Women of the Word: Reading the Bible for Ourselves

00:00:00.000 | Today we're joined by our friend Jen Wilkin, wife, mom, Bible teacher, and the author of

00:00:09.200 | the fabulous book, Women of the Word, How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and

00:00:14.280 | Our Minds.

00:00:15.440 | The book turns four years old this summer and it's already sold 200,000 print copies

00:00:21.960 | alone.

00:00:22.960 | Incredible.

00:00:23.960 | A whole forest has died for good cause.

00:00:27.760 | Jen, besides clear-cutting an entire forest, what did you set out to do with this book?

00:00:34.200 | When I set out to write Women of the Word, first of all, I never even thought I would

00:00:38.240 | become an author.

00:00:39.320 | I was just head down teaching the Bible in the local church and this was the method that

00:00:45.360 | I had come to identify as being helpful for women over the years.

00:00:49.960 | I was not even familiar with the observation, interpretation, application method that existed.

00:00:57.440 | I ended up coming up with my own formula of comprehension, interpretation, and application,

00:01:02.360 | which appealed to my Baptist feelings about acronyms because it's spelled CIA and was

00:01:08.240 | an easy way to help women remember those three steps.

00:01:11.880 | But I had just developed a method based on my background, having studied English and

00:01:18.640 | having studied literature, and then trying to apply basic interpretation tools that you

00:01:24.640 | would use with any book to this most precious of books.

00:01:29.280 | The main obstacle for women is usually just not knowing where to start.

00:01:33.080 | I would say the main obstacle for anyone is just not knowing where to start.

00:01:36.520 | And so this was an opportunity to give them a starting point and to give them basic tools.

00:01:42.360 | Women were conditioned by the resources that had been created for them that you would find

00:01:48.440 | in the typical Christian bookstore to passively receive instruction about the Bible, but they

00:01:55.560 | were not growing in their capacity to rightly divide the word on their own.

00:02:00.520 | And that was problematic to me.

00:02:03.160 | But I never intended to write a book.

00:02:05.840 | I had blogged some on the ideas because I just wanted the content to be there for the

00:02:11.640 | women who were doing my study and didn't even know that anyone was reading my blog.

00:02:16.480 | I didn't even know how to check the stats for like the first year that I had a blog.

00:02:21.360 | Which is kind of good, because I think I would have panicked if I had known that people were

00:02:24.840 | reading it.

00:02:25.840 | So I got a call one day from a publisher saying, "Would you want to write a book?"

00:02:29.720 | And so I did.

00:02:31.520 | And I thought I could pawn it off on a few of my family members and could use it in my

00:02:36.840 | Bible study.

00:02:38.120 | And it ended up being read by a lot of people, which is pretty exciting, because when I started

00:02:43.400 | talking about Bible literacy, I perceived it was a problem that was pervasive in the

00:02:48.240 | environments I had had exposure to, and I suspected it was a larger problem.

00:02:53.760 | But I would say I got confirmation on that once the book came out.

00:02:58.080 | And so it feels pretty gratifying to think, "Hey, we could actually make a dent in this."

00:03:02.400 | People can perceive their need, and they can perceive that there's a way forward.

00:03:06.720 | But who knows 10 years from now or 20 years from now, what might be the fruit of that?

00:03:11.120 | Amen, well, you've made a dent for sure at 200,000 print copies sold already.

00:03:16.600 | So four years out now, what has been the most surprising reader response to the book?

00:03:22.680 | People saying, "I've been in the church my whole life, and no one has told me how to

00:03:29.200 | do this."

00:03:31.320 | I had heard that from women, but I did not think I would get that email several times

00:03:36.760 | a week.

00:03:37.840 | So I just began to realize that when we talk about Christian discipleship, we have had

00:03:42.680 | a blind spot around this.

00:03:44.400 | We have thought that the sermon was enough to teach people the Bible, or we have assumed

00:03:50.480 | that they already had basic Bible literacy, and neither of these assumptions was accurate.

00:03:56.600 | I think we can trace some of the problem to the death of Sunday school in many church

00:04:02.960 | environments.

00:04:04.040 | And Sunday school is not a sacred cow, but having dedicated learning environments, the

00:04:09.600 | way I usually say it is active dedicated learning environments.

00:04:13.280 | So environments where we say our primary stated purpose is learning versus community or something

00:04:20.040 | secondary, and then we guard them as places for active learning.

00:04:24.480 | So in other words, the teacher doesn't do all the work, the student is going to work

00:04:28.720 | as well.

00:04:30.000 | And so to have places where people are learning, not just to absorb content, but actually to

00:04:35.520 | engage critical thinking around what they're learning is what I believe the church needs

00:04:40.440 | as we move forward into a post-Christian culture.

00:04:43.600 | Yeah, speaking of trends, you've been teaching the Bible for many years.

00:04:49.040 | Inside the church, are you encouraged at Bible trends that you see or concerned?

00:04:54.160 | What do you see?

00:04:55.440 | I'm encouraged by a trend that others find to be alarming, which is that people are leaving

00:05:02.640 | the church.

00:05:03.640 | And that sounds terrible.

00:05:04.880 | That sounds unchristian.

00:05:06.120 | I don't believe that the church of God shrinks.

00:05:10.680 | And so I think what we're seeing is a revelation of who the church truly is, and that those

00:05:16.680 | who remain are going to be more committed to owning their faith than previous generations.

00:05:24.160 | And Bible literacy will be a big component of that.

00:05:28.040 | We have one book that we are responsible for.

00:05:31.200 | It's made up of 66 books, but that's not an unlimited amount of content.

00:05:38.040 | And although none of us will master it in the years that we have during this life, we

00:05:43.760 | can take a pretty good crack at it if you give us some decent tools.

00:05:47.200 | Amen, for sure.

00:05:48.200 | Jen Wilkin, thank you for taking some time today and talking with us.

00:05:51.760 | And congratulations on the success of your book.

00:05:53.920 | But we're not done, because next time I want you to come back to look at how social media

00:05:58.600 | and Instagram are changing the way we do Bible reading.

00:06:02.400 | We'll do that with Jen Wilkin when we return on Friday.

00:06:06.000 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:06:07.000 | Thanks for listening to this special guest episode of the Ask Pastor John podcast.

00:06:11.280 | We'll see you then.

00:06:11.800 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Women of the Word: Reading the Bible for Ourselves

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