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Podcast: How Can I Begin to Teach the Bible? (David Helm)

August 05, 2024 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

The Vital Work of Teaching the Bible

In this episode, David Helm reflects on what faithful Bible teaching looks like in a variety of contexts, offering advice related to preparation, dealing with anxiety, and relying on the Holy Spirit through the whole process.

How Can I Begin to Teach the Bible?

How Can I Begin to Teach the Bible?

David R. Helm

In this short, accessible guide, pastor David Helm provides proven, easily applicable tips for creating and communicating memorable, gospel-centered messages.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:16 - You’re Called to Teach the Bible—Even If You’re Not a Pastor

Matt Tully
David, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

David Helm
It’s good to be here.

Matt Tully
So you’re a pastor. Do you remember the first time that you were tasked with teaching the Bible in some kind of formal setting, whether it was preaching or leading a Bible study? Do you remember that? Can you go back in time to that moment?

David Helm
Without a doubt.

Matt Tully
What was that?

David Helm
Well, you need to know a little bit about my family. I grew up in a Christian home, but people aren’t born Christians; you become one. And so while I had a bloodline that had some Christian strength to it, I became a Christian when just before my senior year in high school. I was converted and had faith in Christ. And one of the things that happened to me initially, Matt, was I was really vested in helping other people come to what I had just become. So it wasn’t that I ever thought I wanted to teach the Bible, but it’s that I really wanted to clearly communicate the good news—news that had changed my life. And so a couple of friends and I decided that in our senior year in high school we were going to devote ourselves to helping everyone in our school at least hear the teaching of the Bible, where they could discern for themselves what they want to do with it. Now, back to the first major teaching moment, I was asked to be the senior speaker at our class graduation. There was some friction in the midst of the school because they kind of knew me by then. They knew I was going to do something with Jesus and the Bible. And so I do remember vividly wanting to take that privileged opportunity to explain again what I felt about the gospel in a public high school with 1,200–1,300 people present.

Matt Tully
That would be intimidating for many pastors, let alone a high school student.

David Helm
Yeah. Maybe that’s a “fools rush in where angels fear to tread” thing. When you’re eighteen-years-old, you’re just like, “You know what? I’m going to go for it.”

Matt Tully
There’s a passion there.

David Helm
Yeah. I had that, and hopefully I still have that but in a more mature sense now.

Matt Tully
And how did it go?

David Helm
It went well. I tried to take Micah 6:8—“to do justice, love kindness, walk humbly”—but without doing a quotation of a Scripture. So I tried to teach the Bible to my class and to those there to ask, What’s required of us when we get out of here with this degree we have? And I used those headers. What’s required is doing justice, loving kindness, walking humbly. But then I put the dagger at the end of the message, that these words come from the Bible, and we have to do this with God. And how do you do it with God if not through Jesus? There was a bit of consternation because a few people walked out, but none of my classmates did. I think they knew me and they respected what I tried to do, and hopefully I did it with humility and not some kind of barrage on top of those that had attended. And I didn’t feel like I messed up our graduation at all. The gospel, when it goes forth, is going to have a mixed response. And I learned that early on.

Matt Tully
That’s a fundamental conviction that teachers need to have. I think sometimes when it comes to this topic of teaching the Bible, our mind can immediately go to pastors. It can go to a sermon context. And that makes sense. That’s obviously a really important context in which God’s word is taught and proclaimed in an authoritative way. But I was struck, in reading your book, that there’s a lot of other contexts in which we as Christians, even lay Christians, are called to teach the Bible and would have opportunity to teach the Bible. A graduation speech is one example of that perhaps. But what are some of the other contexts in which you would say it would be good for Christians to think carefully about how to teach the Bible?

David Helm
When you think about how to begin teaching the Bible and the kinds of persons I have in mind, it’s ordinary Christians serving in the context of their conversion in a local church. For instance, I thought a lot about how I have a son in Manhattan, I have a daughter in DC, and I’ve got another son who’s a businessman in Indiana. They’re not professional Bible teachers, in the sense that they’re not called into full time vocational ministry, but they’re active in their church. They volunteer in ministry. What if you’re working in a youth group? What if you’re a person in a church you have been in your whole life, but you are involved in a prison ministry? What if you attend a men’s Bible study or a women’s Bible study? What if someone in your church says, “I’d like you to work with children’s ministry?” Those people, who may never be moving intentionally toward vocational ministry, what would they need to know to begin teaching the Bible in a way where they could have confidence? Okay, I’m somewhat faithful to the Scriptures, and I’ve been asked in my setting here to be somewhat fruitful, and I believe that the Bible is an indispensable center of that. And so that’s the person in mind in all those kinds of contexts. Men’s Bible study, women’s Bible study, youth ministry, children’s ministry, prison ministry, one-to-one Bible reading with a friend across the street or a colleague at work. What do they do to get a hold of the Bible in a meaningful way?

