jen wilkin women of the word study guide

That precious group of women allowed me to learn alongside them. I agreed to a temporary commitment and ended up teaching the class weekly for seven years. “I was a solid 10 years younger than the youngest class member,” she remembers, “and I lacked both life experience and teaching experience. She began teaching the Bible as a 30-year-old, simply because there was no other teacher. Wilkin challenges herself in the same way, and she is no longer fazed by all that she doesn’t know or understand as a teacher. “If high schoolers are capable of doing calculus and physics, they absolutely are capable of grappling with a line-by-line study of the Bible.”

This is why Wilkin advocates for young students doing adult-type Bible study. Sometimes we think children should only read (the Bible) if they can understand everything they’re reading,” she says, but “we underestimate their ability.” A child who is capable of reading is capable of reading the Bible. Reading the Scriptures to them-and then, of course, having them read them themselves-are all formative practices. “Children need early exposure to the Scriptures because they need to see them as a familiar friend. Wilkin flatly rejects the notion that deep knowledge of Scripture is best left to adults and “experts.” “A child who is capable of reading is capable of reading the Bible,” she insists. Her spoken and written words over the years continue to encourage believers of all ages and from all backgrounds to actively engage with the Bible for themselves. That early flame of passion for engaging directly with God’s word continues to fuel Wilkin’s prolific teaching and writing ministry, based in Flower Mound, Texas, and The Village Church. If she was going to learn to swim, she would have to learn to read the Bible for herself. “It pushed me to want firsthand knowledge of the text.”īy her twenties, Wilkin understood it was possible to drown in waves of opinion. “Hearing different pastors teach the same passages in such different ways had been an eye-opener,” she says. ” This early investment in showing kids how to study the Bible for themselves changed everything for Wilkin.

One church she attended during elementary school held a Bible study where the teachers “treated us as capable of learning and understanding the Scriptures, and then gave us tools to do so. īy the time she was in college, Jen Wilkin had experienced church life in seven denominations, each with its own distinctive approach to reading the Bible. In this excerpt from the May/June 2019 edition of Bible Study Magazine, Bronwyn Lea shares why author and Bible study teacher Jen Wilkin refuses to leave biblical literacy to the experts-and why she’s passionate about teaching others how to study the Bible.

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Jen wilkin women of the word study guide