Category: Bible Usage

Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience was created to be read in community, but we are often asked “where do I even start?” Our friends at the Institute for Bible Reading share some tips on how to read the Bible as a group.

5 Tips for Reading the Bible in Community//

So many of us are getting into the Word of God in personal study. This is important, but we often forget the importance of coming together as a community and reading God’s Word together like they did in the early church. Communal Bible reading is at the heart of Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience. Read what Glenn Paauw, Institute for Bible Reading, has to say about getting back to our early church roots and reading the Bible in community.

How did early Christians learn and pass on their traditions about Jesus and his teachings? What did the first communities of Jesus followers do to maintain the authenticity of their understanding of the meaning of his work, and its continuity to new generations? Further, what place did the growing collection of apostolic writings to scattered churches have in first century Christian gatherings?

For some time the academic study of early Christianity has maintained an emphasis on the role of oral tradition and social memory in the initial spread and growth of the new Jesus movement. It was assumed that due to things like the scarcity of both writing materials and professional readers, actual communal reading from sacred texts must have been somewhat rare and limited especially to more urban areas, at least until later in the second century.

But now there is an increasing recognition that early Christianity, like the Judaism from which it was born, was a “bookish” religion through and through. (See our earlier article How the First Christians Challenge Us to Be Bible Readers.) Larry Hurtado, a New Testament scholar and historian of early Christianity, has been a key voice helping us explore the evidence for this more closely. His books Destroyer of the Gods (2016) and The Earliest Christian Artifacts(2006) have directly examined this theme. Brian Wright’s new book continues this effort to bring more clarity to our understanding of the place of reading in the earliest church.

Wright’s key point is that communal reading was geographically widespread and that such reading was a way of avoiding any serious alterations in the traditions and teachings of the first Christians.

There are two backgrounds to this: first, the fact that public reading was a common feature of life across much of the Roman Empire. Letters, proclamations, poetry, and the great literary sagas of the time were all frequently read in public places. These did have a kind of performance aspect to them, but the point is that they were not performed from memory, but rather read aloud from written texts.

The second key background is of course the Jewish matrix from which Christianity emerged. Just as the Jews met and read the Scriptures together regularly, so did the early Christians. (See the chapter “Sharing Our Synagogue Bible” in my book Saving the Bible from Ourselves.)

Wright’s book is an important piece of detailed, collected evidence from the first century, in both the broader Roman culture and in specifically Christian settings. He includes chapters on relevant social, economic, and political factors, arguing that all of these were actually conducive to the widespread practice of public reading, making it a familiar feature of life for everyone. In the case of the Christian communities, it’s more clear than we’ve realized that the New Testament documents themselves are filled with evidence that they were expected to be widely shared and then publicly read.

In short, a standard part of the experience of the first Christians was the public, out-loud reading of the founding documents of the faith.

Should We Recover Communal Reading Today?

Of course most of the first Christians didn’t have any opportunity to own a personal copy of the Scriptures, and the preponderance of evidence remains that most people could not even read or write. But they were experienced, focused listeners, and this served them well. Christian formation in the early church was centered on immersion in the story of God, Israel, and the world as found in the sacred writings, both old and new. This tangible, practical focus on the Scriptures also helped ensure the integrity of the message over time.

But what about us?

In the modern era we’ve largely turned away from the early Christian practice of communal immersion in the Scriptures. Reading and study of the Bible is largely done individually, surrounded by all manner of reference-type helps, commentary, and devotional aids. The research evidence is clear that this is not working as an overall strategy for Bible engagement. People report that reading alone in this way is complicated and overwhelming. In short, it’s hard. And as a result, folks admit they’re not doing it much.

The consequences have been serious for both private and public expressions of the faith. Unfamiliarity with the Big Story has produced Christians who don’t really have a good chance of living into the story in our contemporary setting because they don’t know who they are or where they came from.

There is no shortcut to this biblical knowledge. It comes only from sustained attention to our founding narratives, letters, songs, and wisdom. It comes from reading big and reading whole, not piecemeal sampling.

So what if we were to reclaim the practice and simplicity of the early Christ-followers?

What if we were to rediscover the unique value of communal reading of the Bible?

