There are a few genres unique to Christian publishing, including devotionals, Amish fiction and, the king of them all, Bible studies.

The Bible study is the essential Christian book. It is unequivocally Christian, often written by Christians for Christians.

Maybe you have considered writing a Bible study. If you are Protestant, you believe in the priesthood of believers, so anyone can write a Bible study, right?

Well, maybe.

Or maybe you are thinking about writing a Bible study for publication. How do you write one that people want to read, and that helps bring them closer to God?

To help us answer that question, I asked Mindy Kiker, cofounder of Flourish Gathering and Flourish Writers. She helps authors publish Bible studies and devotionals through workshops, online conferences, and training courses.

How did you get started writing Bible studies?

Thomas: How did you get started writing Bible studies?

Mindy: My cofounder, Jennifer Kochert, and I were friends. We met in a Bible study, so it was destined to be.

We worked together in local Christian women’s ministry and decided to offer something for the holidays as a way to get into God’s Word, slow down, and savor Scripture. We created a small email series for friends and family, and we included a short video devotional with each email.

It was a big hit. People asked, “What are you going to do for the new year?” So, we kept going. We started sharing our stories interwoven with Scripture. We asked, how are our favorite verses showing up in our real lives? That resonated.

Sometimes there is a disconnect between someone’s quiet time with the Lord and stepping back into real life. Whatever happened in that quiet time can become a distant memory once the complexities of life hit. We felt like Bible study should become something you live in every moment of your life. That is what we started sharing through those small email and video series.

When we realized we might have something to offer, and there was real interest, we pulled it into something more formal. About six years ago, we created our first digital Bible study and ran it with a small group we had gathered.

Thomas: I love this approach. This is the “be faithful where you are, bloom where you’re planted” mindset, which is deeply Christian.

A lot of people think, “I want to write a Bible study, so the first thing I should do is submit it to a big publisher.”

But if you look at Jesus’ instructions to His disciples, He tells them to start in Jerusalem, then Samaria, then the uttermost parts of the earth. People in Jerusalem had heard of Jesus and had an opinion of Him. That was the most intense, controversial, and scary place to start. But if you can be faithful in Jerusalem, you will do okay in Samaria. Then you go to the uttermost parts of the earth.

Often, we want to start with the uttermost parts. People think, “I have to write a book so I can minister.”

I would say, minister now. The book comes out of the ministry. Without the real life ministry,  you do not know what will resonate, or whether what you have to say will connect with what people need to hear.

Mindy: That is a really good observation.

As we support Christian communicators through Flourish Writers, our story is inspiring, and it also relieves the pressure of having to start out with something big and fancy.

The first copy of our first print study was hard work, and we put our all into it. We decided to self-publish because we did not want to take the time to traditionally publish. We wanted it out for the holidays.

We thought, “We can do that. You make a PDF manuscript and upload it to CreateSpace (now KDP).”

When we got the book back, it was tiny and thin, and the font was smaller than we expected. We made a little book mockup for marketing, put our cover on it, and used it on our sales page. A couple people emailed and said, “I am not sure I got the right book.”

At the time, we were proud and apologetic.

But what is amazing is that people who see what we have achieved, and where we are now, by the grace of God, they think, “If Jenny and Mindy started like that five or six years ago, then I can do that too.”

That is one of our mottos at Flourish Writers. You can do it. Here are steps to get you there. But you are going to start small. Start where you are. Start with what you have.

We are not all called to be superstars. We are called to be obedient, to obey where we are, and let the Lord do the rest. We prepare the horse for battle, but victory is the Lord’s.

What did that small failure teach you?

Thomas: Persisting through failure is really the only way forward.

I have two toddlers right now, so I have a front-row seat to how humans learn to walk. There is only one way to learn to walk well, and it is to walk badly, persistently.

A child falling down in our house is not news.

Mindy: And the falling down is learning.

Thomas: If you feel like it has to be perfect at the beginning, you will never publish. You will never make a difference, because you cannot go from crawling to walking with no problems. That is not how it works.

The children of Israel did not get the Promised Land all at once. They took it city by city, area by area, and it took work. Just because God calls you to do something does not mean you are not called to do the work. That is true with the writing craft too.

Mindy: Those forty years in the wilderness were shaping them into the people who could walk into the Promised Land.

What is the difference between a devotional and a Bible study?

Thomas: There is confusion about the difference between a devotional and a Bible study. How would you distinguish them?

Mindy: That is a great question, because there are also devotional Bible studies. Let’s break it down.

Devotionals

A devotional typically starts with a Scripture, usually a verse or small passage, and then you share your thoughts. It might be a story from your life, research you have done, or insight into the passage. It is typically fairly short.

Depending on the venue, a devotional might be a few hundred words, even 150 to 200 words, or up to 600 to 800 words.

