Thanksgiving Bible Study Discussion Questions That Go Beyond the Obvious Answers
Thanksgiving may be one of the easiest Bible study lessons to prepare.
And one of the hardest to teach well.
The problem isn't finding something the Bible says about thankfulness. There's plenty. The problem is familiarity.
Most of the adults in our classes already know they're supposed to be thankful. They've heard the ten lepers.
They've read Psalm 100.
They've probably been asked, "What are you thankful for?" more Thanksgivings than they can remember.
So how do we have a fresh conversation about something everybody already knows?
I think part of the answer is in the questions we ask.
Thanksgiving Bible Study Discussion Questions Can Take Us Somewhere New
A good discussion question doesn't necessarily require an unfamiliar passage.
Sometimes it simply helps us notice something in a familiar truth that we haven't thought much about.
And thankfulness has more dimensions than we sometimes give it credit for.
It touches how we respond to hardship.
It affects how we think about what we have.
It can even affect what we're willing to give away.
Here are three Thanksgiving Bible study discussion questions that can take a familiar truth somewhere new.
1. What Have We Stopped Noticing?
James 1:17 reminds us that every good gift ultimately comes from God.
That's familiar territory.
So we could ask our class to name some of God's blessings.
But here's the question from one of my Thanksgiving lessons that I'd rather ask:
What "good and perfect gifts" have you received from God this year? Which have you overlooked?
It's those last four words that interest me.
Which have you overlooked?
I can probably make a list of the big things I'm thankful for without thinking very hard.
But what have I gotten so accustomed to that I no longer recognize it as God's provision?
Maybe gratitude isn't always a matter of receiving something new.
Sometimes it's seeing something old again.
2. What Happens to Gratitude When Life Isn't Going Well?
First Thessalonians 5:18 says:
"In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you."
That's considerably easier to teach when everybody in the room is having a pretty good year.
But if your class is normal, that's unlikely.
Somebody has lost a spouse.
Somebody's worried about a child.
Somebody's waiting for test results.
Somebody has a job he doesn't know whether he'll still have next month.
So one of the questions in the series asks:
What makes it hardest for you to be thankful right now? How could this verse guide you?
Notice what we're not doing.
We're not explaining away Paul's instruction because life is difficult.
But we're also not pretending that giving thanks in difficult circumstances is easy.
We're putting the difficulty and the Scripture on the table at the same time.
That can lead to a very different Thanksgiving conversation.
3. What Does Thankfulness Make Us Do?
Barna found that 65% of practicing Christians who have experienced generosity say they're motivated to model generosity toward other people.
But I wonder if there's something else going on, too . . .
My guess is that people who have genuinely needed help sometimes understand generosity differently from those of us who've always had enough.
If you've ever wondered how you were going to pay the electric bill, a bag of groceries doesn't look quite the same as it does to somebody with a full pantry.
I can't prove that's what's happening. But it makes sense to me that receiving something when you really need it might make you more sensitive to someone else's need later.
And maybe that's part of the connection Paul is making between gratitude and generosity. So here's the question from the series:
How does gratitude overflow into generosity according to Paul?
Thankfulness can become generosity.
And now our Thanksgiving lesson has moved beyond How thankful am I?
What difference does my gratitude make?
Familiar Scripture Doesn't Have to Produce a Familiar Conversation
I don't think we need to go searching for obscure Bible passages just to make Thanksgiving feel fresh. And we certainly don't need to manufacture some surprising new interpretation of a familiar passage. Scripture doesn't need our help being interesting.
But sometimes our questions do.
There's a difference between asking a question that checks whether people understood the passage and one that helps them wrestle with its implications.
We need both.
But if every question has an answer everybody in the room already knows, we shouldn't be surprised when the conversation feels predictable.
This Week's One Change
Take a look at the Thanksgiving lesson you're planning to teach.
Find one question you're pretty sure your class will answer quickly.
Don't necessarily remove it.
Instead, add a follow-up question: What could I ask next that would make them think about this truth personally?
Sometimes that second question is where the real conversation begins.
Three Questions Here. About Fifty in the Complete Series.
I've given you three of the actual questions from my five-lesson Thankfulness Bible Study Discussion Series in this article.
Use them. That's why they're here.
But there are about 50 discussion questions in the complete series, covering five different biblical conversations about thankfulness.
And the complete series isn't just a list of questions.
Each lesson includes the Scripture passages, a short teaching introduction at the top to help frame the study, and Personal Application material designed to help move the conversation from what Scripture says toward what we're going to do about it.
So you can use one complete lesson for Thanksgiving Sunday. You can use whole lessons during the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving. Or you can pull individual questions into whatever curriculum you're already teaching.
I've already done the question-writing and much of the preparation for you.
Because the challenge with Thanksgiving isn't finding something biblical to say about gratitude.
It's helping people who have heard it before see it again.
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