Matt Tully
As I was reading through the book, I was struck by just how universally applicable some of the principles and content was, even for someone who they’re teaching of the Bible would be not much more than just sitting with a friend, helping to disciple a friend, helping them to understand the Scriptures a little bit better because maybe they have questions. There is a sense in which the principles that you’re drawing out would be valuable for almost any Christian to understand, even as they listen to other people teach them the Bible.

David Helm
That’s true. That’s my sense is that every Christian should have the capacity to rightly read the word and hopefully begin to handle the word in ways that benefit others.

08:03 - Where Do You Place Your Confidence?

Matt Tully
When it comes to teaching the Bible in any context like we’ve been discussing, in the book you highlight a number of key principles that you say should be in place. And one of those principles was the importance of having the right kind of confidence as you prepare to teach. And when I heard that I was thinking you were going to say we need to make sure we sort of have the appropriate posture and demeanor and even vocal quality that communicates a level of confidence.

David Helm
The command of the speaker over the material.

Matt Tully
And even a sense of, “I’m confident this is right and true.” But you took it a little different way when you talked about that. So I wonder if you could unpack that for us.

David Helm
Where does our confidence lie? For some people, it will lie in their charisma. They’re just naturally good with communication, and so someone in their church asked them to teach the Bible because they know they’re good. And they then put their confidence kind of unwittingly and subconsciously in their gift. “I got a gift for this.” I’m not talking about that kind of confidence. For other people, their confidence is in their studious study patterns—students that were always at the top of the class. They’ve mastered material, and so your confidence is in your own mastery of material.

Matt Tully
Your own preparation even.

David Helm
Yeah. We could get to the preparation. I mean, you’ve got to do good preparation. But ultimately, your confidence has to lie in a belief that God’s word actually creates. Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning, God said, ’Let there be light,’ and there was light.” Do you really believe that? Do you really believe that God’s word is, by nature, a creative, animating, life-giving declaration, or is it dependent on you? So I’m just trying to transfer confidence to the Scriptures in that way. And I would wed the word with the Spirit. A lot of people think, “If I just teach the Bible correctly, then it’s all good.” But there are all kinds of clear teachings in the Bible—sermons that are there—but where the Holy Spirit doesn’t actually animate or enliven the listener. So you’re dependent on the Spirit. So I want your confidence to be in the Spirit of God who can reveal Jesus. And that’s going to create a different posture for the one who wants to begin teaching the Bible.

10:40 - The Forgotten Role of the Local Church

Matt Tully
Another thing that you’ve already hit on a little bit is just the importance of the local church for how we think about teaching the Bible. And I think in our world today, we certainly think of pastors and churches, but we also think of parachurch ministries and organizations and Bible teachers who kind of live and operate outside of the context of the local church, and not necessarily always inappropriately. But I think you really want to focus attention on this local church context. Why is that so important to highlight?

David Helm
Well, particularly important in our Western, and beyond that, American disposition, is we prize our freedom and our independence above any other value. So we just do what we want to do. If you want to teach the Bible, you just hang out a shingle and go for it, and we are all masters of our own handling of the word. We’ve really forgotten the role of the local church in both formulating and fashioning people who can handle the word. And we’ve really forgotten, in large part, most Christians today who are even in our churches are really pretty independently minded. They’ll leave your church to go to another church at the drop of a hat. So the local church has kind of been decimated with being the incubator, the greenhouse, the place where gifts are tested, where Bible teaching can emerge and develop and be mentored. So I’m a strong advocate that the local church is your greatest resource to help you learn how to teach the Bible. You don’t just do it on your own. It should be done in the context of community and in the context of people who love us and can help shape us. That’s the way it was for me anyway. I remember my early messages, even in church life, were evaluated. I remember sitting down with Kent Hughes and him saying, “You know, you preached a good sermon, but I think you missed the force of the text.” And I remember being confronted with that.

Matt Tully
Was that hard to hear from him at that time?

David Helm
It was great. But maybe that’s because I’m strange. In other words, it wasn’t discouraging for me; it was motivating. I’m motivated when I actually get feedback from others on how to make progress.

Matt Tully
Presumably, there was a level of trust and understanding there that you had with him that allowed you to hear that. So what do you say to the person who’s listening right now, though, and says, “I would love to be trained up in how I can teach the Bible”—

David Helm
“But my church doesn’t do it.”

