Summary

Creative Bible Teaching is Gary Bredfeldt’s fresh update on Lawrence Richards’ original book. Creative Bible Teaching begins with the nature of scripture. It covers study techniques, teaching structure, how people learn, and more. Finally, it lands on ways you can evaluate the results of your Bible teaching in the lives of others.

What I Like About It

The most refreshing aspect of Creative Bible Teaching is the authors’ emphasis on the Holy Spirit’s role in leading people to truth. Unfortunately, many current books on teaching and preaching that I have encountered overlook this important aspect.

Secondly, the other feature that I greatly appreciate is their focus on the RESULTS of teaching. A major implication is that when the Bible is taught rightly, more than information transfer must take place. Rather, teachers should be praying for and aiming for witnessing life transformation in their hearers. I cannot agree more.

What I Didn’t Like About It

If you like tables and illustrations, you will love this book. Some of them helped to clarify the concept they had written about but many of them felt forced. For me, they did not add much to the verbal description that was already present.

I did not leverage the discussion questions at the end of each chapter. The author’s attempted to engage the reader in further critical thinking about the concepts they presented. Regrettably, their attempt it fell short for me. There is enough thoughtful content in each chapter that I saw most of the discussion questions unnecessary and even obvious.

Finally, some of the chapters were very repetitive. I wonder if the publisher/editors required the authors to reach a word count in each chapter?

Who Is This For?

Creative Bible Teaching is a great primer if you are new to teaching the Bible across multiple settings. Are you a small group co-leader, youth/children’s volunteer, or a Sunday school teacher? Creative Bible Teaching will help you. In fact, even the most seasoned preacher will benefit from reminders regarding basic bible study and sermon preparation.

The authors keep returning to this key question: how will the student or hearer be affected by the teaching? We cannot evaluate the effectiveness of our teaching based on activity. We must evaluate the effectiveness of our teaching based on the outcomes and results in the lives of people.

Rating

Creative Bible Teaching gets 4 out of 5 stars. You can pick up your copy of the book here.