Outline It

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

(I looked around a bit for a way to upload my Study Guide as a PDF file; so far, everything I found indicated it needed to be loaded to a hosting site and then linked. I don't have time to do all that, so I'm afraid it's going to be imbedded. But it's not like it's a great work of personal intellectual property, so feel free to borrow and adapt the idea however it works for you...)

When I taught the youth Sunday School class back in the day, we used a denominationally-printed quarterly . A little. The curriculum we used was designed such that we covered the entire Bible in 6 years (that curriculum has since been discontinued). I thought that the concept was great; kids who grew up in church got a passing acquaintance with the entire Bible in the time it took them to go from 7th grade to High School graduate. Granted, some texts were covered very minimally (we did not, for instance, look at all 150 Psalms individually), but I loved that we really did get into every book.

However, the material was extremely weak. There was a 'background passage' that the student was minimally encouraged to read through the week, but the lesson was usually taken from a short excerpt (the 'focal passage') from the background passage. And it usually seemed rather contrived to make the lesson support one of a limited set of lesson objectives instead of really looking at what was going on in the text.

So I told the kids to read the background passage and use the following Study Guide as lesson preparation:

Lesson Date:_____________ Scripture Passage ___________________

Choose a memory verse for this week and write it here:


1.Roughly outline the passage. Divide the passage into sections that make sense to you. List the divisions, the verses included in each, and a short phrase to describe each division:



2. What title would you give the entire passage?


3. What do you think is the biggest (or most important) truth contained in this passage?


4.What changes, if any, do you need to make in your own life to apply the truths you have learned?


5. List any questions or comments that came to mind as you studied this scripture:

(This was spaced out to fill a single sheet of paper; I omitted the extra spaces, but you get the idea).

Did the kids do it? Well, if I had some sort of incentive for them...but I used it to prepare to teach the lesson. And found it extremely useful just for myself. Later on, when I was in Bible Study Fellowship, I discovered this was sort of a beginning level of homiletics. The homiletical method BSF teaches is very, very detailed and more directed than my little outline, but it's the same basic thought process. It really doesn't matter that the idea of homiletics is to prepare a teaching for others; it's still a good tool for personal study. After all, a personal Bible study is basically an exercise in teaching oneself anyway. ;)