You might list a few additional Scriptures at the end, but typically you are not going to include follow-on questions that require the reader to do research. You might have application questions to help readers apply what they read, but you are not asking them to open their Bible and study further.

Bible Studies

Bible studies can include devotionals. In fact, that is largely how we start. In our studies, the first section of the week is a more substantial devotional, sometimes around 1,500 words, as an introduction to the theme. We weave personal stories with research on the Scripture and set up the participant for the week.

But then the Bible study includes additional components, assignments that require action. You engage the reader in opening the Bible, looking things up, and doing the study themselves. You give instructions on how to study. There are different types of studies, but that is the general difference.

Is a Bible study more intellectual than a devotional?

Thomas: In a Bible study, the emphasis is the study and it’s more academic. There is homework, assignments, and research. Would you say it is more intellectual? More about correct thinking, as opposed to devotionals being more about a correct way of feeling?

Mindy: It depends on the kind of study you want to write.

When we were discerning what study God put on our hearts, we looked at different styles. If you want to write a Bible study, you need to be a Bible study reader. That goes for any genre. Do not start writing in a genre you are not well-read in, or you will not understand the expectations.

Something has to be integrated into the fabric of your inner being by being a reader of that genre.

If you cannot pull several Bible studies off your shelf, I would suggest you start there. Once you do, you will notice there is a wide range of Bible study styles.

You mentioned the more intellectual, more academic studies and that is a whole subgenre of Bible studies.

What are the major styles of Bible studies?

Thomas: Walk us through the major styles first, and then we can get into subgenres.

Mindy: There are some well-known Bible study writers, like Kay Arthur. Those studies are research-heavy. You are given specific questions, and you do a lot of work. You read other translations, use concordances, cross-reference, and dig into the text.

You are learning skills for studying the Bible, but it is focused on knowledge and building an understanding of Scripture.

Thomas: My mom did a bunch of Kay Arthur studies when I was a kid, and suddenly she had Greek-to-English and Hebrew-to-English dictionaries. She started studying Greek and Hebrew. It took her deep, like a light seminary degree.

Mindy: And I hope that bore fruit in your mom’s life. I would assume she saw it as part of her spiritual formation, and part of her journey of realizing, “That is not just for the pastor. I am a regular girl, and I can study Hebrew and Greek.”

Maybe you do not master the languages, but you can look things up in a concordance, understand what those numbers mean, and connect them back to the original words. That is an incredibly empowering skill.

That is one end of the spectrum.

At the other end are studies that are more experiential and focused on application. They do not want readers to get tripped up in concordances, Greek and Hebrew, and all the details that can make your eyes cross.

Which type of Bible study should I write?

Mindy: Our advice at Flourish Writers is to find where you are on that spectrum and own it. Do not write a Bible study you do not like. It needs to align with how you study Scripture, and what you have enjoyed in Bible studies.

Start by pulling Bible studies off your shelf. Reflect on what you liked. Create a kind of vision board of the elements you love, then ask, “If I could design my perfect Bible study, what would it be like?”

Some writers will land on the formal, intellectual, academic end. Some will be in the middle. Others will be closer to the practical, emotional end, where the focus is, “How do we drill Scripture down into everyday life?”

Because I have to leave my quiet-time closet and meet my toddlers, who I know are going to test me today. Dear God, help us all.

How do you structure an applicational Bible study?

Mindy: A lot of the people in Flourish Writers probably skew mid to experiential.

Let me give you a glimpse into how we structure our studies, and how we hybridize some of these elements.

Jenny and I sat down and asked ourselves a few questions:

• What do we love about studying God’s Word?
• What do we love about opening the Bible?
• What is our goal?
• Why are we there?

Are we opening the Bible every day just so we can check it off a list and God will be nice to us today? No.

We open Scripture because we expect wisdom, comfort, help, and insight into how to live. We will not get those things anywhere else. We are bombarded by messages from media and other sources that, quite frankly, have an agenda to draw us away from the Word of God His truth that has endured through the ages. We have access to His truth right now.

So when we created our Bible studies, we wanted to give readers an experience of encountering the Word of God in a way that is not only intellectual. It is not just a box we check to get our goodies from God.

We wanted it to be something where, once you taste the sweetness of it, and you see how it shows up in your life, you become hungry and thirsty to get back to the Word again.

Mindy: We created a process centered on one verse of Scripture. We call it our Declaration Verse, and we dive deep into it for an entire week. That verse becomes the springboard.

It is not about consuming chapter after chapter. It is about quality.

A dear friend of mine, a pastor’s wife, did one of our studies a few years ago. She said, “Mindy, when I opened to week one and saw one verse for the whole week, I thought, This is the stupidest thing I have ever seen. You call that a Bible study?”

