Biblefresh Highlights

I was privileged to be involved in different ways with the Biblefresh initiative, a partnership of 120 organisations (including LICC, where I work), which joined forces to help Christians and churches grow in their appetite and confidence in the Scriptures during 2011.

We asked Theos to conduct a survey of those who had been involved – as individuals and/or as partners, where appropriate. A report on the results of the survey, formally revealed last week, is available here, and an infographic displaying some of the highlights is available here.

Some of the headlines from the Executive Summary are:

• A wide range of churches and other organisations were involved in Biblefresh.

• Partners and users put on a wide range of activities.

• Partners organised a variety of public and outreach events in their local communities.

• E100 and the Biblefresh website were the most commonly used resources.

• Partner organisations were overwhelmingly positive about the way in which Biblefresh had helped them focus more on the Bible in 2011 than they otherwise would have done.

• Partners spoke of its success in ‘immersing’ and ‘familiarising’ people with the Bible.

• They were largely positive about the mutual understanding and collaborative efforts Biblefresh had encouraged and enabled.

• They were, however, a little less sure about whether these would amount to anything in the longer term.

• Partners were overwhelmingly appreciative of the ‘style’ and ‘freshness’ of the initiative.

• Biblefresh helped partners extend their reach into the wider community by doing things that they are unlikely to have done without the impetus of the initiative.

• Overwhelmingly partners said they would be willing to do something like Biblefresh again.

• Criticism from partner organisations was limited and tended to be specific.

• People’s use and experience of Biblefresh resources was on the whole a very positive one.

• User respondents thought that Biblefresh had been most successful in making them feel ‘enthusiastic’ about the Bible, in helping them ‘personally to read the Bible more frequently’, and in helping them ‘value the Bible more’.

• Of Biblefresh’s wider objectives, the single most successful was in helping people ‘explore parts of the Bible that [they] haven’t read before’.

• The regular churchgoers among the respondents (which was 98% of the total sample) were keen and engaged with the Bible, both individually and corporately, most attending biblically-serious churches and drawing on resources and material as they needed it. They read and studied the Bible frequently, if not necessarily regularly, sometimes in public although most often in private, and were deterred from doing so primarily by living busy lives.

• Respondents saw the relevance of the Bible to a wide range of aspects in their lives, although more people ‘got’ the personal connections than the more public ones, and only a minority saw any connection between the Bible and the manner in which they travelled (e.g. car, bicycle, plane, etc).

IDEA (November/December 2011) on the Bible

The November/December 2011 edition of IDEA, from Evangelical Alliance UK, is devoted to the Bible, containing the articles listed below. Individual articles are linked to from here. Or the whole issue can be downloaded as a 10.7 MB pdf here.

Bikers, bloggers and the Bible

Spearheading the national Biblefresh campaign, the Alliance has been encouraging Christians to refresh their Bible passion throughout 2011. Purely and simply – re-discovering the excitement of its words and making it relevant in people’s lives – for good times and bad. And with bikers, bloggers and British festival goers all getting involved with us during the year, Rebecca Taylor looks at how the work has been making the Bible fresh for thousands both in the UK and abroad.

Quoting the King

What is the most famous verse in the Bible? Think of your instinctive response. Was it John 3:16 by any chance?

How churches renewed their love of the Bible

Churches around the country have been taking part in Biblefresh projects inspired by the national campaign with great enthusiasm this year, Claire Musters finds out the highlights from around the country.

What the Bible means to me

I became a Christian in my late teens. I had grown up in church but was never too convinced by the whole thing. But one day found myself reading the gospels and it was while I walked through the stories of Jesus I found someone compelling and inviting.

How to read the Bible

Hearing the deafening roar of 12 motorbikes revving up outside a tent packed full of Christian worshippers; seeing hundreds of children laughing and playing barefoot in sweltering heat waiting to hear a Bible story; feeling infuriated not getting a word in edgeways as Richard Dawkins held forth on the BBC’s Bible Special show: Biblefresh has been quite a year for me.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Looking for conversation starters, Sophie Lister finds relevant themes in popular culture... In a world without God, reason can have no real relationship with ideas about right and wrong.

Living the text

Reading, studying and knowing the word of God is a good start. The fruit, however, is to be found in how we collectively live out the meaning of the text. We are, after all, a letter of Christ, to be known and read by all (2 Corinthians 3:3).

Biblical influence: How Scripture shaped Great Britain

Our political system owes a lot to the Bible, writes Nick Spencer, research director at think-tank Theos and author of Freedom and Order.

Antiseptic effect: The Bible and social renewal

When evangelicals start talking about ‘public morality’, the effects are often incendiary. The reactions usually involve criticisms about ‘moralising’, ‘judgmentalism’ and of course ‘Bible-bashing’. And herein is a problem. If the Bible is all that we believe it is, and yet we cannot refer to it in our social commentary, then we are reduced to talking in code and smuggling in value judgments by other means. Over time, this ‘Bible-blushing’ will have inevitable effects on our national life.

Gather: God is doing something

Unity movements where church leaders from across towns, cities and regions work together in friendship are helping to change their communities. God seems to be doing something very special where Christians are working together...

Truth shining light in the darkness

General Director Steve Clifford asks whether the shaking of our institutions is actually an answer to prayer.

