Where is that Bible?
It's official, it's appeared in the secular media, so it must be so! Australian Christians are struggling to read their Bibles. Linda Morris reported the findings from the National Church Life Survey in The Sydney Morning Herald yesterday. Here are some of the less than encouraging statistics:
It might be the greatest story ever told, but Bible literacy is slipping and not just among atheists. Devout churchgoers, especially Catholics, are losing touch with the scriptures of their faith, research shows.
Of those Australians who go to church, 21 per cent read their Bible daily, 14 per cent open it a few times a week and 6 per cent once a week.
But 24 per cent said they read their Bibles only occasionally, 18 per cent hardly ever and 17 per cent said they never read the Bible on their own as a private devotional activity, according to the research, which is based on the 2006 National Church Life Survey of 500,000 people who attended church from 22 denominations.
My question is, what should we say or do in response? Should I write a post bemoaning the alarming trend? Should I ponder the changing social circumstances that are leading to such a terrible state of affairs? Should I read Romans 1-3 over and over again to remind myself of the nature of sinful human beings and our desire to listen to any voice other than the voice of God? Well, while all of these might be possible responses, what I would love to do most of all is to encourage people to get back to reading their Bibles.
So what I thought it might be good to do would be to hear from people who are reading their Bibles. What kinds of practical things are you doing to make Bible reading a part of your life? Where do you read your Bible? Are you using other resources to help you in your Bible reading? Have you struggled for a while and made a breakthrough recently under God? We'd love to hear about it.
Now, in the interests of doing your deeds of righteousness before God alone, we would like you submit your responses anonymously in our Bible reading survey. These will not appear online but will be sent directly to the editors of The Briefing. We have been thinking about doing an issue dedicated to Bible reading for some time, and would love to include some encouragement from brothers and sisters who are reading regularly.
You can access the survey by going to
http://solapanel.org/article/survey/
Make sure you click ‘submit’ when you're done!
I am really looking forward to hearing about how people are working at knowing God through his word.
We read the Bible after the evening meal.
We’re nearly through Marks Gospel. We tried all the reading aids etc, but the thing that works best is just reading the Bible.
We just read a section according to the translator’s headings because that seems to work for my 4y to 11y old kids. We let the kids ask any questions they want and try to answer them seriously but quickly. I might make brief points about what it means and how it applies to us. And then one of us or all of us might pray, accoding to who wants to. We keep it simple and short, at prsent we read the good news Bible for the younger kids. By the grace of God it has been working.
I have to stop the kids fighting over whose turn it is to read the Bible.
Oops, I should have finished the whole article before I posted. If someone wants to transfer my previous comment to the appropriate section of the survey, feel free. If you want to just delete it, feel free. If you want to let it through, that’s OK too.
Sorry
A former member of our church challenged members of our church to read through the New Testament in 3 months, and supplied us with a chart.
Having completed the NT in the allotted time, I was inspired to read through the Old Testament too, which I found a lot harder.
Since then, I’ve been doing it using Michael Coley’s helpful chart which divides the Bible up into genres. See
http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.html
This has been a great blessing, and I’m sorry I didn’t begin earlier in my life.
Like many Christians, I had read quite a bit of the New Testament, but left out huge chunks of the Old.
Commenting rules
If you would like your comment to be considered for publication, please observe the following rules:
Failure to adhere to these rules will result in your comment being quietly deleted.
If you want to give us feedback but don't want your comments to appear on the blog, DON'T use the form below. Instead, please send us an email or click on the button below.
Your Comment
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.