Tag Archive for: Bible

How Personal Application Can Derail Your Bible Reading

I’ll never forget the time I was preparing to teach an adult education class at a church and I was told by the director to make sure that each lesson had a personal “takeaway” for each member of the class. “Application is the key,” he said, “the only point of teaching people the Bible, and the only thing that will hold their interest, is the personal application.”

This is an interesting statement, and it’s at least half true. The true part is that we read the Bible with the expectation that we’re doing more than learning ancient history. At the end of the day we hope to get something beyond information. We want it to say something to us, to be relevant to our lives, maybe even to do something deep and significant in us.

This is good and proper. So what’s the problem?

The problem is a set of expectations that typically go along with our longing for a Bible that’s always relevant to me, today, right here. There are likely more, but here are three key ones:

1. Talk to me

We begin by assuming the Bible is speaking directly to us. Maybe if we stopped and thought about it a little we’d remember that, oh yes, these are letters to people in first-century Corinth, or songs from ancient Israel. But it’s easy to forget and just start reading the words straight off the page and into our hearts.

2. Talk small to me

Problem #1 is only strengthened when the Bible we have is broken up into bite-sized pieces easily taken out of context. Reading Bible “verses” reinforces the idea that I can pick the tidbit that is just for me. And since some of those bits clearly don’t have anything that applies to me, I can safely stick to the good ones and ignore the rest.

3. Talk to me alone

Finally, we forget the Bible was written overwhelmingly to communities, not individuals. When we isolate the words and think only about our individual situations, we don’t even consider how a group of people would put the Bible into practice together.


So if these mistakes are distorting our Bible reading, what can we do to stay more clearly on track?

Let’s take up these correctives in the same order:

1. Listen in

The Bible is a collection of writings from the ancient world that we are essentially listening in on. The initial step in reading well is to consider what the various books meant in their own world first. The words were given in a context—historical, cultural, and religious. God was speaking to other people before he was speaking to us, and to know what he’s saying now we begin by knowing what was meant then.

2. Read big

The Bible is a collection of writings that were intended to be read in their entirety. The books are each a particular kind of ancient literature that work in their own way. They are stories, songs, letters, and more, and have to be read as the type of writing they are. Then, they come together to tell the ongoing narrative of God’s saving work in history. So read whole books instead of always jumping from little piece to little piece. Then put the books together and read them as a big story. (It’s easier to do this if you get a new reader’s edition without all the modern reference numbers.) We find our identity as a part of the story more than in individual promises or truths.

3. Think about us

The Bible is a collection of writings to communities, seeking to tell them what God is up to and how they can join his project of reclaiming the creation for good. God is creating communities of restoration that are meant to showcase where the story of the world is going. Our individual lives are crucial parts of this bigger story, but the transformation happens through entire communities of God’s people working together toward redemptive goals. Read the Bible with others.

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So here’s the thing: the Bible was never really intended to give you a personal application from each and every little verse. Sometimes it’s okay to simply read, learn, and understand what God was doing in the history of his people. We can relax, read big, and listen in. There is no need to force some application where there is none.

The Bible was never really intended to give you a personal application from each and every little verse.Click To Tweet

We need to give the Bible time and take away the pressure to constantly apply it.

But don’t worry. If we engage the Bible regularly and well, it will have more than enough to say to our lives right now. We will inherit a deep knowledge of God and his longstanding work to change the world. This kind of formation in us takes time, but is deeper and more transformative than the kind of instant application so often urged upon us. This kind of formation will take shape when we know the books of the Bible intimately and begin to live out the story in our own setting.

So yes, the Scriptures are useful to us today. But they are meant to be useful in a particular way. We have not been given a handbook filled with on-the-spot practical tips. We have been given a library of books from the ancient world that tell us the first part of God’s great story. The Bible slowly unveils the shape of God’s restoration and healing, and then it invites us in to take up our own roles.

We are players in the drama of redemption. And the most useful tool we have to help us learn how to live like this is the Bible—the script of the story that came before us.