A Conversation on the Bible and Culture (6)

Not long before he left LICC to take up a post at A Rocha, Nigel Hopper (Lecturer in Contemporary Culture and Communications Manager at LICC) asked me some questions about the Bible’s impact on culture and the implications for Christians and churches today. A trimmed version of our ‘electronic’ interview will appear in September 2011’s edition of EG, LICC’s quarterly magazine, but I will also post the transcript of the whole conversation over a series of entries here.

Earlier entries:

• A Conversation on the Bible and Culture (1)

• A Conversation on the Bible and Culture (2)

• A Conversation on the Bible and Culture (3)

• A Conversation on the Bible and Culture (4)

• A Conversation on the Bible and Culture (5)

Nigel: Finally, I started by asking you about the place of the Bible in contemporary British culture, let me finish by asking you for your view on the place of the Bible in the contemporary British church?

Antony: Survey after survey in recent years – carried out with people in churches, leaders and non-leaders, as well as non-church people – has confirmed what will probably not come as a huge surprise to many of us, that there is an increasing lack of biblical literacy in the church as well as in society more generally. The surveys reveal that the vast majority of people in churches feel positive about the Bible, and consider it to be revelation from God, but fewer and fewer, it seems – even leaders – are reading it for themselves. And when they manage to do so, they’re not always sure what to do with it. And then, on top of that, are the challenges from secularists we’ve already spoken about.

That’s why I’m delighted that LICC is part of ‘Biblefresh’ – a movement of churches, agencies, colleges and festivals seeking to encourage and inspire Christians and churches to a greater confidence in, and appetite for, the Word of God.

Biblefresh has been focusing on four areas this year – encouraging individuals and churches to take practical steps in reading the Bible, being trained in handling the Bible, supporting translation work, and experiencing the Bible in new and creative ways.

It would be great, I think, if we could all move forward a little bit this year. For some of us that might mean reading the Bible on our own more regularly than we have been. For others it might mean using some Bible reading notes when we read to take us further in our understanding, or going to a Bible study, or meeting someone once a week in a coffee shop to discuss a Bible passage. For church leaders and preachers it might mean being even more self-conscious about handling the Bible carefully or thinking through its significance for our people in their everyday contexts. For others it might be a commitment to give to the work of Bible translation so that others can read God’s word in their own language. Think how amazing it could be if we all took just one step forward!

We started with how the Bible has shaped British culture, but of course Christians formed by the Bible are themselves culture shapers. But we will best engage with culture and society today as people who are first shaped by the Bible, through hearing and then living according to the voice of God in the pages of Scripture.

Mark Meynell on the Bible

Mark Meynell kindly makes available the leaders’ notes from a series of studies carried out by the Fellowship Groups at All Souls Church, Langham Place in London as part of their ongoing Biblefresh celebrations.

The studies, derived loosely from Eugene Peterson’s Eat This Book: The Art of Spiritual Reading (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2006), take five different passages ‘which illustrate how God’s people respond to God’s revelation’, looking ‘at how the Bible itself describes its impact on the believer’s life’.

Deuteronomy 8 (and Matthew 4:1-12)

Israel in the Desert

The Bible as Revelation – Feasting on the Word of Life

Psalm 119:33-48

Israel in worship

The Bible in Devotions – Delighting in the Word of Promise

Luke 24:13-35

The Risen Jesus

The Bible in Understanding – Believing in the Word of the Prophets

Acts 8:26-40

The Spreading Church

The Bible in Evangelism – Communicating the Word of Hope

Nehemiah 8

Israel home after Exile

The Bible in Ministry – Explaining the Word of Truth

The document can be viewed and downloaded here from Scribd.

Billington’s Bookshelf 2010

[I’ve already posted a version of the below as a web article for the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity, and thought I’d post it here as well before March turns into April. It’s along the same lines as a list I did for 2008 and another one I did for 2009. Although this one is fuller, as with those entries, the idea has been to profile some books published on the Bible during 2010 (or, in one case below, a book that came to my attention in 2010). The usual caveats apply... I’ve limited myself to books on the Bible (Bible overviews, hermeneutics, biblical theology, commentaries, etc.). I’m not suggesting these were the best books of 2010; the list is limited by my own limitations and is also somewhat driven by work-related commitments, among other things. As with previous years, the mention of an item here does not preclude either earlier or subsequent mention elsewhere on the blog. So, with all those qualifications in place...]

2010 added to the already-considerable pile of books from recent years expounding and exploring the storyline of the Bible. Among them was D.A. Carson, The God Who is There: Finding Your Place in God’s Story (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2010), which guides readers through the big story of the Bible with a special focus on the God who all the time takes the initiative in his relationship with men and women. A separate leader’s guide for groups is also available, containing discussion questions and broader theological and pastoral reflections.

In Remaking a Broken World: The Heart of the Bible Story (Bletchley: Authentic, 2010), Christopher Ash offers a stimulating Bible overview based around the theme of the ‘gathering’ and ‘scattering’ of God’s people in the biblical storyline, emphasising that ‘the local church is at the heart of the Bible story, that it is close to the heart of the purposes of God, and that it is how a broken world will be remade’. His book nicely complements others in this genre which, for the most part, take a more ‘kingdom’-oriented approach to the biblical story. It also signals a helpful move from merely outlining the storyline of Scripture (crucial though that is in a time of increasing biblical illiteracy) to reflecting on its implications for Christians and the church today. Another one which moves in this direction is Mike Erre, Why the Bible Matters: Rediscovering Its Significance in an Age of Suspicion (Eugene: Harvest House Publishers, 2010). About half the book works its way through the biblical story while the other half explores the significance of finding our place in the story. This book would now be one of my top recommendations in accessible treatments of the Bible’s big story.

