Regular people are in fact very sophisticated in their ability to decipher the hieroglyphics of modern media discourses. Such exercises will create positive momentum that can carry over when we turn to cultural narratives that are not as familiar to us, as is the case with the Bible. With a little encouragement, we can learn to pay attention to form as well as content in biblical literature, to genre, to plot, character, and setting. We can become mindful of context, including the relations of social power and whose voice is being heard, both in the biblical text and in our world as readers. Everyone can do this - and everyone's input is important.
Bible study is a community venture.
Like any other discipline, it takes practice, devotion, and commitment. And we need to keep the process fun, interactive, and in constant relationship to our concrete situation. A major disincentive to populist Bible study is the experience of seeing so much official disagreement about what the scriptures say. It is a platitude that the Bible can be and has been invoked to justify a myriad of doctrinal and ethical positions - though not, as skeptics assert, any and all positions. Indeed, scripture is often used in both church and society on different sides of a disputed issue, as is the case currently, for example, regarding the rights of sexual minorities.