There have been a number of shifts in the nature of congregational life in recent history. A new emphasis on small groups, a move toward contemporary music and worship styles, and others. Why couldn’t we commit to similarly shifting how and when and where we engage the Bible? What new kinds of communal encounters can we imagine? What new forms of public reading and dialogue around the text can we envision? There are lots of different kinds of churches, lots of different ways this might look.

A commitment to biblical fluency should be at the center of every church’s life.

We can all ask: What could my community do?

by Kevin O’Brien, brand manager for Study Bibles and Bible Reference at Tyndale House Publishers.

Sometimes it all seems like too much. Life presses in, and I am going to implode under the pressure.

It’s not supposed to be like that.

I know better.

I mean, I really know better. Not sort of, not I think so. For real.

I was in church before I was a week old. Gave my life to Christ before I started school and was always the “good kid,” whatever that means. Sure, I had my doubts in junior high and was silently, scarily rebellious in high school. I am by nature a skeptic. Faith comes hard for me. And yet I believe. I went to a Christian college, changed my major to pastoral studies my freshman year, went on to seminary for two master’s degrees, and did some more grad school in theology after that.

Knowledge. Got it.

I’ve built my life on the Bible. On the idea of the Bible. On the knowledge that it not only matters, it’s true. Really true. Stake-your-life-on-it true.

Still, for twenty years I have been haunted by a question a professor asked after I had given a short sermon in a preaching class: “Kevin, you clearly have the text. My question is, does the text have you?”

How do you answer that question? How do you know?

Life, not the classroom. That’s how.

My second son was diagnosed with autism at 4 years old.

What do you do with that? Does the foundation hold? Do I really believe? Did I simply get over my rebellious phase and follow the path that a good firstborn child follows or did something capture me? I have asked myself that question a lot over the past decade. I have wondered in silence and loneliness—and very much out loud as well. I have had my doubts and defeats, stress and helplessness along the way.

I cannot fix this. Not by a long shot. I cannot fix it for my son or my wife or my other children. I cannot fix the past or the present or the future.

But I can trust. I can hope. And I have since the beginning, since the day that we first heard the word “autism” attached to Nathan’s name. The day I came face to face with the reality that I actually do believe this stuff—God has captured me. But the pressure remains. Autism hasn’t magically vanished.

I have all this training in the Bible and it can still be hard for me to catch a glimpse of what God is up to sometimes. Still its truth has worked its way down into my very soul. Sometimes in surprising ways. Like the day we first heard “autism” and I didn’t panic. Didn’t cry out, “Why me?” I was able to say, “That’s Nate.” Not because I am better or more spiritual or even just numb. But because I actually believe this stuff. I believe that God is who the Bible says he is. That he is for us. That he wants us. That he is big enough to take care of the things that we cannot see past.

Hebrews 4:12 tells us that the word of God is alive and powerful.

I have known this all my life. I have caught glimpses along the way. But it took Nate’s diagnosis to truly open my eyes to just how powerful God’s Word really is. To open my eyes to the fact that this living word points me to the Word—the one who doesn’t just save me from or for some future moment but in the messiness of the here and now. In the mundane routines of life. In the expectations and failures and hopes and dreams and, yes, even in autism. This message has sunk down into me, however imperfectly. It matters.

That’s why I make Bibles. I want to help people to see what is going on in its pages, to drink deeply of its message and hear its call. Ken Taylor, who created The Living Bible and started Tyndale, was often asked what the best Bible was. His reply was always the same: “The one you read.”

It’s often easier for us to say we believe the Bible than to actually read it. We half remember Bible stories from our childhood (and would be shocked at what is really in—and not in—them), we struggle over hard names and wonder what the point of Leviticus is anyway. Sometimes it just feels too hard. Study is for people who went to seminary and who know Greek. It’s stuffy and boring and takes the mystery and wonder out of our faith. It doesn’t help when people like me with years of training are tempted to turn the Bible into a textbook. You know, the kind of book you are supposed to read but don’t? The kind that bewilders and puts you to sleep?

It doesn’t have to be that way. It shouldn’t be that way. The Word of God is alive and powerful. We need constant reminders. Nate has been one for me. But even so, it’s easy to get caught in the routine, the day to day.

For the past couple of years I have gotten to be a part of an amazing project. We started with Taylor’s simple premise and asked ourselves, what would it take for people to want to study the Bible?

Not textbook study. Love-letter study.

The kind of study that sinks down in so that when life happens we have an anchor, not an answer.