Read it. Learn it. Live it. That’s the kind of application the Bible was built for.

Video: Pastor Jim Cymbala Reacts to Immerse

Located in the heart of Brookyn, NY, The Brooklyn Tabernacle is a vibrant church with around 10,000 congregants from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds. When they decided to do Immerse last spring, we were excited to see how it would be received in a church that large in such a bustling urban environment.

A few weeks after they began, we got word from one of their pastors that he was seeing copies of Immerse: Messiah all over Brooklyn – at the gym, in coffee shops, in taxi cabs, you name it. In total, around 5,000 people read the entire New Testament with Immerse.

Here’s Senior Pastor Jim Cymbala describing his experience of leading the church through the New Testament and their plans to continue into the Old Testament.

Jim Cymbala’s Reaction to Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience

Video Story: Immerse at Calvin Christian High School

We created Immerse for churches, but it’s finding its way into other contexts as well. Students at Calvin Christian High School in Grand Rapids, MI used Immerse: Messiah for their New Testament Survey class and experienced the Bible in its fullness like never before.

Christian education is an emerging area of interest for us at the Institute for Bible Reading. How do we introduce kids and teens to the Bible in ways that stick with them, that form their faith, that show them the Bible’s story and help them find their place in it? The experience at Calvin Christian with Immerse shows that, given the opportunity and the right tools, teens are excited and eager to dive into the Bible.

Immerse at Calvin Christian High School

Immerse is one great resource for this space and we think it’s just the beginning. We want to do the deeper work of understanding how we can start kids on the right path from elementary school through college, helping them grow into Christ followers who love the Bible and know how to read it well.

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P.S. A few weeks after the students finished reading through Immerse: Messiah, their teacher called us to share what one of his students had told him that day. “I’m sad we’re finished,” she said, “The same way you’re sad after finishing a really good book. You miss it.”

When have you ever heard a teen talk that way about the Bible?

Kids and the Bible: Are We Discipling Non-Readers?

Many adults are struggling to read the Bible. We know this. At some level it’s understandable, for the Bible is a big, complicated, and very ancient book. (At another level, the Bible is where Christianity gets its story, so the faith community needs to be deeply committed to knowing it well regardless of the challenges.) So if the adults are struggling, what would we expect from the kids?

If the Bible is tough going for the grownups, it’s going to be even tougher for younger readers, right?

It’s true, the challenge is not going to go away for younger readers. But maybe it’s time to look at how we’ve been trying to introduce kids to the Bible. What, exactly, has been our goal? What’s the right expectation for kids reading, knowing, and understanding the Bible? And what would the path to solid Bible fluency look like?

Where We’ve Been

Simply from taking a look at our standard Bible curricula it would seem that what’s actually happening is that we have other goals (spiritual formation, teaching morals, building faith, etc.) that use the Bible in certain ways. Often a deep engagement with the Scriptures themselves is not the intended destination. The result is usually that within any given lesson, the Bible is encountered as either a theme verse or two, or a safely paraphrased version of a “Bible story.”

Perhaps this approach is seen as a good and necessary adaptation of the Bible for readers who are younger and not yet proficient. It makes sense, right? Well, maybe not.

The problem with giving children a verse or two is that this approach tends to stick around as readers get older. We continue to show and teach the Scriptures by referring to “Bible verses” all the way through to adulthood. The consequence is that many people persist in thinking the Bible is in fact a collection of these verses (and if they are honest, admitting that some verses are better than others).

The problem with an ongoing diet of paraphrased Bible stories is that such tellings are not actually the Bible. They are typically told with any age-inappropriate elements toned down or taken out. And of course any paraphrase represents someone’s interpretation of what the essence of a particular story is.

All of this is appropriate as far as it goes, but there’s also a danger here. Many of these safe versions of the stories are never replaced with the actual biblical texts as kids turn into young adults. This means younger readers aren’t learning the way biblical language actually sounds and actually works. And older kids are never confronting the stronger, stranger, more complex versions of these stories that the Bible actually tells.

