Approaches to virtual group Bible study?

[Brother-Mike]

Greetings all. For 2023 I'm going to be hosting a small-group Bible study and am curious if you have any ideas or recommendations regarding process, tools, etc.

The goal

1. Perhaps 10 people maximum, likely geographically distributed across multiple time zones.
2. Although I might be "the host" (whatever that even means) I'm leaning away from a "leader-student" model where, for example, a pastor conducts the study session, pointing out key verses, answering questions, etc. Something like a distributed, open platform where participants can post their thoughts, respond to others, etc, without the need for any obvious leadership other than to ensure the platform's working well and any inner-group issues are taken care of.
3. Keeping it simple, we'd be reading 4 chapters a day in linear fashion from a slightly modified book order (the group can agree ahead of time what the final book order should be, but the sense would be to mix some of the NT across the otherwise vast stretches of OT books). At 4 chapters a day that would give a bit of breathing room each month if a person missed a day or two here or there and needed to catch up, but ideally we'd all stay on track so that we'd be able to keep current with any discussions or observations.
4. Technology platform-wise it should be something available on both mobile devices and desktops, and would allow for free posting/replying while ideally still allowing for some basic organization or structure (e.g. maybe separate forums per book, etc, so it's not just a big soup of messages.
5. No-pressure environment: at minimum the participants would simply be along for the ride, completing the whole bible by year's end, and with some basic group encouragement if they fell behind or had some questions. There would be no expectation that participants post or reply on any frequency, in line with the fact that many have busy lives, vacations, screaming kids, screaming spouses, etc. One would hope though that there would be at least SOME conversation, especially around key chapters and verses. Like all things, what you get back would be related to what you put in.
6. All denominations and English Bible translations welcome. Catholics would be on their own to squeeze in the Apocrypha somewhere along the way and shouldn't expect non-Catholics to necessarily have much commentary or responses to those books (but I'll do my best to read them too and comment on them so you don't feel lonely ).
7. It also might be a good idea to find out key objectives from each participant at the beginning. Then, throughout the year, the others can highlight and discuss when relevant scripture arises. e.g. Mary wants to hone her understanding of theodicy, or symbolism, or eschatology, so we could all keep an eye out and zoom-in a little when appropriate.

Questions

1. Ideas or past experiences on any of the above, in terms of process or protocol?
2. Tool recommendations? Currently I'm thinking Discord, Telegram, Signal are all potentials. I'm guessing an email mailing-group wouldn't make much sense?
3. Additional concerns, cautions, other random thoughts that you think might improve the experience?
4. Anyone themselves interested? Anyone willing to host a second parallel group themselves (with perhaps different protocol - doesn't have to be identical) should the group go beyond a reasonable number of participants?

Thanks for any and all feedback

 

[Clare73]

Greetings all. For 2023 I'm going to be hosting a small-group Bible study and am curious if you have any ideas or recommendations regarding process, tools, etc.

The goal

1. Perhaps 10 people maximum, likely geographically distributed across multiple time zones.
2. Although I might be "the host" (whatever that even means) I'm leaning away from a "leader-student" model where, for example, a pastor conducts the study session, pointing out key verses, answering questions, etc. Something like a distributed, open platform where participants can post their thoughts, respond to others, etc, without the need for any obvious leadership other than to ensure the platform's working well and any inner-group issues are taken care of.
3. Keeping it simple, we'd be reading 4 chapters a day in linear fashion from a slightly modified book order (the group can agree ahead of time what the final book order should be, but the sense would be to mix some of the NT across the otherwise vast stretches of OT books). At 4 chapters a day that would give a bit of breathing room each month if a person missed a day or two here or there and needed to catch up, but ideally we'd all stay on track so that we'd be able to keep current with any discussions or observations.
4. Technology platform-wise it should be something available on both mobile devices and desktops, and would allow for free posting/replying while ideally still allowing for some basic organization or structure (e.g. maybe separate forums per book, etc, so it's not just a big soup of messages.
5. No-pressure environment: at minimum the participants would simply be along for the ride, completing the whole bible by year's end, and with some basic group encouragement if they fell behind or had some questions. There would be no expectation that participants post or reply on any frequency, in line with the fact that many have busy lives, vacations, screaming kids, screaming spouses, etc. One would hope though that there would be at least SOME conversation, especially around key chapters and verses. Like all things, what you get back would be related to what you put in.
6. All denominations and English Bible translations welcome. Catholics would be on their own to squeeze in the Apocrypha somewhere along the way and shouldn't expect non-Catholics to necessarily have much commentary or responses to those books (but I'll do my best to read them too and comment on them so you don't feel lonely ).
7. It also might be a good idea to find out key objectives from each participant at the beginning. Then, throughout the year, the others can highlight and discuss when relevant scripture arises. e.g. Mary wants to hone her understanding of theodicy, or symbolism, or eschatology, so we could all keep an eye out and zoom-in a little when appropriate.

