Wednesday

John Stott on The Bible & the Christian Life


John Stott is one of the great thinkers, writers and preachers of our era. Zondervan has packaged a DVD seminar series of Dr. Stott's in which he speaks to the authority, interpretation and use of Scripture. They bill it as groupware, which is their small group type material, but it is different for any of the other small group groupware material of theirs I have come across.
If you are familiar with the DVD studies that Dr. John Piper or Dr. Tom Wright have put out (with Multnomah and IVP respectively), then you will have an idea of what to expect, format-wise. The six sessions on this DVD are six 45-60 minute talks which Dr. Stott presented at All Souls Church. In these, Dr. Stott presents his teaching on
1 The Authority of the Bible
2 The Nature of the Bible: Double Authorship
3 The Interpretation of the Bible
4 The Problem of Culture
5 Developing a Christian Mind
6 Making an Impact on Society

The "study guide" included is an outline of the lectures and three questions offered for discussion and reflection. I do wish that this was a bit more developed. The questions are good and I think lend themselves to enhancing discussion, but I think it could be done even better.
One of the aspects of the DVD studies which Multnomah puts out from North Point Ministries is having the questions for discussion actually appear on the screen. I would like to see the questions for The Bible & the Christian Life appear on the screen at an appropriate time just after Dr. Stott has spoken about what the question refers to. With each session lasting 45-60 minutes, there is so much that can be gleaned, that if you were to take the time as his is speaking about it, I think it would enhance the comprehension, as opposed to asking all the questions at the end of the session. (This can easily be done by the leader of the study by simply pausing the DVD an injecting the questions, but it would be a nice feature if the DVD did this automatically).
The authority of Scripture and what we believe about Scripture is very important and Dr. Stott does a wonderful job in making these concepts intelligible and applicable.

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