Christian Publishers of Bible Study guides

Think about Jesus. We wanted to be loved for what we was saying and doing. But almost everything he said was challenging to the the status-quo. So if you're material doesn't hit the hard truths your material is not very valuable. If you don't agree look at the faith of Islam. They don't hold anything back in their doctrines and they have some of the most faithful people around.

Read and reprove Lifeway's booklets against scripture for yourself.

 

In my opinion, Lifeway has never been literature written for Bible students in serious study, but generally for the shallow and unenthusiastically inclined except when multi-media, flashing lights, fog machine, and dancing around are involved.

Typically, the literature reading level is approximately 5th grade. Now, this isn’t bad on the surface, for that was the target in the old days of newspapers. Even encyclopedia articles would start at that level and (dependent of the length) move gradually toward 11th grade level with word definitions becoming more frequent.

I like book study approaches.

For example, the adult class will work through Packer’s “Knowing God.”

 

Lifeway was around before fog machines in church, and their material was equally worthless back then.

 

The major doctrines of the bible are all pretty much agreed upon within Baptists, so why would a study of them be worthless then?

 

This has been a subject I have thought about, but not spoken about for a long time.

My Sunday School used the Lifeway studies in a way that seems like we were reading the bible. We were welcome to take stories of ours and understand them in light of the Lifeway study, but I got the sense that the study was almost as, if not as, authoritative as the sermons. This didn't sit well with me. These studies are garbage if you base the entire curriculum on them, because they are certainly not as beneficial as a study of bible verses on a subject with their meaning and application.

IIRC, I was told by the church that the reason they rely on the Lifeway studies was to appeal to those who lack formal education. The problem I have with using the Lifeway studies as an introductory bible study text is that reading the bible is very difficult for everyone. Unless you try very hard and keep coming back in the midst of very hard verses, you'll probably never finish reading the whole bible even once. If you cannot learn how to carefully study the bible and read it enough to know its contexts, you'll never be able to apply it and live by it successfully as far as my life tells me.

So to answer the question of the OP, I agree with Reynolds if people are given the Lifeway studies as the only thing they get. And are thus never trained to do something like come on BB to be part of discussions. In the end, the bible must be understood by each believer and applied by each Believer, this won't happen using the Lifeway studies alone.