What if we used color and photography, images and art to open our eyes to what God is up to?

I got to be a part of a team that went through the entire Bible asking what we should (and could) illustrate well. I got to rediscover the wonder of this thing we call the Bible, watching firsthand as each of us caught a glimpse of the breadth and the depth of God’s love for us. Remembering that this is his world, that he invites us to be a part of it. He carries us home when we wander, tells the father of an autistic child that yes, he can handle this, too.

I want to help people understand what the Bible is all about. Because in all of my crazy, messed-up life, in all of my knowledge and doubt and fear and wonder, I believe it is true.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, I also got a reminder that the process is never done. Every day I have to open my eyes in wonder.

Open my eyes to see the wonderful truths in your instructions.

                                                                                  Ps. 119:18

Check out the Illustrated Study Bible

Kevin O’Brien is a nerd. A full-blown liked school, stayed there far too long, Dr. Who–loving, bookworm sort of nerd. Who also won the lottery when he married a former cheerleader. (Yes, it really can happen.) He also happens to love hockey enough that he married a Canadian former cheerleader. He is a father to three kids, an ordained minister who currently serves as an elder at his church in the far western suburbs of Chicago, and a brand manager on the Bible team at Tyndale House Publishers (which is a fancy way of saying he does product development and marketing all rolled into one). He served as managing editor for the Illustrated Study Bible.

This was originally written in 2016.

We are excited that the most recent volume of Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience has been released. Immerse: Poets presents the poetical books of the First Testament divided into two groupings.

Songs:

• Psalms
• Lamentations
• Song of Songs

Wisdom:

• Proverbs
• Ecclesiastes
• Job

These writing all reflect the daily, down-to-earth faith of God’s people as they live out their covenant relationship with him in worship and wise living.

Experience Immerse: Poets.

Find out more about our partners at the Institute for Bible Reading

by Alex Goodwin, Institute for Bible Reading

Barb and Glenn Martin have spent much of their lives in the education field — Barb as a faculty member at Bethel University, Glenn as a teacher, coach, and high-school principal. They both love the Word of God, faithfully participating in Bible studies and programs at their church in Roseville, MN.

When they heard about Immerse, Barb said, “It immediately captured our hearts and attention. so we thought, ‘let’s pilot it at church. If we can get a green light from our pastoral staff, we thought getting into the Word of God and doing it in the way that the Immerse program has been written would be a great way to get into the Bible with some folks from church and see where it goes.’”

Barb and Glenn’s group recently finished reading through the New Testament together using Immerse: Messiah, so I caught up with them to see how it went.

Tell me about your experience with the Bible prior to Immerse.

Glenn: I’ve tried to be very diligent in the Word in many ways. For the last five years I’ve been doing the One Year Bible in various ways, most recently chronologically using the Bible app on my phone. I’ve really enjoyed that and have done it faithfully for many years. I have emails that come with topical ways to get in the Word. I’ve been in Men’s groups that have been in the Word doing leadership and discipleship studies. I love the Word of God…but I’ve been excited about Immerse. I’m thinking this really has possibilities for believers and seekers alike.

Barb: In my own study I’ve been slowly working my way from beginning to end in a Bible study program. Women’s studies at church, book studies, that type of thing. When we went to Israel in 2014 we read The Harmony of the Gospels in preparation. That was fun and different from anything I’d done before.

How would you describe your personal experience with Immerse?

Barb: I liked it a lot. The approach and way it was structured was fresh. We started out with Luke and Acts and then Paul’s Letters, and the sequencing of that was very interesting. I really liked the notes at the beginning that gave you an introduction to what you were going to be experiencing – I thought that was very helpful. I did like the format without the chapter and verse breaks and just reading it like a book! It was fresh. It was interesting.

I also liked the fact that we had a range of people who joined our group – some people with great Bible knowledge, some with very little. We read with the four questions in mind and what we’d like to share with the group. It was approachable and it wasn’t threatening. We had the freedom to go off on different tangents, and it was wonderful to see what people picked up on as they were answering those questions themselves. It made you say, “I never took it like that” or, “That’s an interesting thought.” It was really neat to see the Body of Christ at work in the Holy Spirit revealing things to all of us in different places.