Matt Tully
“But they don’t do it. They’re not interested in that. Maybe they’re not interested at all across the board, or they’re not interested in me.” What would you say to that person?

David Helm
I understand that, because the church itself, by nature, we have deficiencies. But if you have an interest in teaching the Bible, if you have a desire to teach the Bible, or if you’re beginning to get an opportunity to teach the Bible, I would just put it on you, then, rather than the church. Rather than saying, “This is another reason for me to be disenchanted with the church,” put it on yourself. Find someone in your church that you will begin to collaborate with and run your work by and just say, “Look, help me. I want to make progress, but I want feedback.” Here’s the funny thing. Any professional athlete—my dad coached athletics professionally for many years—the best athletes all go to training camp every year. Hall of famers learn to come off the mound, pick up a bunt, and throw to first base. Why do the best people in every field have some kind of continuing educational feedback loop? Why do they train, in the context of others, to break down their swing, golf swing, or whatever it is, to rebuild it? And why do people that teach the Bible never have that? I think it’s something that we’ve just decided in my life it should be essential. So rather than saying, “My church doesn’t do it,” I would say find someone in your church that will help you do it better than you’re doing it now.

14:56 - Negative and Positive Experiences of Teaching the Bible

Matt Tully
Let’s transition to a few more rapid fire questions that I think people might often have when it comes to this topic. First question: What’s the worst experience you had teaching the Bible?

David Helm
Wow. I can’t really grab one out of forty years, but I can tell you a repeated experience I have. The repeated experience I have is, “Oh, that didn’t do anything. That’s not effective.”

Matt Tully
That’s what you’re telling yourself as you walk out of the pulpit?

David Helm
Yeah. The worst experiences I have are immediate self-reflections on the impotence of what was just taking place.

Matt Tully
Do you think that’s a common experience for Bible teachers and preachers?

David Helm
I think we’re all built differently, so you’ve got to really wrestle down who you are. But a lot of times I would finish teaching the Bible and kind of say to myself, “Well, that was that. We’ll see who comes back next week, if anybody.” So I think discouragement is a common experience for Bible teachers. Doubt is an experience—questioning if it’s actually effective. And I have those experiences often. And I have to remind myself of the stuff we talked about earlier. Where is my confidence? And God does use things.

Matt Tully
How do you balance that reminder that the confidence is in the power of the word itself and the Spirit with I think sometimes we can wrestle with, “Did I prepare enough? That illustration I worked on, should I have done more work on that? Because it just didn’t seem to resonate the way I wanted it to.” How do you balance being confident in the Lord and his power and also just feeling like I did what I was supposed to do?

David Helm
You got to know what you’re supposed to do, right? So there’s a preparation process that’s essential. And it isn’t just going to the Bible and saying, “What can I say from this text?” That’s not the way to work. And so I really think you have to prepare well. This is the whole thing, right? Even with AI, is a pastor even required anymore to prepare or can the computer write my sermon for me?

Matt Tully
There are websites that purport to offer sermons.

David Helm
And my guess is Crossway isn’t going to be one of them.

Matt Tully
No, no. I don’t think that’s on the agenda.

David Helm
Well, here’s the reason. Paul says to Timothy, “You got to devote yourself to these things so that all may see your progress.” So the preparation process is critical. I really think you got to understand how your text works. You’ve got to give yourself to preparation on what we call context. You’ve got to know how your text relates to the gospel. These things are necessary ingredients of good Bible teaching, even though you depend on the Lord and the Spirit to accomplish things. He uses secondary means, and he wants those who handle the word to actually go do the hard work.

Matt Tully
And in the book you go into a lot more detail about what a process could look like; your proposal for how this process works and looks. It’s very practical and helpful. We can’t get into all of that right now. So if that’s an example of a challenging experience that you have, maybe sometimes repeatedly, what would be a memorable, good experience that you’ve had in teaching the Bible?

David Helm
I’ll just give you one from last week. A young man emails me and says, “I’ve been coming to your church. I have been an avowed atheist. I think I believe what you’re saying, and I’d like to get together to discuss the implications on my life, even as it relates to baptism.” And then he says in the email, “I don’t have anything to offer the church other than my great concern is how can I generate more interest among my friends to hear what’s going on here?” So is that encouraging? Yeah. I’ll give you another one. I’m doing a preaching workshop on the East Coast, and I get an email from a couple that had been in our church twenty years before. And they said, “Hey, we hear you’re out here.” I hardly remembered them at the time, and I had to kind of jog my memory of when they were here. And they had me to dinner and they said, “Look, we came to your church as undergraduate students at the University of Chicago, and we gave our lives to Christ. We are raising our family in a Christian way.” They wanted me to meet their children. They are involved in their local church. I mean, is that thrilling? Yeah. And fortunately, I’ve lived long enough now to see that kind of thing.