When do we get around to teaching young adults how to handle the real Bible?

Further, these collections of paraphrased stories are often treated as stand-alone lessons, so kids don’t ever learn how they are connected and build on each other to tell the bigger biblical narrative. And rarely are different kinds of literary writings ever acknowledged. A curriculum constructed of “Bible stories” will of course have difficulty incorporating things like letters, songs, wisdom sayings, and the other literary variety of our Scriptures.

So are we discipling kids into not being Bible readers?

What would any average child take away from their long-term experience with the Bible in our current teaching approach? Have they taken the first steps toward receiving the Bible on its own terms? Or have they been taught to use the Bible in simplistic and misleading ways?

What would any average child take away from their long-term experience with the Bible in our current teaching approach?Click To Tweet

I’m reminded of a conversation we had with a prominent publisher of children’s Sunday School resources and Bible curricula. After reviewing their programs and comparing them with our perspective on Bible engagement, one of their executives, deep in thought, looked up and said, “So you’re telling me that if our programs are successful, we are actually producing generations of non-Bible readers.”

Are kids growing up learning that the Bible is a book to be read? Do kids have an inkling of the big story? Are they falling in love with Jesus—that is, with a Jesus understood in the context of the overall narrative?

Where We’re Going

Okay, here’s where we admit we don’t know all the answers, but we believe that some things need to change. As youth within the church grow up, graduate, and head out on their own in various ways, it doesn’t appear that a healthy and hearty appetite for Bible reading is going with them. It shouldn’t be a surprise then that Bible reading and comprehension numbers are so low among adults in the church. People are following the path we’ve laid out for them, and then we scramble to convert adults into Bible readers after failing to show them the way in the first place.

So what would change look like?

The Institute for Bible Reading would like to learn more about all of this, and then do what we do, which is to provide fresh thinking and new resources that change the way the world reads the Bible.

We want to do more and better research on what the childhood Bible engagement landscape looks like in greater detail. What are the most popular current resources? What’s working and what’s not? What do kids say? What do parents say? What do teachers say?

We want to have in-depth, interdisciplinary conversations with all the right people and from all the right angles, so new learnings can take place. We want to listen well in an environment where different perspectives are presented and thoughtfully discussed.

We want to chart a course for a new future for kids and the Bible. We don’t believe that a Bibleless Christianity will be a vibrant and effective Christianity. The trajectory of downward Bible engagement in the church needs to be reversed if we are to fully receive the profound gift that we have in God’s word.

We want kids to know the Bible the right way at the right age and stage. We want kids to appropriately grow into the Bible. We want kids who not only love the Bible, but learn how to read it intelligently and well, so they don’t turn away from it the first time they encounter its opponents.

Please pray for us on this new journey. We need wisdom and resources and the courage to challenge old paradigms. Because God loves both his word and his children, and he wants them to flourish together.

Listen: Re-Enchanting the Scriptures

Glenn recently had the opportunity to present at the Your Imagination Redeemed Conference hosted by the Anselm Society, an organization in Colorado Springs that is dedicated to the renaissance of the Christian imagination.

Here’s the abstract for Glenn’s lecture Re-Enchanting the Scriptures

The rise of modernity has led to an increasing sense of the disenchantment of the world. As our rational, scientific explanations grow stronger, the sense of a mysterious, lively, and spiritual world diminishes. So what happens when the Bible meets modernity? Disenchantment happens—the growth of attempts to dissect the Bible and master its facts, draining much of its intended literary power and beauty.

So how do we re-enchant the Bible? We begin by simply remembering what it actually is. The Scriptures are a collection of diverse literary creations, telling a story, and inviting us into a live drama. What are we to do with such a Bible? Faithfulness is reading the Bible as the literature it is and then accepting God’s offer to enact the story and initiate a Spirit-empowered improvisation in our world today.