Repurposing Your Lesson Material

Usually Bible teachers and leaders can re-use lesson material in different ways. This is an important capability that I encourage you to develop.

Let's look at one example so you get some ideas.

The previous post (about Epaphras) has an interesting history. The original insights about Epaphras surfaced while I was immersing myself in Colossians, to prepare for a series I'll be teaching in early 2009. So I had jotted a few notes in the margins of my markup copy of Colossians.

I needed a short (3-5 min) devotion for a leader breakfast. I took 2 of the ideas and used them with that group of men.

Later in the week I developed a longer devotion (10-12 min) for an elder board meeting. I tailored the model prayer as a prayer for our specific church congregation and our missions outreach.

This morning I rewrote the devotion as an article to post on our church website in January. In this case, it's not about leading the church, but about leading in all settings, including our families.

And I made still another variation to post on the blog.

This will be part of one lesson I teach in 2009, when we get to Colossians 4. I'll extend the material and change the questions around as appropriate for the group I'm teaching. (I don't know exactly whom will be in the class yet.)

One idea I have is to create a short audio recording of the questions -- what do we know about Epaphras' family, background, age, appearance, etc -- as a between-lesson opportunity to encourage people in the class to be meditating on the material.

The other possible use I have for this material is for another teaching series I'm thinking about presenting in late 2009 -- on developing leaders in the church.

So you see how you can leverage your insights from personal Bible study in multiple ways. Take notes as you study. Look for opportunities to re-use and re-purpose your devotion and lesson materials.