Student Reflections on Immerse
Bible teacher Nathan Smith has been using Immerse in his classes at South Christian High School for over a year. After trying Immerse at Calvin Christian High School and seeing the impact it had on his students, Nathan became convinced that the organic reading experience and “book club” discussion model needed to be incorporated into whatever Bible classes he taught.
Nathan has become a good friend of ours, and he blesses us by periodically passing along feedback he receives from his students about Immerse. He’s probably sent us more than two dozen quotes over the last year or so, and we wanted to share a few of our favorites. God is at work!
“I would occasionally decide to read the bible, then I would start from Genesis because I felt like I had to. Then I would get kind of bored because the whole creation part was something that I heard over and over my whole life. So I would flip the pages for some time then maybe go for a snack, then forget about it. This time, however, was different. The Bible, for instance, wasn’t what I was so used to. It didn’t have a black leather cover, it didn’t even have chapters and verses! It was so different, it felt like I was reading a book. A story. And that is what the Bible actually is, and the Beginnings Bible helped me a lot to recognize them.” -Freshman
“I have enjoyed reading the Beginnings Bible. I have grown up reading the Bible, but I let it come in one ear and go out the other because it just doesn’t resonate with me. However, ever since I have started reading the beginnings Bible on a daily basis I have been able to just fall into the story and actually remember what I have been reading so that I can learn from it.” -Freshman
“I realized that I never knew some of these stories existed before I read them without skipping in between stories. It was very eye opening to read what the life of Jesus was like in more depth and detail.” – Sophomore
“I liked reading without chapters and verses because it made it flow easier. When I read the Bible it is always hard for me to understand and I usually don’t really get a lot from it unless someone explains it to me. But when I read it this way it became a lot easier to read.” – Freshman
“One thing that definitely stood out to me throughout the reading is that I understood the content better. It was easier for me to comprehend and understand what I was reading in story-form. After reading the entire book, I was able to connect the dots of the sequence of events in the first five books of the bible.” – Freshman
“Reading through the whole New Testament was really a cool experience because it’s something that I usually would never do…It fascinated me on how much of the New Testament is letters to certain different churches. I had known that there were books in the Bible that were letters but I had never known truly how many of them were letters and that we could learn a lot from them.” – Junior
“I’ve grown up reading the Bible, going to a Christian School, and going to Sunday school. I thought that I already knew most of what the Bible was about, little did I know that I would be learning more and more each book.” – Freshman
“I found it easier to read and stay engaged while reading the old testament in book form instead of in the Bible. I love to read and it felt like I was reading a chapter book and it was easier to understand because the Bible can be pretty confusing. Reading the Bible, it is disengaging for me and this version was not.” – Freshman