Matt Tully
That long-term fruit.

David Helm
There’s nothing more joyful.

Matt Tully
And to what you were saying earlier, to see that your faithfulness in preaching the word, which is where the power lies, seeing the word do its work like that frees us from that burden too. I think that can be a challenge for Bible teachers is we desperately want that fruit, but we also feel a little bit like we have to produce it somehow.

David Helm
We’ve got to generate it. And we have to remember sometimes when I don’t think anything’s happening, I’ve just tried to call that crucifixion preaching. It’s just death. It just looks like nothing’s going on. The rare moments in preaching or teaching are kind of resurrection preaching, where you finish and you’re like, “Oh my gosh! That thing elevated. That’s at work. I felt it all the way through. I had freedom.”

Matt Tully
Half the congregation is in tears.

David Helm
Right. That’s resurrection preaching. But the general day in and day out, we’re preaching Christ crucified. And guess what? You’re preaching the powerlessness that you sense, which isn’t really real.

Matt Tully
And that’s helpful to remember for both preachers who are in front of a whole church on a Sunday morning, but even a small group leader, perhaps, who’s doing their best.

David Helm
Yeah. And they’re going to beat themselves up. “Oh, it was terrible. I can’t do this. We got to get someone else to do it.” No, you don’t want to do that.

20:57 - Three Common Mistakes New Bible Teachers Make

Matt Tully
What are the top three mistakes that new Bible teachers often make, in your experience?

David Helm
Top three mistakes. Wow. That’s just off the cuff, so I’m going to give it to you in a thing that’s mattered to me. So there was a friend of mine named Mike Bullmore. He’s now retired. And at one point in his ministry, he wrote three things in his flyleaf, and they’re going to revolve around my answer to your question. One, Did I prepare well this week? That’s a top mistake. Most times where you’re deficient, you didn’t prepare well. If you walk up and go, “Lord, help me!” The voice comes down from heaven and says, “You should have been asking that all week long.” You didn’t prepare. Two, Did I pray well this week? That, to me, is a mistake. People are preparing and studying without seeking and praying. We only understand the word as the Spirit will make that known to us. You cannot be an effective Bible teacher because you have preparation patterns that give you a command of the text, but you’re not praying for the Spirit to be actually at work in the midst and through your talk. So that’s a mistake. A big mistake is to put all this in your study and never put your study in the context of supplication. And then the third one is, Did I pledge myself to my people this week? For a lot of Bible teachers, their mistake is they’re generating talks that are general. They’re explaining the Bible, but they’re not actually facing the people in the room. At the end of the day, the only people that matter to your next Bible talk are the people that were there listening to you in the moment. And so did you pledge your heart to them? Or are they kind of more like a platform for you to do your thing? For a lot of Bible teachers, that’s a mistake. The people in front of them become a platform for their ministry rather than the fruition and fullness of what their ministry is to be by way of service. So you serve them; they’re not there to serve you. That’s a mistake people often make. They’re not praying in their preparation. And then finally, they’re just not preparing well at all.

23:13 - Dealing with Anxiety before Teaching

Matt Tully
What advice would you give to somebody who feels like they have prepared well, they’ve really worked at it, they’ve really prayed, but as they are thinking about tomorrow, leading that small group Bible study, they just feel so nervous? They just feel kind of overwhelmed with anxiety about that. What counsel would you give to somebody who just regularly really struggles with that anxiety?

David Helm
Number one, you’re not alone. You feel the weight in the room that you’re supposed to lead, and so I would want you to know that’s natural. It’s not as though when you do good preparation, those feelings aren’t there. I think for the nervous or anxious facilitator, let’s say, of a Bible discussion, you could help yourself. You could help your anxiety by having a clear goal for that conversation or teaching, which is a different thing than what the big idea of the text is. I’m talking about the question, What’s the one thing we need to be convinced of tonight as a result of this text? So I think we would be helped to move toward exhortation and application in light of what we’re talking about tonight. Because now you’re into the people’s lives that are in front of you. So have a clear goal. Know the one thing we should be convinced of from this text, because now you’re in the life on life, not merely just explanation of text.

Matt Tully
You’re a pastor, and so it would be easy to assume that when it comes to teaching the Bible, it’s pretty routine. It’s even pretty easy for you at this point. Is that true?

David Helm
That’s a really solid question. There are things that are easy because I’ve been doing it for about forty years.

Matt Tully
A lot of practice.