But she decided she liked me enough to try it. She went through the week and the activities we designed, and by the end of the week, she said she had insight and revelation that worked itself into the fabric of who she was. She had never experienced anything like it before.

She said, “In my frantic consumption of Scripture, because I am afraid if I do not do it something bad will happen to me, you helped me fall in love with Scripture in a new way.”

What does a week look like in your method?

Mindy: We build our studies as a write-in journal.

Day 1: Read and Write

You read the Declaration Verse and write it out.

Day 2: Investigate

We give you things to look up, such as where the verse is set and what is happening the chapter and book. We research so we are not pulling a verse out of context. The verse is a launching place, but we look at what is going on around it.

Day 3: Imagine

We imagine ourselves in the scene. Who is talking? What is happening? What do we hear, smell, taste, and touch? These are real people in Scripture. What were they feeling? What was going on?

Day 4: List

We ask, “God, what does this have to say to me?” After reading, writing, investigating, and imagining, what is the Lord saying? How does this need to show up in my life?

Day 5: Declare

You write a declaration of what the Lord spoke to you, and the truth you received. There might be repentance. “God, I am sorry. I have been off target, and I want to center this in my life again.” You write that declaration, and it becomes a kind of prayerful confirmation before the Lord.

That is what we do in our studies.

What is the evidence that Bible study has accomplished its goal?

Thomas: I love that.

I had a pastor once tell me I was trained far beyond my obedience. That is easy to do. We keep learning, learning, learning, but we do not put it into practice.

Whether you read 12 chapters or one verse, the fruit of God’s word will be demonstrated in how your life is changed.

This requires belief that the Bible is transformational, and that the Holy Spirit breathes life into our understanding, because otherwise there is nothing to experience.

I remember reading The Iliad in high school. We read the entire Iliad. It has verses too, but the academic community does not even agree on what the verses are. Different editions do not line up. They could have used a council or two to settle things.

But it is not transformational. There is no life in it. It is dead. It is artistically valuable, and I even memorized the first couple of lines, but it did not transform me the way Scripture does.

I love this idea of practice. Instead of homework being more study, the homework becomes, “How do I implement this truth in my life?” That is how it becomes real.

There was an early heresy addressed in 1 John called Gnosticism. It taught that Jesus did not really come in the flesh. He did not really suffer. The Greeks believed that the spirit is pure and flesh is evil, so Jesus could not have existed physically. He only appeared to suffer and die.

John calls that an antichrist spirit. It is still a temptation today to make things so spiritual that they are no longer real. They become ideas that live in the mind but never touch flesh and blood.

That is as dangerous as saying there is no spiritual world and only the physical exists. We are alert to the danger of materialism, but we are not nearly as careful about the opposite error, “It is all just spiritual.” That is dangerous too. Read 1John if you do not believe me. John does not pull punches.

What is your goal as a Bible study writer?

Mindy: Our aspiration is to bridge that gap, to bring the spiritual realm into a real, practical reality for people.

Thomas: In most kinds of writing, authors are taught, “Don’t be preachy. Don’t be preachy. Show, don’t tell.” Does that rule apply in Bible studies, or do people come to Bible studies for a didactic presentation of truth?

Mindy: Part of that answer is personal opinion.

I would not write for a reader who wants to come get a good preach. If you are an author listening and you are in touch with a community of people who want that, more power to you.

But if you are writing for the typical Bible study consumer I know, you would not take that tone.

In Flourish Writers, as we support Bible study writers, we spend a lot of time studying how to soften statements and create empathy through story. We even get down into the nitty-gritty of grammar, including pronouns.

Instead of saying, “You, you, you,” you can say, “I, I, I. Here I am. This is what happened to me.” Then, “We, we, we. Here’s how we can walk through this.” That softens the finger-pointing.

Bible study writers can be very intentional about adopting a voice that is not superior. We are all working this out. We are coming alongside as a guide, sharing from our passion and joy, saying, “Would you like to walk with us?” That is much more appealing.

It also relieves the Bible study writer from needing to be a highly accredited theologian, which I am not, or a perfect goody-two-shoes Christian, which I am not. It enables the writer to show up as a fellow seeker.

“I created this study because I have a passion for walking in the light,” or “I have a passion for having a heart like Mary,” or “I have a passion for seeing how God showed up in Gideon’s life, and what that means for us.” You present yourself as a trustworthy, friendly companion to the reader.

I would argue that is a much more approachable way to write a Bible study that appeals to modern readers.

What are some safeguards against being preachy?

Thomas: It is also safer spiritually.

Paul talks in Galatians about correcting someone gently and humbly to restore them and being careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. There is something about correcting from roughness or pride that makes you more vulnerable to falling into that sin.

