How to Test Teaching by Scripture: A New Workbook by Ed Rangel

How do you know which teacher to believe? A Christian student who left for college this fall has probably heard it answered three different ways by now. A professor has told him the Bible is a collection of old stories. A roommate has told him all churches are basically the same. A campus group has handed him a flyer that sounds a lot like what he grew up hearing, until it doesn't.

That confusion shows up in the numbers too. In a report released this September, Lifeway Research surveyed Protestants who attend church at least once a month. Among churchgoers 18 to 29, 54 percent agreed that as culture changes, some biblical truths become obsolete. Eighty-seven percent of that same age group said God's Word can mean different things to different people. These are young people who are in church. Many of them have simply never been shown how to check a claim against the text.

I don't think the answer is to keep our young people away from hard questions. They're going to meet them anyway. What they need is a way to sort through the voices, and Scripture gives them one.

Paul's word to a young church

Paul knew what it was like to be one voice among many. When he preached in Thessalonica, he spent three Sabbaths in the synagogue, and Luke says he "reasoned with them from the Scriptures" (Acts 17:2). Some believed. Others stirred up a mob, and the brothers sent Paul away by night to Berea. The Bereans heard the same message, and Luke gives them a compliment we still quote: "The people here were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, since they received the word with eagerness and examined the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so" (Acts 17:11).

Notice what made them noble. They were eager to hear, and they were careful about what they accepted. They took an apostle's preaching and checked it against the Scriptures they already had.

A few months later Paul wrote back to the church he'd left behind in Thessalonica. Near the end of that first letter he gives them a short string of commands: "Don't despise prophecies, but test all things. Hold on to what is good. Stay away from every kind of evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:20-22). He wanted that young church to do what the Bereans had done.

I like the way those commands hang together. Paul doesn't let the Thessalonians sneer at teaching just because some of it might be false. He also doesn't let them swallow whatever is said with confidence. They're to test it all. Then, once something proves true, they're to hold on to it. That's how a Christian gets to conviction.

That's a healthy word for us in the churches of Christ. We've always said we want to speak where the Bible speaks. If we mean it, we have to be willing to put our own habits under the same light we'd put on anyone else's teaching. A young Christian who sees his elders do that will trust what they hold on to.

What this workbook does with it

We've just released Ed Rangel's Test Everything, Hold Fast: Building Biblical Conviction in an Age of Confusion. Ed takes 1 Thessalonians 5:21 seriously and builds 27 lessons around it. He teaches students how to examine a claim, read a passage in its context, and hold on to what proves true.

The lessons fall into five sections. Foundations covers faith and honest questions, the authority of Christ, why the Bible can be trusted, reading Scripture in context, and the old and new covenants. The Gospel and Salvation takes up the resurrection, grace, faith and repentance, baptism, predestination and Calvinism, and whether a Christian can fall away. The Church section looks at the church's identity, elders and deacons, worship, the Lord's Supper, a cappella singing, and the church's mission. Contested Questions on Campus deals with the roles of men and women, the Holy Spirit, miraculous gifts, Romans 14, and how to handle disagreement. The last section, Living and Defending the Faith, covers examining inherited beliefs, Christian morality in a secular culture, talking with skeptics, and Christ's return.

Every lesson has a key text, learning objectives, verse-by-verse notes, discussion questions, a personal assignment and a memory verse. Ed also includes campus case studies with practice responses. Those give a student the chance to work out an answer at a church building table before he has to give one in a dorm room. Ed is as willing to test an inherited church custom as he is to answer a skeptical roommate, and he keeps bringing the discussion back to the risen Christ and the authority of His word. The workbook uses the NASB, so its wording will differ a little from what I've quoted here.

About the writer

Ed Rangel has been preaching since 2000 and serves as an evangelist in Wisconsin. His ministry has taken him across the Midwest, the South, the Caribbean, South America and Europe. He also spent years as a special education teacher, and it shows in how he makes a difficult subject clear without watering it down. You can see the rest of his work, including his new Philemon study, in Ed's author collection.

Who it's for

Ed wrote this for college and young adult Bible classes, campus ministries, and high school seniors getting ready to leave home. It would also serve any adult who wants faith that rests on examined conviction. Its 27 lessons fill two quarters of weekly classes. At 217 pages, it gives a teacher plenty to work with.

The workbook is $16. There's also an $8 PDF for individual use and a $100 class-use PDF. A class can order a workbook for each student or go with the class PDF. If you've got a senior in your youth group who'll be on a campus next fall, I'd put Test Everything, Hold Fast in his hands this year.

The Bereans had to decide whether to believe an apostle, and they went to the Scriptures to do it. When someone tells you or your children something new about God this week, where will you go to check it?