How the ‘biblical story’ approach might be worked out in the interpretation of a particular biblical book is seen in Timothy G. Gombis, The Drama of Ephesians: Participating in the Triumph of God (Downers Grove: IVP, 2010). It’s not a commentary so much as what the author calls ‘a cultural and theological engagement with the text of Ephesians’. Ephesians, he says, is not a ‘collection of facts or theological truths that need to be extracted’ but ‘a drama in which Paul portrays the powerful, reality-altering cosmos-transforming acts of God in Christ to redeem God’s world and save God’s people for the glory of his name’. Through the death and resurrection of Christ, God has defeated the powers of darkness, and the church is called to reenact this drama as we are transformed into a mature, cross-shaped people.

Two more worth mentioning before we move on are Michael R. Emlet, CrossTalk: Where Life & Scripture Meet (Greensboro: New Growth Press, 2009) and Ron Martoia, The Bible as Improv: Seeing and Living the Script in New Ways (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010). Both, in different ways, explore the significance of the Bible’s story for how we appropriate Scripture for today. Largely from the perspective of using the Bible in counselling, Emlet offers a readable and very helpful treatment, looking particularly at how God’s ‘story’ in the Bible connects with our ‘stories’. Martoia uses the increasingly pervasive ‘improvisation’ model as a way of thinking through what applies from the Bible to today and what doesn’t.

More generally on biblical interpretation, Robert Plummer, 40 Questions About Interpreting the Bible (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2010) provides a helpful resource for concise answers to questions, organised in four main sections: getting started (on text, canon, and translation), approaching the Bible generally (on interpretation and meaning), approaching specific texts (focusing particularly on the Bible’s literary types), and issues in recent discussion. 2010 also saw the publication of the second edition (though only lightly revised) of Richard Bauckham’s The Bible in Politics: How to Read the Bible Politically (London: SPCK, 2010). It remains useful in its self-conscious reflections on methodology, and in providing worked examples of ‘political exegesis’ of sample passages across Scripture.

J. Todd Billings, The Word of God for the People of God: An Entryway to the Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010) shows that ‘theological interpretation’ is now well and truly on the landscape, seen not as a separate method so much as ‘a wide range of practices we use toward the goal of knowing God in Christ through Scripture’. Billings offers a very helpful guide to those wanting to know more about this area, and includes exegetical examples of theological interpretation at work.

In The Virtuous Reader: Old Testament Narrative and Interpretive Virtue, Studies in Theological Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), Richard Briggs provides a well-written treatment, with worked examples from narrative texts, of the ‘spiral’ that exists between the virtues necessary for reading Scripture and the virtues that Scripture itself inculcates in such ‘virtuous’ readers. Those who already come with some philosophy or literary theory or virtue ethics will cope better than those who don’t, but all will benefit from reflecting on how we might be shaped by Scripture into the kind of reader that is most appropriate for reading Scripture – those who read with humility, wisdom, trust, love, and receptivity.

On the biblical theology front, 2010 saw the launch of a new series from Zondervan – ‘Biblical Theology for Life’. The first volume was by Christopher J.H. Wright, The Mission of God’s People: A Biblical Theology of the Church’s Mission (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010). Following previous works which argue that the whole Bible can and ought to be read from the perspective of the mission of God – his redemptive purpose for the whole of creation – this book explores the mission of God’s people. The bulk of the book outlines the kinds of people we were created to be (caring for God’s creation, walking in God’s way, representing God to the world, etc.) and the specific tasks we are called on to do (bearing witness, proclaiming the gospel, living and working in the public square, etc.). The world, the gospel, and the church frame the book and dominate the discussion, their treatment flowing out of the overarching story of Scripture, demonstrating the significance of biblical theology in handling these themes, and showing mission as the all-encompassing purpose of God to restore creation.

In the same ‘Biblical Theology for Life’ series, Jonathan Lunde looks at discipleship – Following Jesus, the Servant King: A Biblical Theology of Covenantal Discipleship (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010) – where the main theological drivers are covenant (its grace and its demands) and christology (Jesus as the Servant King). If these first two volumes are anything to go by, this will be a series to watch out for.

Worth noting in publications on the doctrine of Scripture is John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Word of God (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2010), a comprehensive (682 pages) and theologically conservative treatment of the doctrine of Scripture as God’s revelation and how it is communicated to men and women, forming the fourth volume in Frame’s ‘Theology of Lordship’ series. The discussion itself takes place without much interaction with wider scholarship in 300 pages or so, with the rest of the book containing a number of appendices of articles and reviews written over the years, conveniently gathered together here. In addition is D.A. Carson, Selected Writings on Scripture (Nottingham: Apollos, 2010) which also helpfully gathers together essays published elsewhere over the years, along with a number of reviews (some of them lengthy, reviewing significant books on Scripture).

It’s difficult to know what to mention in the area of commentaries, but we’ll limit ourselve to highlighting three series. First of all, the ‘Pillar New Testament Commentary’ series – billed as commentaries which ‘interact with the most important, informed contemporary debate yet avoid undue technical detail’. With the exception of D.A. Carson’s 1991 commentary on John, I was fairly disappointed with the first few volumes in this series. However, more recent volumes, in my opinion, have been excellent; the last few years alone have seen the release of commentaries by Douglas J. Moo on Colossians and Philemon (2008), David G. Peterson on Acts (2009), and G. Walter Hansen on Philippians (2009). 2010 saw the addition of Peter T. O’Brien, The Letter to the Hebrews (Nottingham: Apollos, 2010) – to join his earlier excellent entry on Ephesians – and Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians (Nottingham: Apollos, 2010). Now the series taken as a whole is shaping up to the best, if not the best, of commentaries written from an evangelical perspective at this level.