That is a real risk of being a teacher. You are preaching against a sin, and then you fall into it yourself. It does not take much searching to find famous preachers who were neither gentle nor humble, and then had a flameout. Often in the very sin they preached against.

There is a real danger in teaching the gospel and teaching the Bible. This is not something to do casually. It should be done with reverence, fear and trembling, and with gentleness.

There is that old saying, “There but by the grace of God, go I.” It is archaic, but the meaning is, “Except for the grace of God, I would do the same thing.”

The next time you see someone canceled for something terrible, instead of, “That evil person finally got what was coming,” especially if it is your political enemy, what if you said, “But by the grace of God, I would have done the same”?

Maybe faced with the same temptations, you would have fallen too. The only thing protecting you might be that you have not had the same power, and therefore you have not faced the same temptation.

That humility and gentleness is safer spiritually, and it is more effective. People do not want a finger wagged in their face. There are tens of thousands of sermons uploaded every Monday. There is no shortage of preaching. People do not need more preaching from you.

Mindy: Many times, what you choose to write about comes from a passion that was born out of struggle or failure in your own life. When you share that, you earn trust as a guide, because the Word of God has done hard work in you, digging up that root of bitterness.

I have had the privilege of sharing transparently about how Scripture has shown up in my life and done that hard work, heating up the sludge so the nasty stuff rises to the top and we can scoop it off, or putting that coal to my lips.

My best stories are about my failure, and how the Word of God rescued me from myself.

What common mistakes do you see in Bible studies?

Mindy: One of the most common mistakes is the struggle we all have as content creators. We think more is better.

We worry that what we are creating is too simple, or we think, “Everything has been done, so I have to come up with something wildly revolutionary. I am going to turn Bible study on its nose and do something radically different.”

There is nothing wrong with meeting reader expectations. That is why I say, be readers in the genre you are writing. If readers encounter something too different, they get confused. When people are confused, they do not persist. If you confuse someone, you lose them.

Sometimes people get too out-of-the-box, too creative, and they put too much in, too much for readers to do.

Over the course of writing 12 studies, ours got simpler and simpler in terms of instruction. We cut what did not really land. We chased the 80/20.

What are the sweet spots? What can I cut so I get down to the core, the part that creates the experience for the reader?

I would urge Bible study creators to keep it simple. It may break your heart if you adore the Word of God and want to spend hours a day in it, but most people do not. They do not have that time, and they will not make that time.

If you give them too much, they start to feel behind or like they are failing, and they will stop. Bible study creators want everyone else to be as enthusiastic as they are, but you have to create resources for someone who does not have that kind of time.

Our goal is to offer about 20% effort for an 80% result, so people feel successful. They feel how the Word of God is transforming their life and showing up in their life, and they want to keep going.

That is one of the biggest issues that comes to mind.

How do you write for normal people with limited time?

Thomas: There are people who spend hours working out in the gym every day, and then there are people who are lucky if they can get in twenty minutes.

If you are a trainer, you do not give your clients the same routine you do. You give them something smaller and doable. If you gave them your routine, it would break them, or even if they survived day one, they would not come back.

Full confession, I grew up in churches that did not really do purchased Bible studies. When we had Bible study, we had the Bible and we discussed it. No workbook, no companion.

As I talk with authors like you, I think, maybe I should check these out. Maybe we have gone too far in the “Bible is all you need” direction. It is not that we have nothing. People have study Bibles, and we piece together our own ad hoc study, compare translations, and so on.

Mindy: What is fun about a study someone created is that it is often built around a theme, and the writer guides the reader through Scripture to unearth that theme.

Sure, you can look up “prayer” in an index and read the verses. But if someone has seen prayer become alive in their life, and they have stories of what God has done, it is rich to have them guide you through Scripture, and to receive that revelation from their heart to yours.

Isn’t that often how the Holy Spirit works? You catch the energy from another believer, and the Spirit says, “Hey, look at this. This is something I want for you.”

What is Flourish Writers?

Mindy: Flourish Writers was born out of our community asking us to help them write their stories the way we were doing.

We started with our first course, The Power of Story. It helps people share their story as a modern-day gospel, sharing how God showed up in their lives and how Scripture became real to them.

Then Flourish Writers took on a life of its own. We have gathered a community of Christian communicators in many genres. It is humbling how many amazing people God has gathered there.

We host online events. Often they are free, with an optional purchase component. We try to serve all kinds of writers, especially beginning writers who are not made of money. We know how hard it is early on to grow in craft when you do not have much to invest back into your writing life.

We also have Flourish Writers Academy, a 12-month journey to help people find clarity in their writing life. We created a writer’s life planning guide to help writers figure out the components of their writing life and how to fit writing into their life. It is a super fun place.

Connect with Mindy Kiker and Flourish Writers

Links:
https://www.flourishwriters.com/
https://flourishgathering.com/

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