Asking questions I'd never ask myself

When asked how we could further serve his ministry work, a good friend of Matthias Media told us that “we are an unfortunate product of our own success”. It was an interesting statement. What Matthias Media has done for years—to some good success—is help people open up Scripture and read it for themselves and with others. So much so that, to our friend’s point, his people have learned from our resources so well that they don’t need them as much anymore!

We are always wanting to provide the-same-but-different types of resources to help people digest the word of God well. And our success, in God’s gracious kindness, has been that thousands of people have grown in their reading and understanding of Scripture through resources like Six Steps to Reading Your Bible, Growth Groups, One-to-One Bible Reading and How to Read the Bible Better, just to name a few.

Because Matthias Media exists to partner with you to foster disciple-making of all people through the word of God, our resources often have some kind of explicit training component to them. This isn’t limited to the Bible reading resources listed above, but is also a part of the Bible study resources we produce.

In fact, the reason I do what I do with Matthias Media is because many years ago when I was attending a church in Oxford, England, I happened to pick up a Bible study on the book of Titus. I had never heard of Matthias Media, but Titus had just been preached on so I bought it. I took it home to the US and worked through the whole set of studies on my own in just a few weeks. I was hooked.

I had never been challenged to look at Scripture in that way before. The questions the study asked forced me to account for what the text actually said and forced me to account for what I believed (or thought I believed). Because of that, I was forced to account for my sin and short-sightedness. In the end, I was reading Scripture more faithfully and with greater openness to God’s Spirit of truth.

From there, to make a long story short, I started Matthias Media in North America because I wanted more people to be ‘forced’ to read and listen to Scripture in that way. And it all came from a simple but powerful Bible study on a book of the Bible I don’t know if I had ever read in my (then) 23 years, let alone studied in depth.
Yes, we want people to be trained and equipped to be able to open the Bible and read it clearly and powerfully to themselves and others. (Even if it results in the ‘unfortunate product’ of selling fewer resources!) But we also want to continue that training and apply those skills with in-depth Bible studies. I know that when I studied Titus that first time, with a set of tried and thoughtful questions, it helped me immensely.

Our Interactive Bible Studies and Pathway Bible Guides are full of insights and questions that I trust will help you in the same way. And they are not only for groups—they are equally helpful for individuals like you and me! You can learn how each series differs here.

My regular habit for personal Bible reading is to work through questions from one of these Bible studies at least a few times a week. I love that almost always God has ordained a question to be in there that I would most likely never ask of the text of myself. And in that, the power of God’s word is seen and heard.