David Helm
You just gain an understanding of the word and its fullness and its beauty and its distinctions. Given the fact that I’ve been in that material, you build. In a sense, it’s not just coming at something new for the first time. And even in regard to just the theological controls or railroad tracks, I’m probably less likely now to say something off to derail the fidelity of the word because I’m aware of the checks and balances and things in the Scripture that you would have to understand your text in light of. So yeah, in that sense, things are easier, but teaching the Bible is, as my mentor used to say to me, “It’s not rocket science; it’s harder.” That’s what Kent Hughes used to tell me. I’m sixty-three now, and I would say that every time I come to the Scriptures, there are complexities, there’s work, there’s a life to be lived under it. I think the greatest danger for Bible teachers is to be able to handle the Bible but somewhere along the line not continue to live under the authority of the Scriptures. So the challenges are kind of the way Moses put it to the people in Deuteronomy 4:2: you can’t add to the word, you can’t subtract from the word, and then he tells them you’ve got to keep the word. So there’s this thing every week where I’m working to try to get the text right and yet also demonstrate the ethos of keeping it, adhering to it. It can’t ever be that familiar to you or easy. So it’s a disciplined approach. I certainly have my own preparation patterns. Whereas if you’re just beginning, you don’t really know what you’re doing or whether what you’re doing is effective. But it’s easy, and it’s not easy. It’s rocket science, and it’s harder than rocket science.

Matt Tully
That makes me think of one of the biggest challenges, I suppose, that you would need to be aware of, especially as an experienced Bible teacher, would just be that temptation towards maybe a complacency or assuming you already know what the text says on this or that topic. So how big of a factor is that for you as you prepare at this point in your life and career?

David Helm
I do think that presumptive knowledge is a hindrance, not only to further progress as a Bible teacher, but it can be deadly in regard to you’re assuming you know what this text is doing. So I’ve always found it to be important to just take a fresh look, even if I’ve taught something two or three times before. It’s funny. You look at your old notes, even if it was like three years before, and I’m like, “This is terrible. I got to start over.” I think the thing for me is Paul says to Timothy, “You devote yourself to these things so that all will see your progress.” And so this kind of complacent, presumptive knowledge would really mean just kind of resting on your work of old. And that’s detrimental to your own holiness, your own growth, your own effectiveness as a teacher. So you got to fight that. But to be honest with you, it’s not so much a fight for me because I love the word. It isn’t just that I love study, but I love the impact of the word in the life of a congregation. So for me it’s always been a lifelong joy—a joyful burden, a joyful privilege. I’ve never sensed complacency creeping in. You can’t plummet the beauty and strength and glory of his word. And so why not give yourself to it fresh each week rather than just assuming you know what this does and get up and roll it out as a professional?

29:36 - Dealing with Discouragement

Matt Tully
Maybe last question. What would you say to somebody who just finished teaching in some context, and even though they worked really hard with that, they do feel pretty discouraged? They’re feeling down about that. How would you encourage them to think and process those feelings?

David Helm
For that kind of thing, a couple things come to mind. One, just remember that you’re not supposed to always get it right. That’s not even Paul’s injunction for Timothy, who is a pastor. He says, “You devote yourselves to these things so that all may see your progress.” All you’ve got to do is make progress. And yeah, we all feel that sometimes—unconsciously incompetent. Or consciously incompetent. Maybe that’s the way the person feels. “I am consciously incompetent at this work.” Well, that’s good to know. Don’t beat yourself up. You just keep making strides. You realize that even every meal people make isn’t always a great meal, but it sustains them for the week. And so I would just tell the person to stop the self-reflection in a way that almost can be self-pity. And ask yourself this: Am I really looking for adulation? Is that what I’m seeking when I tell somebody, “Oh, that was terrible?” Am I really looking for adulation? Well, that’s wrong. That’s weird. So know yourself. Be an adult. An adult is moving on. What’s next? I never evaluate myself on the basis of one task. So just keep going. But you don’t want to be a secretly needy person by the kind of responses you’re trying to require from your listener or the kind of feeling you think God’s supposed to give you while you’re teaching. All those things are subjective. But do the work, and you’ll make progress.

Matt Tully
David, thank you so much for walking us through some of your reflections and your wisdom when it comes to teaching the Bible. I think you’ve offered a lot of encouragement and principles for those of us who are still growing and learning and all of that.

David Helm
It’s good to be here, and I’m really excited for the person that somebody has tapped you on the shoulder and said, “Hey, can you teach the Bible this week?” Wow. What an opportunity. What a privilege. Take it and enjoy it.

Matt Tully
Yes, for sure. Thank you.

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