SIS Bible Study

Awhile back I asked for prayer for a women's bible study that I was going to start teaching.  So many of you gracious prayed and I am grateful.  So I thought I would write up a brief blog post to share with you how it is going.

How it started

Well the church we attend here and are members at is GCF East.  GCF East has a men's bible study that meets every Tuesday night.  Allan started attending that bible study last year and has really enjoyed the teaching and fellowship and getting to know more men in the church.  I was wondering if they had a woman's counterpart to their study and so I asked Juvie, the wife of the leader of the men's study.  She told me no they do not but then quickly followed up her comment by asking if I wanted to help teach one?  She explained that her and a couple others have been wanting to start one they were just looking for a teacher.  I agreed to help teach if she would help me with the logistics and cultural nuances.  She agreed and thus SIS was started.

Why SIS?

So the name of the men's study that meets weekly is called BIC, Brothers in Christ.  Because we desired SIS to be the women's counterpart to BIC we decided to name it close enough so that it would be understood that it is the counterpart to BIC.  Initially Sisters in Christ came up for a name, but the acronymn SIC is not very desirable.  ha ha... so we tweaked it just a bit and called it SIS, Sisters into Scripture instead.

How it is structured...

SIS meets at the same time that BIC meets and both meet in separate classrooms at our church.  We meet regularly, but we only teach the first three weeks of the month.  The last meeting of the month we have a food fellowship time, which we eat of course, but we also use that time for extended prayer requests and updates.  Also currently, we are taking turns and each food fellowship we have someone share their testimony with the group so we can slowly get to know each other better. 

Cultural help....

So Juvie helps me in many ways.  One specific way she has helped has been to explain to me how relational Filipinos are. She said because of that it is important to allow a brief "share and update" time each week.  It is informal and short, but basically the ladies share what has been going on in their lives the past week.  Juvie explained that without such time it would be harder for the ladies to open up and interact with the actual study if they first do not have relationships with each other.  This "cultural tip" has really been enjoyable to me and I am appreciating getting to know the ladies more.

Language

You might be wondering what language we use.  English and Tagalog.  But my Tagalog is very simple and limitated at this time so I conduct the teaching time in English.  All of the ladies have English bibles and they are used to hearing the Word of God taught in English because our Sunday services and sermons are all conducted in English.  But I mention that part is in Tagalog because afterwards and before the ladies speak to each other in Tagalog.  They are gracious and kind and help translate words me for when I don't understand.  They are also very encouraging to me in my own pursuits to continue to learn Tagalog.

What we study

We started by studying the book of Esther.  It was enjoyable and the ladies appreciated the study.  Now we are studying the book of Habakkuk, we are about half way through and hope to finish by Christmas break.  Although I have taught the Bible before in various context, this is my first time to lead an ongoing bible study.  It is fun to have the freedom to decide what to study and how to break it down.  I am learning a lot about my teaching style and the ladies are humble and gracious to me as I learn my style.  They are just thankful to be taught from the Word of God that they are forgiving when I keep changing my presentation and format of the actual lesson from week to week.  

How you can pray

Pray for me as I adjust and learn my teaching format and style.  Also because of my training and background in Biblical Counseling I would love to incorporate that into our study in some format.  Just this week I tried for the first time to go through a counseling scenario with the ladies that pertained to our lesson.  It brought up good discussion and the ladies enjoyed the illustration of how biblical principles apply to life.

I am so thankful for this study. It has been a blessing in many ways.  It started simply because I missed fellowship with believers from my local church body.  I desired to have friendships in my local church that was centered around the word of God, but I didn't know how to find such relationships.  I was willing to teach a bible study if that meant I would have fellowship with believers and the Word of God.  The discipline of having to study and prepare a bible study is also exciting and refreshing for me, to see for myself that I don't need a lot of tools in order to study (because resources are limited here and internet connections slow and unreliable I have to learn how to study without much tools because the ladies I am teaching have even less resources than me).  The Bible alone is sufficient with the help of the Holy Spirit.

We had a special fellowship at one of the ladie's house.  It was delicious and fun.  We had kareoke and everyone participated.  Memories were created as one of the gals sang and danced to "Build me up Buttercup" while the rest of us were her backup singers and dancers.  Here is a picture from that night.