Having been a college student for more than half a decade (oi!), I understand what the methods of education look like.
And having experienced group therapy, I understand what the methods of life-adjustment look like.
It's like the difference between going to class (former) and going to the gym (latter). Then I look at a typical mid-week class at my home church and ask, What is the goal here?
For most classes, the goal is to adjust and maintain one's daily life.
The methods used, however, are usually strictly educational. I think that this is what results in an epidemic of cliche, cookie-cutter, heard-it-a-million-times weekly bible lessons that seek a very active goal of changing lives, but use very passive educational methods. Ultimately, these kinds of bible studies neither educate nor change lives. At least not for most of the attenders. Arguably, group therapy could be called a form of education. But until I get my terminology hammered out, let's not complicate things. Let me explain what I think would be more effective: For your typical mid-week maintaining-your-Christian-faith bible study, I think it would be more effective to model this after support groups. Is that not what these classes are doing anyways? What this means is that participants of this class will have the option of discussing their personal experiences, the option to participate in weekly group assignments, the option to participate in prayer-partner systems, etc. That's the kind of thing that will boost a person's faith, not a once-a-week koom-bay-ya (sp?). And all of those little things would be optional, so a person who likes the koom-bay-ya can have it as koom-bay-ya as they want it.
I digress.
The point here is to use community to instill and maintain real change - like in group therapy. The way that we currently do things is more like how my college classes were: The teacher lectures a little, and then there is some discussion. For effectively getting people to adjust and maintain their spiritual lives, I think this is limited. Given a proper goal, however, I think that this can be very effective. For example, I think that this college-class method would be very good if, say, the teacher of the adult mid-week bible study wanted to give attenders some background info on biblical archaeology to enrich their understanding of the scriptures. Will they adjust their lives as a direct result of this information? I doubt it. But that is not the purpose of the class. That is the purpose of other classes that are modeled differently for their different goals. Anyways If a class is meant to influence students' daily lives, then it should use methods and strategies that encourage daily growth.
If a class is meant to enrich students' perspectives, then it should use methods and strategies that encourage the free exchange of information. I believe that while the professed goal of most bible studies is to influence daily lives, it is the methods of daily growth that are strangely missing. | 
