ONLINE BIBLE STUDY GUIDE

While we are on in this continued state of emergency we want to provide you with tools for your continued study and growth in God’s Word.

The guide provided here is from “A Longer Look at the Lessons” which we use here at Trinity for our Sunday Morning Bible Study. It will take you through the Readings used during our Sunday Worship Services, giving you additional insights into their meaning.

Current Study Guide for the Easter Season
Easter Sunday-Ascension; April 4-May 16, 2021
Bible Study Guide Easter 2021

Also still available:
Bible Study Guide Lent 2021

Some words of explanation…

This study is presented for each Sunday in two sections: the Study Guide and Leader’s Guide.

The Study Guide will lead you through each Sunday’s Scriptures: Gospel, Old Testament, Epistle. (The Gospel is presented first as it is the main reading which carries the theme of the day; the Old Testament is selected to complement the theme of the Gospel; and the Epistle during the Pentecost Season is a semi-continuous reading through the letters of the New Testament.)

Following all of the Study Guides, you will find the Leader’s Guide materials. These give the “answers” for the questions found in each study. These have been included for you, not to “give you the answers”, but rather to guide and deepen your own personal reflection with these thoughts from Pastor Ken Behnken, the author of the study.

What are “Propers”?
In the “green seasons” of the Church Year (the Sundays after Epiphany in the winter; the Sundays after Pentecost in the summer and fall), are known in many places as “Ordinary Time”. “Ordinary” is used here, not in the sense of “common” or “usual”, but rather as in “counted”. Each year, the Sundays in the Festival Seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter take up a “regularly scheduled” amount of Sundays. The Sundays in “Ordinary Time” fill up the remainder of the Sundays left in the year, determined by the date of Easter. This is why there can be in any given year anywhere between 4 to 9 Sundays after Epiphany (any unused Sundays in this season, other than the First and Last Sundays, are skipped), and anywhere from 23 to 28 Sundays after Pentecost.

The “Propers” used during the Season after Pentecost are scheduled according to the calendar, set by dates that a Sunday may fall between. And by using this schedule, we skip over any “unneeded” Sundays at the beginning of the season and continue straight through the appointed course of readings to the End of the Church Year. This system is different from previous Lectionaries used by our congregation, where the opposite was done: one began on the Second Sunday after Pentecost (the Feast of the Holy Trinity is always the First Sunday after Pentecost), and continue through until either three weeks before the Last Sunday or the Last Sunday itself, skipping over any unneeded Sundays at the end of the Lectionary.

You can see a listing of the Lectionary Readings in the front of the pew edition of Lutheran Service Book on pages xiv-xix. This year, 2020, we are in the Year A Lectionary cycle, and the Season after Pentecost begins with the readings for Proper 6 on the Second Sunday after Pentecost. (A copy of the current Church Year Calendar and Lectionary is available from our Synod’s website here.)