Every week, Adventists around the world study the same Sabbath School lesson. This section offers a short commentary on each lesson, written from African experience, for members and teachers to use in their classes.
How each commentary works
- The lesson. A short summary of what the whole church is studying that week.
- Read from Africa. What the passage means in African settings, with examples from church and community life.
- For your class. Three questions a teacher can put to the class on Sabbath morning.
Why read Scripture from where we stand
Gerald West, of the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, has spent decades on Contextual Bible Study, in which trained readers and ordinary believers read the Bible together and bring their own lives to the text. In The Academy of the Poor (1999) he argued that such communities read Scripture with insights that scholars often miss.
The Sabbath School class is one of the oldest forms of this kind of reading in the Adventist church: members gathered around a passage, asking what it means for their week. Our commentary aims to strengthen that conversation, not to replace it.
Write a commentary
If you teach a Sabbath School class or study the lesson closely, we would like to hear from you. See Write for us.
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