical text.
The focus then shifts to how this story is happening in the world
around us. Finally the questions turn toward how the story is an
event in the lives of the people in the group. The journey through
the text seeks life-giving questions that wait to be lived.
Weekly written materials of the highest quality include a series
of proposed questions which leaders may use to speak to the text,
as well as to the world around us and our individual lives. Academic
background material is provided to enable the text to be read in
context. Parallel Reading includes poetry and book excerpts as
well as timely newspaper and magazine articles that echo the theme
of the text. Bible Workbench can be subscribed to on a yearly,
half-year or seasonal basis. Click
here to subscribe today!
A sequence of questions in the process, EXPLORING THE PATTERN:
THEMES AND MOTIFS, is meant to be honed and tweaked by the leaders
to speak directly to the lives of those in the group and what is
happening in the world around them. Background of an academic kind
enabling a reading of the text in context is provided in a section
called CRITICAL BACKGROUND features such scholars such as Marcus
Borg, Walter Brueggemann, John Dominic Crossan, Elaine Pagels,
Karen King, Walter Wink and Bart Ehrman. PARALLEL READINGS includes
contemporary poetry and prose as well as timely news articles from
newspapers and magazines that echo the theme of the text. Four
Associate Editors collaborate with the editor in the fashioning
of each of the seven annual issues.
The Bible Workbench
Method
Each person in the circle is invited to respond to the text as
spontaneously as possible from as deep a place within as they are
able. As a leader you are encouraging participants to engage the
scripture rather than each other and to experience the story as
it is happening in the text, in the world around them, and as an
event in their life.
Bible Workbench is designed for flexible use by individuals and
groups. Groups will vary in size but tend to work best when between
6 and 15 participants. Designed originally for Sunday morning adult
education programs, sessions are generally 50 minutes or during
the week an hour to 90 minutes. Most groups have a leadership team
of two or three people who share in the responsibility for presenting
the material. Some groups encourage all members to take turns week
by week in the leadership. Many groups meet in churches but others
are in homes, some as part of a congregational program others existing
independently. In all the variation there are several important
things to remember:
- As a group, we engage the text, not each other. The text is
central.
- Knowledge about and familiarity with the Bible are not prerequisites
to participation.
- Stay with the story in the text using the exploration in the
material as a guide to developing questions that work for you
as a leader and speak to those in the group and their world.
- Feel free to call the Educational Center and
request assistance if you get stuck or bogged down. Request a
copy of The Leader's Guide be mailed to you.
History:
Seven people with varied backgrounds but with a common desire to
create a new vital approach to the Bible came together in Wrightsville
Beach , North Carolina in 1979 and gave birth to what became
the Bible Workbench program. Their backgrounds were clergy and
lay, counselors and preachers, but they all had common prior
experience in Educational Center issued oriented education.
A fresh and lively way of engaging scripture emerged from this
meeting. Because of their experience in issue oriented experiential
education, materials developed which were a powerful resource for
small groups rather than a scripted curriculum.
A guiding principle from the start was pioneer Christian educator
Charles Penniman's insight that "the student is the curriculum." This
understanding in part means that the group discussion is to be
fashioned by each unique group challenged to hear the Spirit speaking
through the Bible rather than creeds and doctrine.
As the program has evolved the value of the Bible Workbench method
for groups has become obvious as a preaching resource. In a radical
shift from traditional preaching, the preacher delivers the biblical
text rather than his or her interpretation of the text along with
insight and questions that equip the listener to create the sermon
that is needed to be heard. Each issue of the Bible Workbench includes
at least one sermon that experiments with this preaching model.
The resource developed in three years into today's Bible Workbench.
Behind this name was the sense that rather than a finished product
to be interpreted, the Bible is an invitation to a group to work
hard together on how the story or text is happening in their lives
here and now.
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