Secondly, hard on the heels of the ‘Two Horizons Commentary Series’ (Eerdmans) and the ‘Brazos/SCM Theological Commentary on the Bible’ (Brazos and SCM), both devoted to a more self-consciously theological reading of Scripture, comes a new series from Westminster John Knox – ‘Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible’ – which aims to focus ‘less on traditional historical and literary angles in favor of a theologically focused commentary that considers the contemporary relevance of the texts’. 2010 saw the publication of two volumes: William C. Placher, Mark (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010) and and Justo L. Gonzalez, Luke (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010). Others are on the way.

Finally in commentaries, those familiar with N.T. Wright’s ‘For Everyone’ series on the books of the New Testament may be interested to know that John Goldingay is writing a similar series – following the same general formula – on Old Testament books. Genesis came in two volumes: Genesis for Everyone Part 1: Chapters 1-16 (London: SPCK, 2010) and Genesis for Everyone Part 2: Chapters 17-50 (London: SPCK, 2010). The rest of the Pentateuch is dealt with in a further two volumes: Exodus and Leviticus for Everyone (London: SPCK, 2010) and Numbers and Deuteronomy for Everyone (London: SPCK, 2010). Again, 2011 will see the release of others. Even those who don’t see eye to eye with Goldingay on some matters of interpretation could benefit from using these books as devotional aids or in preparation for preaching and teaching.

2011 sees the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible. We should anticipate a veritable glut of books to be released as the year goes on, exploring its history, its influence on culture and politics and language. In the run up during 2010, a number of books caught my eye, including Gordon Campbell, Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) and Derek Wilson, The People’s Bible: The Remarkable History of the King James Version (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2010), both of which do a great job of telling the story surrounding the publication of the King James Bible. In addition, David Crystal, Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) explores the influence of the language of the King James Bible (itself based on earlier translations) on language today in the continued use of phrases like ‘lamb to the slaughter’, ‘as old as the hills’, ‘written in stone’, ‘sour grapes’, showing how the Bible ‘begat’ such phrases in the English language – now found in newspaper headlines, TV sitcoms, song lyrics, and book titles.

In line with the interest that will be generated by the King James Bible anniversary comes Biblefresh – a movement of churches, agencies, colleges and festivals seeking to encourage and inspire churches across the UK to a greater confidence and appetite for the Word of God. The vision of Biblefresh is ‘to make 2011 a year of the Bible to help individuals and the whole church gain greater skill in handling the scriptures and a greater passion for hearing and obeying the Bible’. As part of the initiative, a manual – Biblefresh (Milton Keynes: Authentic, 2010) – was published, containing lots of helpful short articles containing ideas for individuals, small groups and churches to take practical steps in reading the Bible, being trained in handling the Bible, supporting translation work, and experiencing the Bible in new and creative ways.

Biblefresh Translation Pack

The latest newsletter from Biblefresh links to a Biblefresh Translation Pack, containing lots of helpful resources and ideas for churches and small groups.

1611 and All That

[This has just been published as an article in EG 28 (March 2011), by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.]

‘I had perceived by experience how it was impossible to establish the lay-people in any truth except the Scriptures were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text... I long that the husbandman might sing portions of them to himself as he follows the plough, that the weaver should hum them to the tune of his shuttle.’

William Tyndale

2011 sees the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible (KJB). It was referred to in the Queen’s Speech, broadcast on Christmas Day 2010, and Radio 4 has already devoted an evening to readings from the KJB. As the year goes on, we can expect a flurry of books, lectures, and exhibitions to mark the occasion. No surprise, perhaps, for a book that has been continuously in print for 400 years.

Even from unlikely quarters, praise is being heaped upon the KJB. In an interview with The Guardian, Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate and self-confessed non-believer, lamented widespread ignorance of the Bible; Bible stories are an essential part of ‘cultural luggage’, he noted, recommending that all children should be taught the Bible in school, since without it they cannot hope to understand history and literature. Well-known atheist Richard Dawkins (being interviewed for the King James Bible Trust) has said: ‘You can’t appreciate English literature unless you are steeped to some extent in the King James Bible... not to know the King James Bible is to be, in some small way, barbarian.’

Whatever one may think of it as a translation, it’s possible that our friends and colleagues will pick up on the buzz about the KJB, and it may provide an opportunity for Christians and churches to shape the conversation in distinctive ways – as we tell its story, reflect on its influence, and celebrate its significance.

A Story to Tell

Of course, the story begins a long time before 1611. Told properly, it’s a story which takes in the development of the printing press, the rise of the English language, and the European Protestant reformation, all set against the politics of the time. John Wyclif’s 14th-century translation was from Latin, but William Tyndale was the first to translate the New Testament into English from the original Greek (1526). He did so because he wanted open and common access to Scripture – for the ploughboy as well as the priest. And he did so under threat to his life, managing to finish translations of the New Testament and much of the Old Testament before being burned as a heretic in 1536.

