Four tips for successful Discovery Bible Studies

11 September 2025

Discovery Bible Study (DBS) is a great way to help people engage with the word of God, but not every DBS group successful. Here are a set of four tips which can help with that.

Tip 1: Engage the interested

One of the questions we often get asked is “Can I use Discovery Bible Studies to bring my husband/daughter/friend to faith?” Unfortunately the answer is not a straight “yes”. The Discovery Bible Study Method is excellent when the people engaging in the studies are genuinely seeking or interested. If they are not, then it is much harder to engage them.

If there is someone you desperately want to see come to faith, the main thing to do is keep praying for them. Ask God to give them spiritual hunger. Trying to force them to do a study that they are not really interested in will probably be counter-productive.

“When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’”

Luke 10: 8-9 (NIV)

When Jesus sent out the seventy-two he told them to look for people who welcomed them. The spiritually open are far more likely to respond than those who are closed off.

We should not be discouraged by people who are not interested. If we keep looking we will find people who are. They are much more likely to engage with the process and benefit from the group. They may even spark the interest of others. We have heard stories of people runing a DBS with a group whilst their uninterested husband was in the room. After a while he was joining in.

Tip 2: Study in a group

A lot of evangelism techniques focus on one-to-one engagement. When we have someone who is interested we are often keen to forge ahead and start with just them. In some circumstances this can be essential. If we wait to engage people, we can miss the opportunity. If we are never going to see that person again, then why not start immediately.

Despite this, when using DBS it is always better to engage a group rather than an individual. Asking the person if there are other people who are interested is a good way to start.

Groups are much stronger than individual studies for a number of reasons.

• Group memory is much better than individual memory. When asking people to retell the story a group will remember much more than an individual, and this helps individuals to process and remember the story
• Group understanding goes deeper. Different people have different insights which help unlock the text. One person may understand something the others do not
• Groups encourage each other to keep coming along and to stick to their I will statements. Hearing each other’s stories of how things are going can spur people on.
• Often a group discussion will draw the less engaged people in. They become interested despite themselves.
• It is also much easier to achieve the following tip in a group context.

Tip 3: Allow the text to speak for itself

As you study the bible with others, its is inevitable that they will have questions. In order for the studies to work as well as possible it is best not to get into the habit of answering all of them.

The dangers of answering every question are:

• it stops people thinking for themselves
• it creates dependence on you as a leader
• it makes people think that they do not have the expertise to run a group themselves

Instead of answering the question there are number of things you can do:

• throw the question back to the group. “What does anyone else think about this?”
• refer the question back to the text “What does the passage have to say about this?”
• if the passage doesn’t directly address the question ask “Can we look at that another time?”

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

Luke 10: 25-26

Jesus approach to questions was often to tell a story, or ask another question. People remember much more if they discover it for themselves. If you teach it to them they are more likely to dismiss it, or forget it.

Tip 4: Keep trying

“He called out to them, “Friends, haven’t you any fish?”
“No,” they answered.
He said, “Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.”

John 21: 5-6

Not every DBS succeeds. There are a multitude of reasons why, and many of them are probably nothing to do with us. So if it doesn’t work out, try again with another group. There are lots of people out there who are searching. We’ll never find them if we don’t look.