BibleDocs Weekly Bible Studies

Summary

BibleDocs runs two weekly Bible studies:

  1. The BibleDocs Ichthys Bible Study. This Bible study is associated with the BibleDocs Ichthys Community, and goes through various studies from Ichthys.com, another online Bible teaching ministry that my mentor runs.
  2. The BibleDocs Open Bible Study. This Bible study is associated with the BibleDocs Open Community, and goes through various topics related to ancient history and culture, Church history, hermeneutics, and more.

Among other things, this page contains information about meeting dates and times, joining us in person, and joining us over Zoom.

Quick reference

Meeting dates and times

The exact meeting dates and times are posted in the community group chats every week. See:

At present, both the BibleDocs Ichthys Bible Study and the BibleDocs Open Bible Study meetings meetings are being done on Saturday, although we have at times also done the BibleDocs Ichthys Bible Study meetings on Sunday.

No matter what, we avoid Sunday morning meetings so that people don’t have to make an exclusive choice between our Bible study meetings and Sunday morning church services, but can benefit from both.

I have also chosen to avoid Friday evening meetings, since Friday evenings are a popular time-slot for movie nights, game nights, date nights (for couples), and so on.

We meet most weeks, but we will occasionally skip a week or two if I am traveling for work or on vacation or what have you.

Joining us in person

As to getting to my house and parking, I share my address in the community group chats before each meeting. Again:

I somewhat encourage people to park in the parking lot of the Elementary School directly behind my house and then walk the half block or so to get to my house, since parking there reduces the risk of y’all’s cars getting hit when parked on the street, nobody has to parallel park, nobody will ever end up getting boxed-in (like can happen if someone parks behind you on my driveway), my neighbors will probably be less annoyed overall, and it ensures that the parking directly in front of my house can stay open in case someone is on crutches or in a wheelchair or otherwise actually must park close due some other physical need. If you are on crutches or in a wheelchair or have any other need like that, then do of course park as close to the front door as you feasibly can. You are also welcome to park in the driveway.

While we do typically give people a few minutes to trickle in, we will actually start reasonably close to the scheduled times, so just plan accordingly. It is least disruptive for everyone if most people are there when we start, but if you do end up running a bit late for whatever reason, just try to slip in quietly while minimizing the amount you disturb others as best you can. It’s alright—life happens.

Joining us over Zoom

The Zoom meetings happen at the same time as the in-person meetings—the Zoom meetings are fully tied-in to the in-person meetings. And when I say fully, I mean fully; we use an eight-channel wireless microphone system to ensure all discussion gets captured on the meetings, so people who aren’t in-person can follow everything.

The link to directly join our Zoom meetings is also shared in the community group chats before each meeting. Thus, once you are active on one or more of the group chat platforms, you will be able to join our meetings over Zoom. Again:

We generally don’t change the Zoom meeting room/passcode, so you can probably just bookmark it once and then keep using the same link, but we don’t post the meeting information publicly here for privacy reasons.

We do ask that most Zoom participants stay muted when not talking, especially if you have noise around you.

Note

Even people who are local to me in the Warner Robins area are more than welcome to join via Zoom rather than making the drive. There are, of course, quite a few benefits to being face-to-face when we gather as believers, but since everything is already set up for Zoom so that some of my geographically-dispersed friends can participate too, local folks can obviously do the same, no problem.

This lets people who are sick still listen in and participate, for example, without risking spreading the illness. And so on.

Our Bible study meetings

Duration of our Bible study meetings

Usually our Bible study meetings last roundabouts two hours overall, with about an hour and a half of that being Bible study proper, and the rest being an informal fellowship time. Sometimes it is a bit more or less, but that is about how long the meetings usually last.

Our Bible study meetings involve recordings that will eventually end up posted publicly on the internet

All of our Bible studies are recorded, for a few reasons:

  • It lets us share our Bible studies with the wider world, through the power of the internet. (For example, our Bible study recordings get posted to this ministry’s YouTube channel).
  • It lets regular study attendees who miss a week due to illness or travel or what have you seamlessly stay up to date. (This is most useful when we are doing multi-week series where one lesson depends upon one or more previous lessons).
  • It lets all of us go back and revisit past discussions we’ve had. This is especially useful after it has been months or years, and remembrance has started to fade; repetition is essential to the learning process.
  • Etc.