When James VI of Scotland became James I of England, the most widely-read English version was the Geneva Bible, put together by Protestants who had fled to Switzerland during the reign of Queen Mary, later published in England in 1576. It contained marginal notes, some of which undermined the absolute authority of monarchs. At a 1604 conference of bishops, the request for a single, ‘official’ Bible gave James the opportunity to get rid of the Geneva Bible. The assignment was entrusted to about 50 scholars and churchmen based in Oxford, Cambridge, and London. Staying fairly close to Tyndale’s translation, but drawing on others and revising along the way, the task was completed in 1611. Although James authorised the translation, he seems to have lost interest in the project and it’s not clear he ever authorised its publication. Moreover, it took a while for it to become accepted; only after the English Civil War and the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 did it achieve popularity.

An Influence to Explore

With its popularity, the KJB exerted considerable influence – shaping not only Protestant Christianity, but politics, language, and culture as well.

It has been argued, for instance, that the translation of the Bible into the vernacular kickstarted the birth of democracy – in England and later in America. The accessibility of translated Scripture – with every believer having the freedom to interpret the Bible for themselves – fostered a spirit of inquiry, providing reasons to stand against the tyranny of rulers, coupled with the conviction that Scripture was on the side of those who demanded the rights of the individual in matters of governance.

There is ongoing debate as to whether the language of the KJB was already ‘archaic’ in its own time, but its subsequent shaping of the English language is not in doubt. Vestiges of its influence are seen in the continued use of phrases like ‘lamb to the slaughter’, ‘as old as the hills’, ‘written in stone’, ‘sour grapes’, etc. In a recent study, David Crystal counts 257 of them, showing how the Bible ‘begat’ such phrases in the English language – now found in newspaper headlines, TV sitcoms, song lyrics, and book titles.

Beyond language, the Bible has imprinted itself on our culture, reflected (for instance) in art, music, literature, and film. In her recent book, The Writing on the Wall, Maggi Dawn moves through major biblical stories from Genesis onwards – taking in Rembrandt and Banksy, Handel and The Byrds, Jonathan Swift and Dan Brown, The Shawshank Redemption and Doctor Who – showing how the Bible is central to western cultural history right up to the present day. This, as we have seen, reflects the concerns of Motion and Dawkins, that not to be biblically literate is to be on the back foot when it comes to cultural literacy.

An Opportunity for Mission

Of course, praising the Bible for its literary merit or cultural influence alone might be to miss the point that it is, above all else, the living words of the living Lord, that it tells the story of what God has done in Christ for the world. Significant cultural heritage aside, Christians will want to celebrate how God, through Scripture, shapes the lives of everyday people in everyday situations.

Indeed, the story of the KJB fits into the yet larger story of what God is doing in and for the world, in other languages and cultures – which is why the translation of the Bible is bound up with the mission of the church (and why Christians support the work of those engaged in translation and literacy projects). The gospel is ‘translatable’, and translation has been a feature of Christianity from the start, reminding us that the communication and reception of God’s word is not limited to certain cultures or types of people, but open to all. ‘Translating’ the Bible is always a missionary enterprise, whether it’s carried out in Burkina Faso or in Basildon.

2011, then, may provide increased opportunities to share the significance of the Bible with others, and step up in our own engagement with Scripture in the process. With this in mind, LICC is delighted to be one of the partners in Biblefresh – a movement of churches, agencies, colleges and festivals seeking to encourage and inspire churches across the UK to a greater confidence in, and appetite for, the Word of God through 2011 and beyond. The Biblefresh website provides information and ideas for individuals and churches to take practical steps in reading the Bible, being trained in handling the Bible, supporting translation work, and experiencing the Bible in new and creative ways.

Further Reading

Biblefresh

King James Bible Trust

Gordon Campbell, Bible: The Story of the King James Version 1611-2011 (Oxford: OUP, 2010).

David Crystal, Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language (Oxford: OUP, 2010).

Maggi Dawn, The Writing on the Wall (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2010).

Martin H. Manser, Scapegoats, Shambles & Shibboleths (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2009).

Derek Wilson, The People’s Bible: The Remarkable History of the King James Version (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2010).

Biblefresh Newsletter (February 2011)

The Biblefresh February 2011 newsletter has just come out (subscribe via this page). This month features links to several resources related to ‘Bible Experiences’ – creative ideas for churches, including for Easter and Lent – as well as some opportunities for training in various parts of the country.

The King’s English

The Biblefresh website draws attention to a new blog – The King’s English – by Glen Scrivener, which promises daily posts on phrases from the King James Bible that have passed into common parlance in English... phrases like ‘labour of love’, ‘beast of burden’, ‘scapegoat’, etc.

Biblefresh (September 2010)

The September 2010 Biblefresh email is available as a pdf here, and is worth checking out.

Among other things, it links to a free downloadable resource of ideas for a service based on Nehemiah 9-10, which includes suggestions for prayer, songs, and a sermon outline.

Jason Clark on Word Association: Connecting the Bible with Everyday Living

Notes from a seminar at the London launch of Biblefresh (30 March 2010):

Jason addressed his topic under four main headings:

1. Stories and imagination
Jason began by talking about the significance of ‘social stories’ – particularly for children on the autistic spectrum – which provide information about situations that may be difficult or confusing, what things looks like, the things that might occur, etc., so that children can picture where they will be and what it will be like.

Similarly, he noted, social theorists talk about ‘social imaginaries’, a set of understandings, practices, expectations, and the like, which give human beings a sense of how we ‘do life’, how we organise life. Most people don’t organise life around a set of rules. We have stories, and are engaged in ongoing conversations we tell internally and externally.

