What People Are Saying

Anyone searching for wisdom in education would do well to investigate the programs generated by The Educational Center. They integrate a deep understanding of the teaching process and a knowledge of the depth of human personality.
-- Morton Kelsey -- Episcopal Priest, Writer, Educator

Praise for BibleWorkbench

For both clergy and laity, BibleWorkbench is, in my judgment, the single most important resource for engaging and internalizing the lectionary readings for each Sunday of the year. It is of great value for clergy preparing sermons and for adult study groups undertaking a serious and life-changing encounter with the Bible.
-- Marcus Borg -- Author, Lecturer, Historical Jesus Scholar

The BibleWorkbench is not only a way of reading the Bible but also a way of letting the Bible read us. In this approach we experience a live encounter between the stories told in scripture and the stories of our own lives.
-- Parker Palmer -- Author of Let Your Life Speak

BibleWorkbench has been very engaging and enriching at a personal and group level in our parish. It is not only intelligent, but deeply connected to the realities of our time, and call for an active response to the Bible story in the midst of a community. The material provides a process that can make the word of God incarnational.
-- Rev. Silito Romero, Rector, St. Philip's Episcopal Church, San Jose

 

Bible Workbench has enlivened our congregation. ...I’ve tried lots of different curricula and this is one of the absolute best. It stimulates mind and heart, teaches sound Biblical scholarship and challenges the student to engage the holy on a personal level. It makes Bible study relevant without being trite, helping the reader see the story of God alive in the world today.
- Rev Carla Aday, Country Club Christian Church, Kansas City

I have used the Bible Workbench in parishes for over fifteen years. For many of my parishioners in small groups and private devotions, as well as for my own spiritual growth, the Bible Workbench remains the single most thoughtful and engaging resource for in-depth exploration of the Bible and the human journey.
-- Rev. Gary D. Jones, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Richmond, VA

Before I was trained as a BibleWorkbench leader, I always strived for meaningful class discussion, but seldom succeeded. Bible Workbench gave me the tools to make this happen. I learned to be the midwife and the class became the curriculum. Rather than lecturing to the class about facts and opinions, I was able to encourage them to engage the text and have it awaken inside them. Having the class consider relevant questions raised by the text is a magnificent learning experience.
-- Leader of Adult Sunday School Class

Studying the scriptures in community, using the Bible Workbench materials, is life-changing for me.

- Baptist Clergy

The Bible Workbench study method and the community I study with weekly are a strong, encouraging community and force in my life. The weekly Workbench experience is a confirming and motivating energy for me and, more often than not, the highlight of my week.

- Retired banker

BWB represents an approach to the study of Scripture that stresses applicability to our own lives, but in a different way from more traditional methods. As opposed to searching Scripture for absolute and immutable truths that we must all obey, or at least "believe," it has us looking for the questions that the stories, parables, and sayings raise that were important in Biblical times as people like us tried to understand their own lives and which can be just as important for us who are trying to do the same today. It can be challenging and even life-transforming to take a parable of Jesus and, instead of deciding what it means, thus ending the discussion, rather to identify the characters in the story, identify their problems, their conflicts, their hopes, their disappointments, their triumphs, their failures and then look for similar characters or characteristics in our own world, our own lives, our own psyches. The insights that can flow are endless and lead to a new and richer understanding of Jesus and his mission to his and our world. Understanding that Scripture can be a way of helping us ask the questions that can save our own lives, rather than being a receptacle of established and immutable truths, has been a true epiphany for me.

- Robert Ruppenthal, Retired physician

No matter what your theological stance, Workbench allows you room to wiggle and to hear other voices in the group. I find that the poems, commentaries, and probing questions offered by the editors enable me to deeply engage the scripture selections of the week.

- Seminarian at the Duke Divinity School

Being a participant in Bible Workbench has brought a new dimension to my faith experience.

- Homemaker

The Bible Workbench is the finest curriculum for Bible study I have encountered through 28 years of parish ministry. It incorporates sound scholarship in each lesson. Yet it makes a presumption that most of everyday living, choosing and discerning is characterized not by clearly delineated black and white absolutes, but rather by loads of uncertainty and gray areas. There is an integrity about BWB I have not found elsewhere. I have used BWB in sermon preparation and for my own private devotions, as well as for adult classes.

- Verdery Kerr, Episcopal Priest

The material is so solid that it helps the committed worshiper predicate what's going to come on Sunday morning. What I mean is that they have done their homework on the lectionary passage so thoroughly they can confirm and confront the sermon.

One Bible Workbench group has met weekly for two years; the second group for one year. I've watched the change in the twenty or so members of these two groups. Their confidence with theological thinking has skyrocketed.

We playfully argue theological points, stimulated by original perspectives and persuasive rebuttals. The discussions start during the Bible Workbench session. They pick up after the Sunday worship service and continue well into the next week. These conversations blur the division between clergy and laity and we see each other with renewed respect. We are not so much teacher and learner, but fellow explorers.

- Episcopal Priest