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Prepared Bible study curriculum is nice, but sometimes adult groups like to chart their own course, to study a Bible book without prepackaged questions.

When Louis Haase was at First Presbyterian Church in Toledo, Ohio, and later at Gibson City, Illinois, he found a way to benefit from resources while enjoying free-form discussion.

"Adults want some sort of study aid," he says, "but we thought there could be a better way than the church buying everyone the same book."

His suggestion: get a different commentary for each couple in the class. Haase would go to a Christian bookstore and buy several different laymen's commentaries on the specific Bible book the adult class was going to study. ("We found Barclay and the Laymen's Bible Book Commentary especially helpful," he says.) Then he'd deal them out. Sometimes people in the class also had commentaries at home they'd never gotten around to using, and this gave them the opportunity to discover the treasures already on their shelves.

"The wide variety of viewpoints and writing styles made for lively discussion," says Haase. "We'd have one person summarize the approach of his or her commentary. Then everyone else would compare and contrast. Soon 31 theological flavors had been sampled.

"Of course, the leader has to be a person comfortable with a variety of viewpoints."

When the class was over, books purchased by the church were placed in the church library. That way:

• The library acquired some in-depth Bible study aids.

• Adults were already familiar with the scope of the library's reference works.

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