Most people live their life through ‘story’. Jason here commented on the significance of using story when speaking to others about our faith, that when we tell a story, something often happens as a result.

2. Relationships, homes, and jobs
So, what are the stories of life? Drawing on his pastoral experience, Jason commented that there are a few key stories that regularly go around our head: what relationships we have, where we live, what jobs we have.

Although we are already living somewhere, many people see themselves as passing through to somewhere else, such that we talk about where we’d like to be one day, where we’d like to live one day. The notion of the ‘housing ladder’ is a social imaginary, and we’re increasingly giving all our lives to these sorts of stories.

Likewise with our jobs, where the whole of life gets bent round our jobs, where the only considerations about going for a new job are whether we are going to like it and how much it is going to pay.

If this is our story, it affects how we live our life and the things that concern us.

Jason recalls meeting a careers advisor at sixth form college who was expressing some anxiety about Jason’s hopes to study theology at a vocational college. Jason commented that he had effectively said to the advisor: ‘I’ve met the creator of the universe’, to which the reply had been – ‘Don’t let it affect your life too much!’

But he noted that genuine danger, where what’s seen as really real is my relationships, finance, and job, and Christianity is simply an add-on to those things or a resource that helps me with those things. We’ve met the creator of the universe, but we shouldn’t let it affect our lives too much…

This can become the case even with church. People ask, What should church be about? And the frequent answer is: one that’s relevant to me, helps me with my job and relationships – helps me, in other words, with this permanent conversation I’m having everywhere.

3. The story I find myself in
Theologians and biblical scholars have made a major turn to this idea of narrative theology in the last few decades. One of the key factors in this area is to recognise that the Bible is a big story, and the significance of this.

Jason spoke about three stages we might go through in this respect:

• We’ve got our various ‘stories’ going on and Chrisytianity is a resource ‘over there’ that helps us with our stories. We’ve got Jesus rather than Oprah, but essentially we want the same thing everyone else wants.

• Instead of just a story that helps me, it becomes something I live in.

• The Christian story becomes my story completely in that it takes over my imagination, aspiration, practices, goals, etc. The gospel becomes our social story, so that we act and behave differently as a result.

4. Re-framing life
This might mean that we start to talk and frame life in the language of the Bible. So, in a conversation about work, at what point do we ask, What does Jesus want you to do? Does the gospel have something bigger to say than about living somewhere nice and having fantastic jobs? Jason cited Jeremiah 29 with the advice of Jeremiah to the Judean exiles in Babylon to settle down there – to go out, get jobs, have families – but to seek the welfare of the city in doing so. All our stories should be about the benefit that comes to others.

Jason also spoke about the significance of a cruciform identity. For the conversations that go on inside us – I need this, I deserve this – how often are those earthed in conversations with Jesus through reading the Bible? How often do I take the most difficult things I’m challenged with and take them to the cross in terms of my identity? We need to have different conversations…

•••

Jason concluded by noting that often our pain about loss in life is the pain of losing stories that aren’t supposed to be our stories in the first place. Indeed, does the Bible affect our lives at all? In our relationship with the Bible, it seems, we have barely begun to scratch the surface.

Andy Flannagan on Reading the Bible Politically

Notes from a seminar at the London launch of Biblefresh (30 March 2010):

Andy started by saying that it’s an exciting time to be involved in politics and the public life of the nation, not least because of current high levels of interest on the part of churches in issues of public life.

He noted the importance of working appropriately on the inside and the outside. In 1 Kings 18, for instance, Elijah stands on the outside bringing a prophetic challenge, but Obadiah has a position within the state – an example of how different people are called to different things. Likeise today, there are many agencies and local Christians speaking from the ‘outside’, and there are others seeking to be salt and light within the political world itself.

Andy then took us on a journey through the whole of Scripture – looking briefly at every biblical book or collection of books – to show that all the way through there are points of significance about God and government. (This part was too full and too fast to make decent notes, but the talks will at some point in the near future be made available on the Biblefresh website for those who would like to chase this up.)

Given the amount of compelling evidence of God’s interest in ‘politics’, Andy asked those gathered why more folks had not fleshed this out in the reality of everyday life. Various answers were offered, including that we have privatised our faith, that we are concerned about the possible degree of compromise people have to enter into in politics, that it is never preached about in church, and that we don’t think of Jesus as a ‘political’ animal.

Andy recommended N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope, which lays out the vision for the restoration and redemption of all things, and the importance of demonstrating the presence of the kingdom whenever we’re involved in acts of redemption.

He also directed us to a website – Susa – containing helpful resources for people to get politically engaged.

Other books recommended were Richard Bauckham, The Bible in Politics, Nick Spencer and Jonathan Chaplin (eds.), God and Government, and Krish Kandiah, Just Politics (Authentic).

Jason Gardner on Reading Youth Culture through Biblical Lenses

Notes from a seminar at the London launch of Biblefresh (30 March 2010):

Jason’s topic was helping young people critique the world around them from a biblical perspective.

He began by talking about the recent proliferation of Vampire films, TV series, Sephanie Meyer’s Twilight books, etc., showing the impact of this in youth culture, and raising the question, From a biblical perspective, where would we go to deal with ghosts, werewolfs, and vampires?

