Today we're joined by our friend Jen Wilkin, wife, mom, Bible teacher, and the author of the fabulous book, Women of the Word, How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds. The book turns four years old this summer and it's already sold 200,000 print copies alone.

Incredible. A whole forest has died for good cause. Jen, besides clear-cutting an entire forest, what did you set out to do with this book? When I set out to write Women of the Word, first of all, I never even thought I would become an author. I was just head down teaching the Bible in the local church and this was the method that I had come to identify as being helpful for women over the years.

I was not even familiar with the observation, interpretation, application method that existed. I ended up coming up with my own formula of comprehension, interpretation, and application, which appealed to my Baptist feelings about acronyms because it's spelled CIA and was an easy way to help women remember those three steps.

But I had just developed a method based on my background, having studied English and having studied literature, and then trying to apply basic interpretation tools that you would use with any book to this most precious of books. The main obstacle for women is usually just not knowing where to start.

I would say the main obstacle for anyone is just not knowing where to start. And so this was an opportunity to give them a starting point and to give them basic tools. Women were conditioned by the resources that had been created for them that you would find in the typical Christian bookstore to passively receive instruction about the Bible, but they were not growing in their capacity to rightly divide the word on their own.

And that was problematic to me. But I never intended to write a book. I had blogged some on the ideas because I just wanted the content to be there for the women who were doing my study and didn't even know that anyone was reading my blog. I didn't even know how to check the stats for like the first year that I had a blog.

Which is kind of good, because I think I would have panicked if I had known that people were reading it. So I got a call one day from a publisher saying, "Would you want to write a book?" And so I did. And I thought I could pawn it off on a few of my family members and could use it in my Bible study.

And it ended up being read by a lot of people, which is pretty exciting, because when I started talking about Bible literacy, I perceived it was a problem that was pervasive in the environments I had had exposure to, and I suspected it was a larger problem. But I would say I got confirmation on that once the book came out.

And so it feels pretty gratifying to think, "Hey, we could actually make a dent in this." People can perceive their need, and they can perceive that there's a way forward. But who knows 10 years from now or 20 years from now, what might be the fruit of that? Amen, well, you've made a dent for sure at 200,000 print copies sold already.

So four years out now, what has been the most surprising reader response to the book? People saying, "I've been in the church my whole life, and no one has told me how to do this." I had heard that from women, but I did not think I would get that email several times a week.

So I just began to realize that when we talk about Christian discipleship, we have had a blind spot around this. We have thought that the sermon was enough to teach people the Bible, or we have assumed that they already had basic Bible literacy, and neither of these assumptions was accurate.

I think we can trace some of the problem to the death of Sunday school in many church environments. And Sunday school is not a sacred cow, but having dedicated learning environments, the way I usually say it is active dedicated learning environments. So environments where we say our primary stated purpose is learning versus community or something secondary, and then we guard them as places for active learning.

So in other words, the teacher doesn't do all the work, the student is going to work as well. And so to have places where people are learning, not just to absorb content, but actually to engage critical thinking around what they're learning is what I believe the church needs as we move forward into a post-Christian culture.

Yeah, speaking of trends, you've been teaching the Bible for many years. Inside the church, are you encouraged at Bible trends that you see or concerned? What do you see? I'm encouraged by a trend that others find to be alarming, which is that people are leaving the church. And that sounds terrible.

That sounds unchristian. I don't believe that the church of God shrinks. And so I think what we're seeing is a revelation of who the church truly is, and that those who remain are going to be more committed to owning their faith than previous generations. And Bible literacy will be a big component of that.

We have one book that we are responsible for. It's made up of 66 books, but that's not an unlimited amount of content. And although none of us will master it in the years that we have during this life, we can take a pretty good crack at it if you give us some decent tools.

Amen, for sure. Jen Wilkin, thank you for taking some time today and talking with us. And congratulations on the success of your book. But we're not done, because next time I want you to come back to look at how social media and Instagram are changing the way we do Bible reading.

We'll do that with Jen Wilkin when we return on Friday. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to this special guest episode of the Ask Pastor John podcast. We'll see you then.