Why is the questions that tends to encourage the most speculation of any of the six questions.  When we are trying to determine why the author decided to say what he did or why God encouraged the author to include it, we are trying to put ourselves in the shoes of the author.  It helps me to make my own outline of the text in order to get a good overview of what all is happening.  While Bible outlines are readily available, making your own forces you to reconsider the whole book as a single cohesive work instead of several distinct sections.

Whatfor is by far the most difficult question to ask because it forces us to relate the passages to our own lives.  As we consider how the stories and teachings of the Bible affect us, it may make us happy, sad, or even a little nervous.  But what’s important is that we are allowing the Bible to teach us more and more about God and how we can be more like Him.

Viewer Response

Now, the conference itself is not what impresses me the most.  Oh, it’s appreciated and I love the “firehose” of encouragement and advice, but the viewer response is what really makes me stop in my tracks.  By the time I came around to see what was going on, #thenines had already become a Trending Topic on Twitter (like group text messages for the Internet).

I can’t help but consider that there are some reasons why we might collectively flock to this sort of conference.

1. We need encouragement.

Selfishly, we thrive on encouragement.  Encouragement helps us to see long term goals in a more positive light.  Long term goals are critical for ministry because they allow us to formulate plans, set benchmarks, and most importantly keep out focus on the really important things.  This is because when we are encouraged, we think of the possibilities not the struggles.   When we lose our source of encouragement and our attitude starts to slip, so does our focus.  On a day that is otherwise a particularly frustrating day,  I can’t help but feel my spirits lift as I listen to these speakers while I go about my regular work.

2. We want to be better equipped.

Like many congregations, South Arlington has only recently put significant emphasis on equipping rather than simply teaching.  It’s your typical “give a guy a fish” scenario except applied to ministry instead of tradeskills.  This is the fundamental basis for most multiplication ministries, like our recently launched Life Group program.  I am a huge fan of the concepts behind programs like our Life Group program: train new teachers and encourage members introduce unconnected friends and family to their own home group.

Unfortunately, too many of us feel ill-equipped to even accomplish even these two tasks.  The problem as I see it, is not that we don’t know how to minister it’s that we area really unpracticed.  Ministry is not some elusive art known only to a handful of overtrained seminary students.   It’s real people, working, living their lives that are in the best position to spread the Word.  This concept is not lost on the speakers today, so I hope that many of today’s listeners are able to absorb a lot of these good suggestions being offered by experienced ministers.

3. We have to do more than just listen.

It’s easier to get excited about something that’s interactive.  If The Nines has been presented as a free DVD series, a day-long video series, or a collection of essays – I doubt we would have seen the same level of interest from the participants.  I would speculate that this is related to some underlying need to be more than just passive viewers.  Active listeners are better listeners, any teacher will validate that statement.

The use of social media, like Twitter, allows us to take otherwise passive activities and provide immediate feedback, as well as our own commentary (in 160 characters or less).   For The Nines, this feedback looks like a streaming commentary from viewers.  In home-based Bible studies, this feedback is the basis for excellent group discussion.

Conclusions

Seeing these things in action gives me some suggestions on ways that we can improve our ministry for the teenagers.   We need to appreciate ourselves as a group more often when we are successful.  If we are not being successful, we need to identify why and encourage one another to reach for the goal.  Somehow, we need to all learn that we are adequate just as we are… more than capable of doing the tasks God has called us to.   While there is always opportunity for growth, we should not feel as if we are incapable of action.  Finally, we need to find a way to involve everyone in important activities.  This is true for bystanders and parents, as well as teens.  We are all invested in the teenagers, just as they are involved as a part of the bigger congregation.  Mutual involvement will be a blessing to all sides.

When questions are important for rebuilding timelines or while establishing a chain of events, especially when an earlier event has specific relevance to an event occurring later in the narrative.   Understand where the writing falls in the life of the author may help to bring out keywords and phrases that we might otherwise miss.

Where helps us to determine the environment in which the story is unfolding.  Knowing the location of an event will tell us about nearby cities, land features, or lakes – which sometimes are even referenced in the story itself.  Knowing how one location relates to another, can allow us to estimate travel time as well.  Furthermore, locations can also give us hints about the people, what sort of culture they came from, and their background.

While context is not strictly required in order to extract the basic meaning from most passages, it does greatly enhance our ability to understand more deeply what the author is trying to convey to his readers.  In the New Testament, this context is particularly important for the letters written by Paul as some of them are very short and do not give sufficient context to see the whole backstory without additional study.

This little series is based largely on an adult class that Doug Henson is teaching on Sunday mornings.  I have mentioned more than once that it would be good for all of us to go through that class at least once; until then, we’ll pick up the cliff notes in our own class.

Who is the question we ask when we need to know the players in a passage.  Who is speaking?  Who is the recipient of the writing?  Who is listening in the story?  Who is in the story?  At this time, we also look for anything that is special about the actors.  Is he a “man after God’s own heart?”  Is someone mentioned as having a checkered past?  Does anyone remind us of ourselves or someone we know?  What is their background, their motivation, their purpose in the story?

What is where we pull out the greatest volume of information.  Consider the narrative: what is happening?  How are the actions described: quickly, without hesitation, carefully?  With every one of these six questions, take notes; always have pen and paper handy.  Next to your description of each person, take note what they were up to.  This will help you see the who and the what side by side, so you miss nothing.

Of course, at first you will have to think about each question one at a time – just like when you are reading a math word problem or a short story.  It doesn’t take long before you start to identify the important parts and recognize elements that may be important later.  But the key is practice!