Thursday, July 19, 2018

Bible Book Club

We launched a Bible Book Club in Nailsea last night. It's like a normal book club (read a book, get together over a drink and discuss it) except that we use books of the Bible. No faith necessary. No previous Bible reading experience necessary. No church allegiance necessary. No lectures. No context (at first).

My preliminary conversations had led us to believe that it might appeal to:

  • People who liked book groups
  • People who found Bible study notes and reading in ten verse chunks difficult
  • People who liked to meet others for a drink

We decided to start with some stories so six of us got together having read the Book of Ruth (or listened to it as an audio-book in previous days). We agreed that this group needed to understand that there were no right answers. We could all contribute (we did). We had a lively hour chatting about patriarchal cultures, the significance of genealogies, whether Naomi was a devious and manipulative Jewish mama and how to stage 'Ruth - the musical'.

We meet again in the Ring O Bells on Wednesday August 22nd at 8.00 p.m. to look at Esther if you would like to join us.

For anyone wanting to steal the idea we used some generic book group questions to help us:

  • Did you enjoy the book? What part did you like most? What least?
  • Did you engage with any of the characters?
  • Did you follow the plot? What, for you, was the hinge point?
  • If this book was a movie who would you cast?
  • What art work would you put on the cover of the book?
  • Did you have a favourite quote?
  • Would you read other books by this author?
  • What did you think of the length? Too long? Too short?
  • What did you think was the author's purpose?
  • Would you like to read the same story from the point of view of one of the characters?

1 comment:

Tim Chesterton said...

I like this idea. Thanks, Steve.