Our friend, Christi Harlan, has written a new book based on Sunday School lessons given by President Jimmy Carter when he was a member of First Baptist Church of the City of Washington, D.C. Here is a description of the book from a church email:

First Baptist Member and noted reporter Christi Harlan has published a new book, Mr. President, the Class is Yours. Harlan’s book presents transcripts from 14 Sunday school lessons Carter presented to a couples Bible class at First Baptist while president. Titles range from “Jesus and the Holy Spirit” and “Facing Life’s Tensions” to “One Gospel for All People” and “Following Jesus’ Example.”

The transcripts were taken from recordings of Carter’s teaching discovered in church archives and include question-and-answer moments with students, good-natured ribbing with fellow teacher Fred Gregg and the president’s concordance-like recall of Scripture.

When I told my mother about the book, she asked how it was possible for President Carter to teach Sunday School when he was president. Surely, he must have been too busy with his presidential duties to prepare Sunday School lessons!

I replied that President Carter was a lifelong student of the Bible, having been raised in a Baptist church and remaining active in churches throughout his life. Teaching Sunday School was a natural outgrowth of his continued Bible studies. Of course, he did not have time to teach Sunday School every week when he was president. But occasionally, he did fill in for the regular teacher.

President and Mrs. Carter were active members of First Baptist Church, along with their daughter, the four years that he was president. The church is located on 16th Street NW, just seven blocks north of the White House. The Secret Service provided security for the Carter family when they came to church. The family sat in the same pew for worship, and President Carter taught the couples class in the back balcony of the sanctuary, again for security purposes.

In the book Christi provides transcripts for 14 of the lessons that President Carter taught at First Baptist, along with some historical context for each of the lessons. In other words, Christi tells what was going on in our country and in the life of the president when he taught the lessons.

If studying the Bible, and then teaching about the Bible, was important for a president of the United States, then Bible study must be important for all Christians.

That is one of the premises behind my series of Bible study books, Spelunking Scripture. To date, four books in the series have been published: Christmas, The Letters of Paul, Acts and the General Epistles of the New Testament, and Easter. All of the books seek to go beneath the surface and explore important passages of the Bible.

Another premise of the series is that not all passages of the Bible are of equal value. Simply put, some passages are more important than others. The verses for study in each of the books are among those I consider to be some of the most important passages in the Bible.

After he was president, Jimmy Carter continued to teach about the Bible in his church in Plains, Georgia. Many visitors came to Plains specifically to attend the Sunday School lessons that he taught. We are grateful to Christi for compiling some of those lessons that he taught at First Baptist in a book that can engage many more people with his Bible studies.