All of this is well and good, but it does introduce one rather important consideration: since everything said when the recording is rolling will eventually be public on the internet, we must all during such times be careful not to divulge information that ought not be public.

For example:

  • We try to stick to first names only when addressing each other as part of recorded conversation.
  • We try not to talk about sensitive personal matters when the recording is live.
  • Etc.

If there is something you want to talk about when the recording is not rolling, you can just bring it up after we finish the dedicated time for recorded group discussion (i.e., the “Further discussion” parts described below).

What we do in our Bible study meetings

In the formal Bible study part of our meetings, we might go over a third party source’s content

If we are going through content from a different source (for example, an audio study from Ichthys, a YouTube video from Dr. Ryan Reeves, etc.), then our time together will consist of five-part segments:

  1. Section introduction: I give a short introduction to a subtopic from the discussion source.
  2. Source clip: Together, we listen to a source audio or video clip.
  3. Summary points: I go back over the information to restate things in my own words, and add additional comments here and there.
  4. Follow-on topics: I go through one or more follow-on topics related to the initial topic. This content is less directly related to the source content, and instead revolves around tangential points I think are worth us going over.
  5. Further discussion: Together, we discuss anything else people want to talk about related to subjects that came up in (1) through (4), going back and forth so long as people have further questions or points they want to bring up.

You will note that only during the fifth part is it an open floor for group discussion. The rest of the time is either me alone talking, or us listening to/watching source clips together.

There are pros and cons to rigidly boxing group discussion like this. In terms of pros, this format:

  • Keeps the final recording nice and structured, with clearly-delimited boundaries between different types of content.
  • Gives me the option of pre-recording my section introductions, summary points, and follow-on topics, which lets me use my full recording studio setup (with three-point lighting, a teleprompter, etc.) to generate content, without these things getting in the way during our group meetings.

In terms of cons, this format:

  • Is less flexible and dynamic than letting people chime in whenever they think of something, rather than only during certain predetermined times.
  • Requires people to write down questions and thoughts to bring up later (or hang onto them in their minds), which adds some friction to group participation.

For our purposes, I have decided the pros outweigh the cons, so that is why we limit group discussion in our Bible study meetings to only specific predetermined times.

In the formal Bible study part of our meetings, we might go over my own original content

If we are going through content that I have written myself, the structure of our studies is a bit simpler, consisting only of two-part segments:

  1. Overview: I talk through my own content, elaborating on and expanding on whatever written words I previously put to the page.
  2. Further discussion: Together, we discuss anything else people want to talk about related to subjects that came up in (1), going back and forth so long as people have further questions or points they want to bring up.

Again, group discussion is restricted only to predetermined times, for the same reasons discussed above.

In our Bible study meetings, we typically follow the formal Bible study time with an informal fellowship time

Usually we hang around and chat a bit after the formal Bible study part of our meetings, although if folks have to leave for other commitments, that is perfectly fine, since nothing organized ever happens during this time.

We switch into informal fellowship mode only after we finish the formal studies, so that people with tight schedules can commit to something definite and reasonably time-boxed.

What we do not do in our Bible study meetings

In no particular order, these are some things that we do not do in our Bible study meetings:

  • Games, movies, or other sorts of organized group social activities. The post-formal-study fellowship time mentioned above is purposefully left unstructured so that folks can most naturally spend time visiting with each other, and leave whenever they need to.
  • Worship music (of either traditional hymn or praise band varieties)
  • Prayer (in the sense of having a time to formally take down requests, and pray over them as a group)
  • Communion
  • Etc.

This means both the BibleDocs Ichthys Bible Study and BibleDocs Open Bible Study are more or less pure Bible studies. This keeps our meetings very focused (which is a good thing), but it does mean many folks may want to participate in additional Christian meetings aside from just ours. As mentioned before, this is one reason why we avoid meeting on Sunday mornings, which is the main time that other Christians tend to meet together every week.

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