We’re an Action-Oriented Think Tank working to change the way the world reads the Bible.
Think tank because we take research and learning seriously. We listen and work closely with the best voices in Christian scholarship who are doing vital work to understand what the Bible is and how to read it well. Unfortunately, much of their work stays in the echo chamber of the academic realm and rarely reaches the average Christian in the pew.
Action-Oriented because we use our learnings from the scholars to create real, tangible resources that help ordinary Christians read and understand the Bible. We then mobilize a better Bible engagement paradigm, educating and training Christian communities on reading the Bible well.
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Our Bible Engagement Model
1. A Bible Made for Reading
It starts with a new form of the Bible. Modern Bibles are packed with chapter and verse numbers, cross-references, section headings, and footnotes, all of which are relatively new features within the Bible’s history. These additions can be helpful for some things, but in many ways they make they act of reading much more difficult.
The most natural thing to do with the Bible is read it at length and immerse yourself in the text. So we created a Bible that removes all of the modern additives and instead displays text in a beautiful single-column setting, inviting the reader to jump in and get lost in the story.
2. Formative New Reading Practices
Having a newly formatted Bible is a great start, but we also need to shift our reading practices. There are three bad habits that have become normative in modern western Bible culture:
- We read in fragments
- We read without context
- We read alone
So we created Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience, a groundbreaking program that invites whole communities into new habits of reading big, reading real, and reading together. It’s less like a Bible study, more like a book club.
3. Ongoing New Tools and Resources
We believe the journey with the Scriptures is a lifelong one, so we’re committed to continually equipping people with resources to read the Bible well. Beyond a new Bible format and new reading practices, we help them understand how the different genres of Biblical literature work, how the books of the Bible fit together to form a grand narrative, and much more.
The more we immerse ourselves in the Scriptures and read them well, the more we will come to know God and his work, be remade in the image of Christ, and live our lives as part of God’s story of redemption. We walk alongside people throughout that journey, helping them to read the Bible for all it’s worth.
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The Institute for Bible Reading is a part of Our Daily Bread Ministries, a global nonprofit committed to making the life-changing wisdom of the Bible understandable and accessible to all.