Family Bible Reading - Update

As I mentioned earlier this year, I have been attempting to read the Bible with my young children. It has been a great journey and my children continue to amaze me with the level of insight/curiosity they have concerning God's word. At times it has all felt a bit hard, but inevitably it is the kids who have kept us disciplined and continuing on our path! The approach that we have been taking has been very heavy on narrative/story, and we have sort of come to the end of our abbreviated voyage through the Bible (ending in the book of Acts).

It seems that we are now ready to try a different approach. I am really keen for my kids to see that these are not just stories that we read for their own sake - they are not just myths, fables or nice stories about the past. I want my kids to see that this grand story calls for response/action. I want them to find their part in the story.

So, this is what we are going to attempt now (I'll let you know how it goes). We are going to spend some months just reading the Gospels. As we read some big chunks of the Jesus story, we will ask ourselves these questions:-
'What is Jesus thinking/saying/doing?'
'What are the implications of this for today?'
'What are we going to do about it?'
We will brainstorm practical responses that we as a family can have to what we have read about Jesus - then we will seek to go and do it! Together we will celebrate our success/failure in this.

Hopefully we all will grow closer to the heart of Jesus through this action/reflection approach to family Bible reading!

Plan Be : be the change you want to see

Bible Society QLD and Dave Andrews of TEAR Australia have teamed up to produce a great resource entitled 'Plan Be'. Plan Be is a Bible study series that focuses on the Beatitudes and involves group work, personal reflection (journaling) and community action. It encompasses many of the Bible engagement principles that I'm often raving on about and I highly recommend it to you.

The Bible Story Summarised

Stephen Opie from Bible Society NZ has written a 5 page/part summary of the entire sweep of the Bible story. This is great for someone who is new to the Bible, or struggling to make sense of the whole thing. Read it here...

Free, Downloadable Bible Reading Startup Guide

Whitney T. Kuniholm is the president of Scripture Union USA and is the author of "The Essential 100" and "The Essential Jesus". These publications are essentially Bible reading programmes that lead the reader through key Biblical texts in order to get the big ideas of the Bible. They are particularly good for people who are new to the Bible.

In addition to these, he has just written The Bible Reading Startup Guide which he is making available for FREE online. This is a great tool that introduces the reader to the Bible and suggests basic approaches to the study of it.