Are you ready to take your Bible Study group or adult Sunday School class to a deeper level? This Advanced Lay Servant course might be just what you need!
Through daily discussion board questions and private journals, you’ll develop interpretation skills, practice in a comfortable group setting, and explore the use of current study resources. You’ll consider the context of the people who lived the events of the Bible, who recorded those stories and interpreted them over time, and the contexts of all of us who read it today!
If you have any questions, email the course instructor.
* PLEASE NOTE: Biblical Interpretation: A Roadmap, the required book for this course, is a 235-page college-level textbook. Don’t let it intimidate you! The instructor will make the content more understandable but does strongly recommend that you purchase and read the book in advance. If your current schedule doesn’t allow you to read the book in advance, please register for a future offering of the course.
This course has been approved by Discipleship Ministries as an advanced course in Lay Servant Ministries. It provides the required 10 contact hours.
This course is eligible for 1.0 CEU.
Quick Info:
Number of weeks: 2
Price: $105
CEUs: 1.0
Required books: Yes
Blackboard: Yes
Zoom: No
Certification or Series: Yes (Lay Servant Ministries)
Read course description for details.
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About the Instructor
Beth Perry graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary with an M.Div. in 1994 and has a bachelor’s degree in business from Elizabethtown College. She was ordained in the United Methodist Church and then had Privilege of Call in the United Church of Christ. In addition to decades of pastoral and chaplaincy experience, she has taught college religion, critical thinking, and sociology courses, and been a frequent guest preacher, public speaker, and church consultant. She was the Safe Sanctuary consultant for NYAC for five years, developed a digital Bible study, mentored seminary students, and served on numerous boards and committees. She has been an instructor with BeADisciple since 2010 and has been on staff since 2021 as support for BeADisciple instructors. She is the author of “Storytelling: Beyond the Sermon,” “Women Mystics in the Christian Tradition,” and “The Study: Spiritual Action in Daily Life.”
Past Students Said…
“Wow, what a great course. Following the guidelines provided can make scripture study have so much more meaning and have much more richness and depth. I give the course 5 stars. But a word of caution: it is intense, lots of reading and thinking.”
“I liked the questioning atmosphere that made us look for clues from text and related readings in commentaries and dictionaries.”
“This course really went above the expectations I had for this course. I have a much better understanding of how to interpret scripture and why other views are not always in agreement.”
“I am always up for a challenge, and just reading the text book was a big one. However, taking the time to research and truly understand and compare what the scripture was saying then to what it is saying now was awesomely challenging.”
“I learned a great deal that I had not known before about specific methods and tools for bible interpretation.”
“I just finished this course. I loved the way we were encouraged to look at many different resources and not just use our favorite.”
“If I had bought the book and tried to read it before I signed up for this class, I would have skipped this class. That would have been a huge mistake on my part. I would have missed out on a lot of interesting new ways of looking at scripture. … Now, when I go back and read it again I can understand what they are saying better. Thank you for helping us see scripture in a new light and giving us new ideas to build on for the future.”
