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Introduction

This resource book is a collection of Bible studies presented at various programs of the World Student Christian Federation Asia-Pacific (WSCF A-P) over a period of time.

The desire to collect the Bible study materials began with the Human Resources Development '89 program. It was at this program that the WSCF A-P had highlighted the need for "doing theologies in Asia from the perspectives of young people, women and students." This need also sprang from the observation that many of the SCMs lack basic biblical knowledge to help them understand social reality and to equip them to participate in its transformation. And in response to such need, the content of HRD '89 was geared towards deepening the biblical-theological foundations of the faith of the participants and towards linking these with social justice issues and involvement. Hence, the HRD '89 included ten sessions of intensive study of both the Bible and social reality.

From then on, however, this focus of relating faith and action and deepening them through a new reading of both the Bible and reality have become an integral component of other WSCF A-P programs including its committee meetings. And, thus, the collection of Bible study materials with this focus continued.

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One material included in this collection was presented at a grassroots women's leadership formation program of the Christian Conference of Asia-Urban Rural Mission. This material, now entitled "Judith: A Paradigm of Faith and Steadfastness," reflects the same focus and is relevant to the WSCF A-P constituency. We therefore asked the CCA-URM, one of our partner organizations, to allow us to include this material in this resource book.

Most of the Bible study materials were, in their original form, written or presented as input and then ended up with participants raising questions during the discussion. Two of the materials, now entitled "The Early Church as the Faith Community" and "Jesus and the Faith of Women in the Gospels," included creative and participatory methods of facilitating the study sessions. Such creative methods have proven to be good icebreakers and to encourage participants to take active part in the study.

In that similar interest of encouraging wider and active participation among the learners/users, as well as ensuring that the study is not just a mental exercise, the editors have taken the liberty of providing similar participatory methods to all the other presentations. However, these are just suggested starters and procedures. We encourage users of this resource book to adopt, revise, or modify these according to their need. Better still, we urge them to come up with their own creative methods in the light of their respective contexts and to always aim for wholistic approaches to studying the Bible — i.e. those which touch not only the mind, but also, the feeling and the behavior or action of learners. After all, that's what studying the Bible is meant to do - to transform the whole of ourselves that we may be empowered to transform the world in which we live.

We hope this resource book will contribute something of value to the cause of reading both the Bible and our social reality

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with new eyes and new perspective. Furthermore, we hope this will inspire young people, students, the SCMers, and friends to continue to deepen their faith and action together.

Finally, we express our gratefulness to the writers of the Bible studies whose efforts at relating faith and reality and at sharing these with the WSCF A-P served as one of our sources of inspiration at producing this resource book. We are equally grateful to our very own WSCF A-P support staff, Violet John and Iris Li, who painstakingly facilitated the collating, computing, laying-out and proofreading of the materials. We also thank Harsha Basna-yake for helping with the final proofreading.

Yong Ting Jin

October 1992

Hong Kong