Mean Girl Bible Study: A Field Guide to Making What You Need

One of the most important, and one of the most fun, things I’ve ever done is create my own Bible study group. 

I know. Stay with me. It’s a wild ride and totally worth it. 

My experience with modern Christianity didn’t start until my late twenties. I didn’t avoid it before then, I just didn’t think it had anything to do with me (which turned out to be wrong, but that’s for another day). Everything I knew up to that point came from the academic side of things and usually involved something ridiculous to use at a dinner party (Lookin’ at you Council of Worms 1521). 

I signed up for the “Read the Bible in a Year” challenge my church was doing, and it quickly became apparent that there needed to be a space for people who don’t thrive in the traditional Bible study envoironment. Not everyone fits in those sterile, but necessary, places where everything stays on the surface, only the instagramable moments get airtime, and where someone (me) is politely asked not to curse while trying to parse out the celestial point of the Hagar story. 

I was listening to Judges 15:4 on the treadmill at the gym (like a normal person) when the narrator said: “So he went out and caught three hundred foxes and tied them tail to tail in pairs. He fastened a torch to every pair of tails.” Excuse me, what? Samson did what?! I was trying to double check what I had heard when I fell off the treadmill. That was the moment ‘Mean Girl Bible Study’ was born. 

One thing to know about me is that I’m not a ‘should’ person. I don’t have room in my brain, or my life, for ‘should’ve, would’ve, could’ve.’ If something needs to exist and it’s in my power to make it, I make it. If it isn’t, I pass it up the chain. Mean Girl Bible Study was one of those things that needed to exist and was well within my power to create. 

I find things with weird or funny names delightful and this was no different. The name ‘Mean Girl Bible Study’ evolved out of both an homage to Tina Fey’s magnificent 2004 screenplay and also the chain of so-called “mean girls” in Scripture who force uncomfortable, yet necessary, change while being written off as villains. Hagar. Tamar. Jael. Jezebel. Women who push the story forward even when nobody’s ready for it.

The premise for my Bible study experiment was straightforward. We would follow the same structure as the ‘Bible in a Year’ challenge, while also creating an environment where anyone could ask the actual questions they had. Where we could discuss the stuff that’s too intense for coffee hour but also way too important to ignore.

Things like:

-How is the story of Hagar not about the systemic exploitation of a woman with no agency?

-Why does Psalms feel like some guy writing sad cave poetry after a breakup while his friends beg him to come outside?

-And I’m sorry, the townsfolk offered WHAT to the angels in Sodom and Gomorrah?

We would meet weekly, usually at a local pub (Bonus: french fries and scotch tend to inspire excellent conversation). I had created a rotation of local clergy and theologians from all kinds of backgrounds and denomonations to sit with us each week to help sort out what needed sorting. There would usually be some good natured yelling, always a lot of laughter, a few tears, but most importantly by the end of the night this group of people felt safer, braver, and more at home in their faith.

Sadly ‘Mean Girl Bible Study’ is on hiatus for now, but the example it set still holds:

Use what you have. 
Make what you need. 
Invite people in. 

And before you know it, the world feels a little bit more steady, a little safer, and a whole lot more loving. For everyone.