Taking his cue from Clifford Geertz’ definition of culture as ‘the ensemble of stories we tell each other about ourselves’, he made three points (I think) about stories:

1. Stories connect us
What TV series did you have to watch as a teenager in order to be able to chat in the playground the next day? What stories are young people telling us today? What stories are they telling each other?

2. Stories shape us
Big stories impact our lives, forming a worldview that drives attitudes, behaviour, values, approaches, and beliefs – and there are powerful stories being told in contemporary culture, such as secularism, which clashes with the biblical worldview – sometimes leading to an ‘enthusiastic dualism’ in young people, where two contradictory stories impact and affect their lifestyle in different ways.

What channels are our young people absorbing the story of God through? What channels are they absorbing secularuism through? Where are the stories in conflict, where are they overlapping?

How do we help our young people to be active critics, not just passive recipients, of the stories that shape their lives? How do we help them understand their story through the biblical story of creation, fall, redemption, future hope? And how do we help them understand how that story engages with the stories around them?

In exploring the relationship between Christainity and culture, Jason referred to the work of H. Richard Niebuhr (reducing his fivefold typology to three):

• Christ against culture – Christ and culture as a radical either-or choice.

• Christ of culture – where Christians find their culture compatible with the surrounding culture, and perhaps even cut off bits of the biblical story that don’t quite fit.

• Christ the transformer of culture – not opposition or agreement but transforming. Cultures can be converted; the fall only corrupted and misdirected culture, and improvement, even redemption, is possible.

Jason here referred to LICC’s use of the ‘10-110’ model. If our young people spend (no more than) 10 hours a week in church and 110 hours elsewhere, how much of that 10 hours is spent equipping them for the 110, in their mission to redeem every area of society.

We use the Bible to critique, affirm, and transform what’s in the stories in society and culture.

3. Help them understand how stories shape them
Jason finished with two ways to read culture, one simple and one profound.

The simple one comes from Paul Tillich, focusing on hopes, fears, and enduring stories. What are the stories that keep getting repeated – such as told in Pride and Prejudice, for instance? What does it say about the hopes and fears of the culture?

And think about Star Wars, the Harry Potter movies, and the Lord of the Rings saga, each with main characters who are orphans living with their uncle, who go on a journey, who are nurtured by sage warriors – perhaps showing the ‘orphan’ heart of people everywhere. What are the core elements of these stories?

The more profound way comes from Andy Crouch’s Culture Making, asking the question, What does culture make possible, and what does it make more difficult or impossible? Jason used the examples of motorways and mobile phones.

Jenny Baker on Fresh Approaches to Sharing the Bible with Young People

Notes from a seminar at the London launch of Biblefresh (30 March 2010):

Jenny began by saying that young people don’t share our view of the Bible, showing a video clip of young people answering the question, What do you think of the Bible?Answers: long, lots of pages, small writing, few connections with life and their world, lots of misinformation.

The context in which we teach is that we have good relationships with young people, recognising that they are going to be looking at our lives.

Creative expression is really important for young people; children are often self-starters here, and self-expression is part of the cultural furniture.

Some suggestions here included:

Revisiting the psalms through making videos. Give them an exericse about what the back story to a psalm might have been, ask how they might have felt. Or, get them to rewrite a psalm of their own. For instance, David himself knew what it was like to care for sheep, and he imagined God doing for him what he had done for sheep. How about: ‘The Lord is my football coach. He makes me stretch after training…’ Some psalms are acrostics, so we could encourage them to write an acrostic psalm of their own.

Use imagination in stories – get inside the skin of a biblical character.

Learning through experience, citing Kolb’s cyle of experiential learning – experiencing, reflecting, generalising, applying.

The prophets engaged in symbolic acts that communicated their message.

Encourage young people to think about how biblical stories apply to their own lives, think about which character they identify with, or use art.

Lectio divina – a slow and prayerful way of praying the Bible – read a passage a number of times leaving space to linger on the words, seeing Scripture as a place of encounter with God. Lectio divina is enhanced when it is coupled with a good working knowledge of the Scriptures.

See the big picture of the Bible, the narrative running through from beginning to end. At this point Jenny showed a video from the Lacey Theatre Company portraying the Bible in three minutes, and mentioned Nick Page’s The Big Story (especially useful for young people themselves) and The Bible Book: A User’s Guide, as well as a resource from Urban Saints – God’s Living Story for Young People – written by Jenny herself.

Krish Kandiah on From Bible Baddies to Storynory: 20 Ways to Engage Children with the Bible

Notes from a seminar at the London launch of Biblefresh (30 March 2010):

Krish began by saying that he was speaking mainly as a parent rather than a children’s worker, and had primary school children in mind for most of his suggestions… which were as follows…

20. We need to be enthusiastic about the Bible if we are to inspire young people to be enthusiastic about the Bible.

19. Make use of every available medium possible. Krish referred here to iPhone apps by Kore (providing a red-letter verse everyday) and one called Yahero (produced by the Canadian Bible Society), and the You Version.

18. Encourage children to read the Bible for themselves – help them be self-feeders. Krish mentioned The Toddler’s Bible, The Jesus Storybook Bible (especially recommended), The Lion Graphic Bible, and The Bite-Size Bible.

17. Family Bible reading – so that kids see Mum and Dad engage with the Bible too. Here Krish mentioned Easter Unscrambled, The Real Christmas Tree (an Advent calendar), and referred to resources designed to be used when a family is on holiday.