Glenn: I echo a lot of that. Additionally, for me personally, I really appreciated the way it caused you to see the flow of Scripture. The flow of Luke to Acts to the letters of Paul – that type of thing. The idea of the Gentile track and the Hebrew track of the New Testament was something I knew about but I hadn’t really read it that way. It helped me see it in a new way—dots that got connected in ways I’d never really fully understood because for the most part I’d read the Bible chronologically every day, but it’s piecemeal, it’s smaller chunks. To have this more global, holistic, 10-thousand-foot view was refreshing and revealed things I hadn’t seen before.

How was your group’s experience?

Glenn: As Barb said, there was varied experience and differing depths of faith. So some of the questions that were raised were really eye-opening for me. One guy asked some questions that seemed obvious at first, but when you stop to really think about it, it’s a very foundational question. It really helped me see the potential of this kind of study with nonbelievers and seekers because it’s really non-threatening. Here’s a book, four questions, what do you think? You don’t have to be a Bible expert, experienced theologian, don’t need a degree, don’t need a concordance to really be blessed by it.

Barb: When we presented this to the group – the reading schedule and everything, there was an element of excitement that in eight weeks we could read the New Testament. It was a fun challenge, and for everyone to say, “Wow, the weeks flew by” and at the end it was really a nice celebration! We did the New Testament in eight weeks! I thought that was a really fun part of it – that we did it together.

What does your future with Immerse look like?

Glenn: A couple of us from the group are heading south for a few months, but the rest of them are continuing with Beginnings and we’re being encouraged to Skype in to the discussions. The group definitely wanted to continue and they actually had their first meeting last night.

Learn more about Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience

Chris Chapman has been practicing law in Southern California for well over a decade. Recently he created Chapman Sports and Entertainment—a full service sports and marketing agency where Chris is a certified agent with both the NFL and NBA. When I talked to him this week, he was on his way to the Pacific Northwest to scout out two college football players for the NFL.

Chris grew up in pastor’s home in Texas and attends Saddleback Church but had never read the New Testament. So when his small group leader at Saddleback Church recommended the group read through Immerse: Messiah, Chris jumped at the chance.

Tell me about your experience with the Bible before Immerse.
Reading the Bible, especially the New Testament, has always been on my bucket list, but when I tried to read I found it cumbersome and overwhelming. I think part of the problem was that I was reading from an older Bible that I got from church when I was a kid. I even downloaded a Bible app thinking that would help, but I found that overwhelming as well.

So how was your experience reading Immerse: Messiah?
Honestly I was a little intimidated at first. I’m not a big reader—I kind of got burned out reading so much in law school. But I was surprised at how easily Immerse read. I liked the layout, and the more contemporary language of the NLT* really helped—although at first I kept going back to my original Bible to make sure Immerse was getting it right. [Author’s note: This is what lawyers do—right?]

As a busy lawyer who’s in court a lot, were you able to keep up with the reading?
Honestly, once I got started reading, it was hard for me to stop. I’d take it to the office with me, and I actually ended up getting ahead of the 8-week reading schedule. I was surprised at how easy it was. I figured I was reading two to three hours a week. The book introductions are brilliant and helped me understand the cultural background and helped put everything in context for the reader.

How important was it that you read Immerse: Messiah with your group?
The group experience was critical. Even though I was enjoying the reading, I’m not sure I’d have kept reading without the group motivation. I really wanted to engage in the conversations when we got together, so the group really kept me on task. The book club approach was also helpful. I’m not looking for more work! So I’d just read and show up.

What were your group conversations like?
The discussions were great! People caught things that I’d missed and vice versa. A number of times we recalled that Pastor Rick had preached on this before, but now we were seeing it as part of the whole. We actually had one of Saddleback’s pastors in our group, and occasionally we’d pick his brain about something we didn’t understand, but because we’d all read about fifty pages that week, everyone had a lot to contribute.

Where do you go from here with the Bible?
I ordered copies of Immerse and sent them to members of my family. And I’m excited that Immerse: Messiah has come out in Spanish! We have relatives in Mexico and want to send them copies as well. Also, as my sports agency grows, I hope to share Immerse with the athletes I’m working with. I don’t want to cram anything down their throats, but I hope to give them a copy when the time is right.

As a group, we’re talking about starting Beginnings. I definitely want to read the Old Testament.

*This is a typical response for people who read the NLT for the first time. Another person said to me: “With the NLT, I spend more time understanding it and less time trying to understand it.”

