Last month, Pastor Aaron Kristopeit focused readers’ thoughts on the importance of planning when creating homemade Bible studies. He mentioned designing our lessons with specific objectives to ensure that we have a sense of direction. Planning is important when we write individual lessons or courses, but it is also helpful to have a framework in mind when we do long-range planning. How do we plan out our Bible study courses over an entire academic year, for example?

One method imitates and expands on Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary’s four branches of theological study: biblical, systematic, historical, and practical. Each year’s worth of Bible studies could be drawn from the following categories:

• Old Testament
• New Testament
• Bible Topics
• Doctrine
• Church History/Confessions
• Practical
• Apologetics

The curriculum planner tries to provide one course from each category each year. Of course, there may be a year when one schedules two practical category Bible studies, and the Bible topics category gets unused. That only means that perhaps next year, something from the neglected category should be scheduled to start the year.

Here are a few other items to keep in mind:

• The Old Testament and New Testament categories could be subdivided into categories akin to exegetical and isagogical. For example, a course that spends four weeks on 1 Corinthians chapter 13 versus a course that spends four weeks going over the major themes of the entire book of 1 Corinthians.
• A study on the enemies of Old Testament Israel (which gathers material from a number of books) could fulfill the Bible topics category while a study on Christian parenting would be an example of a practical course that is not necessarily apologetics-focused.
• One could also argue that apologetics rightly belongs in the practical category. Or that Luther and Lutheranism deserve their own category. It is also apparent that some Bible study courses could reasonably fit in two different places. The planner is free to proceed as he wishes! There is plenty of room to customize the framework to suit the individual congregation’s needs and interests.

Having a framework like this helps to ensure that we are choosing a variety of courses and not leaving any corner unvisited. While simply having a planning framework neither chooses the individual course nor writes the individual lesson, the teacher’s life becomes a little easier when he has a plan and has long before mapped out what is coming up next.

Curriculum Connection

While planning your Bible studies, remember that NPH offers a wide selection of adaptable Bible studies and kits. And don’t forget to check out the Bible Study Workshop. With a one-time payment for a lifetime subscription, you’ll get one or more studies for every book of the Bible and 160+ topical studies covering culture, the church, and more, which you can modify to fit your purpose and teaching style.

This article in Devote Yourself was contributed by the team that previously created and distributed the e-newsletter, Teach the Word. For nearly ten years’ worth of archived teaching-related articles, tips, and advice, visit nph.net/teach-the-word.