Questions

1. Ideas or past experiences on any of the above, in terms of process or protocol?
2. Tool recommendations? Currently I'm thinking Discord, Telegram, Signal are all potentials. I'm guessing an email mailing-group wouldn't make much sense?
3. Additional concerns, cautions, other random thoughts that you think might improve the experience?
4. Anyone themselves interested? Anyone willing to host a second parallel group themselves (with perhaps different protocol - doesn't have to be identical) should the group go beyond a reasonable number of participants?

Thanks for any and all feedback

That's a tall order, but I would be interested in participating.

However, I'm a computer Neanderthal and operate only on a (@#$%&*) laptop.

 

[Brother-Mike]

Fair enough and thanks for the reply When you say that's a tall order do you mean the 4 chapters per day? I'm always unsure of how folks do their Bible reading, given the million plans out there.

I'll give it a day or two to see if there's any other takers, and then communicate out and we can collectively figure out how to move forward. I'll handle all of the technical stuff (with the aim to keep it as simple as possible).

So far there's a guy from my church, plus Neostarwcc and his wife, and yourself

 

[Neostarwcc]

Honestly I think using discord would probably be the easiest way to meet up but, that's just my opinion.

 

[Brother-Mike]

Yeah, Clare73 is probably going to join too… and only has computer, so Discord would make sense.

 

[Neostarwcc]

Yeah, Clare73 is probably going to join too… and only has computer, so Discord would make sense.

Its just much easier. I don't know if 4 chapters a day is too much for people to read either. I personally have a lot of free time but not many people do. You might get more people interested if we read less. Idk.

 

[Clare73]

Fair enough and thanks for the reply When you say that's a tall order do you mean the 4 chapters per day? I'm always unsure of how folks do their Bible reading, given the million plans out there.

I'll give it a day or two to see if there's any other takers, and then communicate out and we can collectively figure out how to move forward. I'll handle all of the technical stuff (with the aim to keep it as simple as possible).

So far there's a guy from my church, plus Neostarwcc and his wife, and yourself

By tall order, I mean the Bible in one year.

 

[Brother-Mike]

By tall order, I mean the Bible in one year.

Just think of it in terms of 1,189 chapters, or 31,102 verses

 

[David's Harp]

Hi Mike, I'd be interested in joining. My Bible study is very sporadic and lacks discipline. I haven't even read through the whole Bible yet! I think it would be good to have the accountability and the discussion, though I'm aware that the others so far are more knowledgeable than I am. With this in mind, I may be one of the ones that's more along for the ride than offering meaningful thoughts.

I can tell you my objective straight away, and that's to get deeper into God's Word and just start making more of those connections that run right through it. One thing I have been thinking about is looking for Jesus in the Old Testament. Quite often there seems to be a tendency - at least on my part - to view Jesus as being related just to the New Testament.

In terms of tech, I mainly use Android devices, and don't have any experience of the platforms you mentioned, but I don't mind which one, I'm sure I'll pick it up.

 

[Neostarwcc]

"Just think of it in terms of 1,189 chapters, or 31,102 verses "







Or just think of it as over 2,000 pages. It's almost the length of a Harry Potter novel  if you can read Harry Potter in 3 days you can reach the Bible in a year lol.

 

[Neostarwcc]

Is anyone else having difficulty quoting posts? I was going to post about it in the forum feedback section but it seems to be gone. Everyime I try to quote a post it makes it giant and unable to quote.

 

[PloverWing]

I might be interested in participating. I'm at a place in my spiritual journey where I'm wrestling with some things I've been taught the Bible says, and I need to reread the Bible to see what it actually says. So a discussion group like this might give me a good occasion to do the reading I should be doing.

Do you envision any synchronous Zoom-type meetings, or would it be asynchronous exchange of typed messages, something like what we do in CF? Asynchronous is probably easier, given our different time zones and work schedules, but I wanted to check.

I like the idea of a discussion format, as you described in your OP, rather than a listen-to-a-speaker format.

Like Clare73, I would be participating from my Mac laptop. I do own a smartphone, but I much prefer touch-typing on my QWERTY keyboard if I'm typing anything of substance. I've used Discord a little, for interacting with my students; I'm not familiar with Telegram or Signal.