Find out more about the Institute for Bible Reading

Find out what our partners at the Institute for Bible Reading are talking about and visit ImmerseBible.com to learn more about the Immerse Bible Reading Experience. Read Part 5 of the 6 part series by Bible Scholar Glenn Paauw.

Editors Note: From “No Bible” to “Know Bible” is a 6-part series on the path toward great Bible engagement.

What does it mean to receive the Bible on its own terms? Dynamic, living Bible engagement happens when a community:

• has good access to a well-translated text presented in its natural literary forms,
• regularly feasts together on whole literary units understood in context,
• understands the overall story of the Bible as centered in Jesus, and
• accepts the invitation to take up its own role in God’s ongoing drama of restoration through
  the power of the Spirit.

When the Scriptures are received on their own terms like this they can once again become God’s speech act—instructing, revealing, convicting, judging, comforting, healing, and saving with all their intended power

Part 5: The Heart of the Matter—The Story of God and Us

We’ve been proposing that there are several steps to reaching the goal of great Bible engagement. Everything from the physical presentation to the reading of whole books, and from experiencing the Bible in community to taking note of the Bible’s various contexts. But here’s the single biggest factor: reading the Bible as the grand adventure God made it to be.

All those books in the Bible come together to narrate the world. In concert, they take us through all those ups and downs—big moves forward and devastating setbacks and losses—to disclose the big shape of the story. We learn the beauty and glory of God’s intention in creation, the failure and darkness of human rebellion, and then the long, slow road back to the redemption and flourishing of God’s entire creation.

There are of course lots and lots of messages, big and small, throughout the Bible. We can learn particular truths about all kinds of things—from the proper worship of God to getting along with our neighbors. But overall, the Bible has one exceedingly great goal: to tell us how things are with God and his world.

More than anything else, the Bible is a story.

This has all kinds of implications.

Jesus was once questioned by an expert in the law about what must be done to gain a share in the world to come. Jesus answered the question with one of his own: “What does the Law of Moses say? How do you read it?”

That indeed is the question for us too: How do you read it?

Jesus is teaching us something crucial about the Scriptures right here. The Bible is not some collection of words that simply jump off the page and communicate by themselves. We have to read and interpret them. And we have to read and interpret them well for them to do their proper work in us. Jesus’ question implies there are options.

Unfortunately, many of our current options for reading and interpreting fail to provide the full and compelling meaning the Bible is offering. Too often the Bible is treated in a piecemeal fashion, as if it were a handy reference book for looking up short, infallible answers to all our questions.

But there’s a better way: big reading leads to big meaning. Because God created our world and always intended to interact with us as significant actors within it, the revelation in the Bible moves along with God’s people. If the Bible wants to enter human history as part of God’s mission to transform that history, then it has no choice but to be story. Because story is where we live. We don’t live in information — even good, inspiring, encouraging, or wise information. We always and invariably think of our lives as individual stories within some bigger, overall story.

So the Bible enters the fray of all the competing narratives that are trying to tell us they are the true story of the world. These narratives are actively trying to recruit us every day. Nationalist. Consumerist. Narcissist. Pantheist. There are would-be Master Narratives everywhere. If we don’t read and know the Bible’s story of the world, then we will end up reading the Bible for little snippets of information and bits of spiritual wisdom that we then fit into another controlling narrative that we get from somewhere else.

This is why the centerpiece of our recovery of the Bible is the recovery of the Bible as story. The piecemeal Bible fails to capture imaginations because it is simply too small. This is certainly part of the reason why fewer people, especially fewer younger people, are engaging with the Bible.

The upward journey from a minimalist Bible to being immersed in God’s full revelation takes us from bits to full books then all the way to God’s beautiful saga of world transformation. It is precisely as this surprising and redemptive story that the Bible comes into its own to confront, judge, forgive, save, and restore.

This is the Bible God intends for us. A Bible we know deeply. A Bible filled with people and covenants, with dramatic scenes, rising and falling action, and major movements that all fit into a plot that is taking us somewhere. To know the Bible is to know all these smaller stories that fit into the Story.

This, then, is our itinerary: as we continually feast on whole books, the Story will emerge with greater and greater clarity. And with clarity comes both understanding and invitation. We will begin to understand what God is doing, and then the Bible’s endgame for us will emerge. We will be invited to join him.

Learn more about the Institute for Bible Reading