InterVarsity's StudentSoul.org

Discussion groups can be fun places to explore parts of the Bible that might otherwise be intimidating when we’re on our own. InterVarsity groups that aim to investigate God are called GIGs, for “Groups Investigating God.” It helps to have good discussion questions, and we’ve found some great guides for group use (and even personal use, if you’re not yet in a group).

The list below is based in the Gospels, the historic narrative accounts of Jesus. These aren’t slick published booklets, but rather “home-grown” study guides tested with students in mind. Watch for guides to other parts of the Bible in the future. And if you have a set of studies you’ve already used successfully in a small-group setting, please upload them to the Ministry Exchange and share them with others!

Brief GIG Teaching Guide (MS Word)

Dan McWilliams presents a brief set of GIG discussion questions in a couple of passages of John and some parables Jesus told. While Dan provides a few hints for leaders (i.e., nudges toward a good answer), this is primarily a set of excellent questions in some fascinating passages. Even someone on their own would benefit from the brief studies in this document. But watch out—stereotypes about Jesus may be broken.

This guide covers John 3:1-16 (Nicodemus coming at night to ask questions of Jesus), John 2:1-22 (making the best wine ever at a wedding for a panicked host), Mark 4:1-9 (a parable about different kinds of soils), Matthew 13:44-46 (a parable about a people who found valuable treasure), Luke 15:11ff (a parable about a wayward son and a loving father), Luke 9:18-26 (a cost/benefit analysis of following Jesus), and Mark 2:1-17 (in which a paralytic’s friends dismantle a roof to get the guy to Jesus for healing). At the end, Dan suggest several more passages to study (hey, Dan, how about some study questions to those, too?).

GIG Guide by Shawn Young (MS Word)

While this guide is very similar to Dan’s (above), it doesn’t give away as many hints. But it also goes further in John 2, covering the incident in which Jesus gets ticked at the moneychangers in the Temple and turns over a few tables. And it includes John 4:4-30, where Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well (very counter-cultural for his and her day!). It spends a little more time in John than Dan’s guide. Again, excellent questions, many identical. But this kind of overlap is fine—guides and their questions can be customized for your own campus and group. That’s what the Ministry Exchange is all about.

Imaginative Reading of Scripture (MS Word)

Here’s one by Roger Weber that will feel different to many, familiar to others. It’s more about a style of personal meditation than group discussion questions. We toss this in as a pick partly because it uses John 4 as the teaching example (after all, we’re into John here, aren’t we?), but mostly because it may introduce a style of reading and meditation that fits you. It’s possible to do this with another person, but it works very well in solitude. Following the lead of St. Ignatius of Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises, Roger unpacks a style of meditation combined with reading and prayer. Start at the beginning, but take it all the way to the end for the actual example. You may find it helpful to read the optional debriefing questions near the end before your first time at reading and then imagining yourself at the scene. Doing so may give you some clue about where your meditation could take you.

Bible Study of Mark

This set of studies covers Mark 1-8. In the Good Question from last week, “How do I start reading the Bible?”, John and Mark are the places of choice to begin, and since we’ve just recommended some John studies, here’s a good one for Mark. This guide is really meant for the leader of a discussion group—it has some good background material and responses to questions, but they are right there in with the discussion questions. It’s not the best layout for personal study, although the questions are great. You could download the text and delete the leader’s notes, but, whoa, that’s a lot of work! Far better to form a GIG with some friends and start discussing the questions with the leaders notes at hand. Then you can really dig in!