Paul and the Amazing Race

How does a budding NT scholar attempt to make the studying of scriptures fun, rewarding and inspiring, all at the same time? This is a difficult and challenging question.

For instance, I have always wondered how to make the teaching of Paul's various missionary journeys as recorded in Acts of the Apostles come alive. For example, one could show a geographical map of the cities visited by Paul and give some background and historical information of each of these cities. However informative this approach might be, it can be rather boring and passive at best, with little or no participation from the audience. How can one expect the audience to appreciate or remember the highlights of Paul's missionary journeys in these cities?

I find some very helpful and interesting ideas for teaching Paul's missionary journeys in the book edited by Mark Roncace and Patrick Gray, Teaching the Bible: Practical Strategies for Classroom Instruction, Resources for Biblical Study 49 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature 2005) as highlighted in a previous post on Classroom Ideas for Teaching the Bible.

With some modifications to suit a younger and non-academic audience, and together with two other "partners-in-crime", we hope to try out the idea of "Paul and the Amazing Race" in one of the meetings of the College and University Group in my church in November.

The whole idea is to borrow from the CBS's show, The Amazing Race, and with the appropriate modifications and some creative imagination, we will run a competition among the participants in tracing one of Paul's missionary journeys (most like the 2nd missionary journey).

While this is not only an interesting but also challenging idea, it does get some of us excited. We have finally nailed down a date to test run this idea. Let's hope that this will present a very fresh and participatory approach to comprehend Paul's missionary journeys by utilising contemporary culture, modern technology and creative imagination.

Hopefully, this will make the teaching of Paul's Missionary journeys more exciting, fun, memorable, and engaging. Ultimately, it is our aim that learning and digging into the Scriptures can be fun and rewarding at the same time, and this project will be a small step to instill some excitement in the hearts of the young adults in wanting to explore further and to dig deeper into the Scriptures for themselves. Hopefully, this will make the Scripture comes alive too for them in a fresh and exciting way.