Howard Hendricks challenged educators when he wrote, “The best learners are participators; they’re not merely watching the action from the outside, but are deeply engrossed in it, involved to the hilt.”[1]
When it came time for our church plant to determine what our women’s Bible studies would look like, Hendricks’s idea became our guiding aim. Not because one-to-one reading, workbook studies, or lectures lack value, but because we felt a particular burden for this formal class to help our women believe they could study their Bibles well at home rather than depending on a more formal teaching environment.
If we were studying Genesis, we wanted women not only to understand Genesis more deeply, but also to learn how to study Genesis (and historical narrative more broadly). To do this well, our women couldn’t simply sit and take notes on a lecture or answer predetermined questions. They needed to be actively engaged in the process of Bible study, practicing inductive tools as they saw them used in real time.
In other words, our formal Bible studies would be a space for active learning, and we have seen it transform our women.
What Is Active Learning?
The author of Hebrews writes, “Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (Heb. 5:13–14).
Discernment is not merely acquired by knowing what to believe, but by understanding why and how. Why is something good or evil, and can I explain how I arrived at that conclusion? When applied to our Bible study, this means participants should not only leave knowing something new about the passage, but also how to defend their interpretation from the text.
This requires a space of active learning—where participants practice using the tools they have been given, and learn not to “look for what the teacher wants,” but to look to Scripture itself to understand what it says.
A helpful way to encourage active learning is through visual reinforcement of instruction. When verbal teaching is paired with visual structure, our capacity to remember increases significantly.[2] We have an ongoing joke in our Bible study that “there is power in the whiteboard.” The whiteboard rolls out, and the teacher asks specific questions that help the class move through the passage, synthesizing the discussion into cohesive, interpretive conclusions and filling the board with a visual map of what the passage says, means, and how it points to Christ.
The teacher may facilitate, but the board is filled with the active work of the women present.
Our Women Need Tools
1 Peter 2:2 has a similar sentiment as the author of Hebrews, “Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.” We are all commanded to grow in our knowledge and understanding of God through His Word—and we are never to stop this pursuit. We are always growing, feasting on the solid food God graciously provides.
Going from milk to solid food requires what Hendricks further argues in his book: learning to think, learn, and work.[3] If the goal of our Bible study is to produce women confident in handling their Bibles, then we can’t just tell them what the text says and what it means, nor can we leave them alone in the process of discovery. We must partner with them—giving tools, helping them get familiar with those tools, then practicing the tools together.
These “tools” are the basics of inductive study: observation, interpretation, and application. What I have found over the years is that telling a woman the various ways to merely observe a passage has its limits. However, showing how to implement these tools is more effective. An active learning space provides the opportunity to identify appropriate study tools for a text, practice them together, and see why they matter for understanding Scripture. We’ve seen this approach send many women home more confident in studying on their own.
For Becoming Spiritual Mothers
Toward the end of his book, Hendricks concludes, “the process of teaching is that of one total personality transformed by the supernatural grace of God, reaching out to transform other personalities by the same grace.”[4] Reading that sentence, I immediately think about the Great Commission: “go therefore, make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:18–19).
Our hope for our active Bible study is to see women confident and equipped to “go”—to teach other women what is good and profitable (2 Tim. 3:16–17; Titus 2:3–4), and to be able to argue the ways of God with grace and truth (Acts 18:28). We want women to grow beyond dependence on a teacher or the temptation to idolize them, maturing instead into spiritual mothers in the faith.
At the end of our class time, we almost always say, “Ladies, you did this. You discovered truth and beauty; you got us to the gospel.” Not only do they see that they can study Scripture and do so well, but that they are needed. Not because they themselves have the power to transform, but because as daughters of God they are called to carry the gospel forward—and it’s a joy to see our active Bible study play even a small role in that journey.
[1] Howard G. Hendricks, Teaching to Change Lives (Portland: Multnomah, 1987), 57.
[2] Ghulam Shabiralyani et al., “Impact of Visual Aids in Enhancing the Learning Process: Case Research (District Dera Ghazi Khan),” Journal of Education and Practice 6.19 (2015): 226–34.
[3] Hendricks, Teaching to Change Lives, 43–46.
[4] Ibid., 85.
