....but life being what it is, it got pushed aside.
I run a Bible study on Sunday mornings at my parish. Look, I just mean I'm in charge of ordering the books--I'm certainly no Bible scholar. It's a group effort--everyone reads what we're studying, everyone thinks about it, everyone contributes. I'm just another member of the group.
We've used a few of the Little Rock Scripture studies, and they were OK. We've very successfully and happily used the Loyola Press "Six Weeks With...." series. We've not done any of their themed studies--we've mostly concentrated on various books of the Bible.
We've found that six weeks is a good amount of time to spend on a topic. We started out using Catholic Exchange's in depth studies, but "Thirty Six Weeks on Genesis" became hard--not because it wasn't interesting and well done--it was, it definitely was. But that's a long time committment to a group. We found that people who might have been interested in trying out the study group didn't want to start "in the middle". Using shorter studies allowed people to flow in and out of group as their time and interests allowed. And since we have several folks with bunches of young kids, they can skip the winter session (when all the kids are sick one right after another) and pick up in the spring when they are back to well again.
So, I highly recommend the Loyola product.
That said, we were kind of casting about for something a little different (we've been doing the group for about 4 years now). We came across 23rd Publications, and series of themed studies, with the series name of Threshold Bible Studies . written by Stephen Binz. The books looked interesting, so we took a deep breath and ordered the set on The Feasts of Judaism. Well, the results have been so good. The book is interesting. The daily reading committment is small. We've had very good discussions. We've liked it so much, that we've ordered another of the TBS books for our next study: People of the Passion, which focuses on Christ's passion through the eyes of different people: Peter, Mary, Simon of Cyrene, Veronica, the women of Jerusalem. I hope it's as good as the first one we did.
An odd note. After we had already ordered our first Binz-authored study, one of our members attended the Lay Ministries workshop held by the Diocese (something that I try to avoid at all costs--in the past it has been dreadful!). My friend said he thought there was a much better program put on this year, and he attended a workshop taught by Mr. Binz! Mr. Binz says one of his dreams is a world in which no Catholic would have to leave his own parish to attend a Bible study. A worthy goal.
Anyway, if you're involved in a Bible Study, you might want to take a look at the Thresdhold Bible Study books.