16. Make our Bible teaching EPIC – an acronym from Leonard Sweet – Experiential (e.g., where we teach could be important), Participatory (allowing children to contribute to stories and ask questions), Image Rich (allowing the images of the Bible to speak), Connected (building a community, asking what the Bible means for the way we relate to each other).

15. Do a journey through the Old Testamernt by enacting some of the festivals, such as Passover and Tabernacles.

14. Play Biblical 20 questions – ‘I’m a person in the Bible, can you guess who I am?’ – and doing this when we’re out walking, as a normal part of life.

13. Listen to the Bible rather than read it – using multiple media such as The Bible Experience.

12. Do your exegetical homework – and seek to enskill others as well. Read books, such as: Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Kingdom; Mike Novelli, Shaped by the Story; Scot McKnight, The Blue Parakeet; Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to read the Bible for all its worth.

11. Make stop motion videos using a digital camera.

10. A book at bedtime – such as stories from Bob Hartman’s Bible Baddies, which don’t ‘Disneyfy’ the Bible.

9. Storynory – listen to Bible stories during car journeys; get involved in telling and recording Bible stories in 10-15 minutes for possible upload to the Biblefresh website.

8. Intertextual engagement of biblical worldview and Hollywood cinematography – help children read film through the Bible. Compare and contrast Finding Nemo with the Prodigal son; use Camp Rock to provoke discussion of moral dilemmas, or The Boy in Striped Pyjamas for the ideas it evokes about overcoming barriers.

7. All age obedience – underline the Bible is not just a text, but provokes action. If we can do that collectively as a church, so much the better.

6. Raise up peer Bible teachers – young people to teach the Bible.

5. Echo the story – Mike Novelli’s Bible storying scheme – telling the Bible stories, and then getting young people to retell the story, then going round the group and ask ing ‘What if?’ questions.

4. Photo storyboard – issue a challenge to come up with a three-picture storyboard of a parable. When people have to produce something in response to the Bible text, that helps them to think it through.

3. Memorise the Bible reading for a church service.

2. Create a voiceover video, getting kids involved in producing something.

1. Art project – referred to earlier in the day by Krish – an example of a local church getting involved with schools through leading assemblies on the parables of Jesus, combined with an art project and competition, displaying pieces in the church, and inviting parents to view the art.

Mark Meynell on the Shock of the Old: How the Ancient and Other Speaks into Today

Notes from a seminar at the London launch of Biblefresh (30 March 2010):

Taking his cue from Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock – describing the shock whch comes with too much change in too short a period of time, the suffering from information overload – Mark asked whether the experience of reading the Bible should be one of ancient shock.

Leading off with a quotation from Thomas Merton about (among other things) questioning the Bible and being questioned by the Bible, Mark noted that evangelicals can be blasé about the Bible, forgetting its troubling and disorientating strangeness, along with the danger of treating every book of the Bible as if it was our favourite letter of Paul’s.

He shared about speaking recently from Exodus 12, a significant episode in the Old Testament story, but also profoundly disturbing with the death of every firstborn son in Egypt. Or, what about Psalm 137 with the dashing of infants against a rock? Or some of the teachings of Jesus himself – hating parents, being poor in spirit – which have lost something of their shock-value precisely because we are so familiar with them.

So, we have to face up to the diversitry, alienness, strangeness of the Bible, and we must help contemporary readers of the Bible to do that too.

Mark addressed this issue under three headings:

1. Put off by the ancient shock? The problem of chronological snobbery
For some people the very fact that the Bible is ancient is problematic. Although there have been good attempts made to put the Bible into today’s ‘vernacular’ (Eugene Peterson’s The Message, for example), there will still inevitably be an element of ancient shock. C.S. Lewis describes how Owen Barfield challenged his chronological snobbery. Why should our generation necessarily have got it right?

So, a top tip here is to expose the fallacy of chronological snobbery. We’ve got some things right now compared to centuries ago (ancient dentistry anyone?), but why should we assume our generation has everything sussed? We need to engage in the deconstruction of people’s assumptions of cultural superiority.

2. We should expect ancient shock: the inevitablity of a worldview clash
Mark cited 2 Peter 1:20-21 to underscore the divine and human origins of the Bible. Prophets spoke from God, not as typewriters, but through their own personality (Isaiah is different from Ezekiel, Paul is different from James, etc.)… and yet still from God! We need to be careful of undermining the humanity of the Bible; the authors were all of their time, and so their world can seem so alien. But there is a sense in which the Bible’s message always comes from ‘outside’ our world – and it clashed with people’s assumptions then as well as now. There can be an assumption that the world revolves around me and so the Bible also needs to revolve around me, but we need to undergo a Copernican revolution in this respect. The Bible will always be subversively shocking.

Mark notes that part of the semantic range of the greek word metanoia is ‘change of mind’, restoring God to his rightful place. Sin means we will resist metanoia, assuming the Bible will justify the way we naturally think. But we should expect to be challenged and shaken up by the Bible – which is why group study is important, as is cross-cultural engagement.

So, a second top tip is to start again if you are not shaken up by the Bible.

3. The hermeneutic of ancient shock: spending time with strangeness
A good question to ask of a Bible passage is, How would I have told it? The difference between how I’ve retold it and how it is on the page will be illuminating. Mark here related an account of Dick Lucas preaching on the images used to describe Christian leaders in 2 Timothy 2 – soldier, athlete, farmer – where Lucas asks us to imagine how we might have phrased 2:7, suggesting we would be unlikely to combine the two halves of the verse in the way Paul does.

Paul did not write: ‘Rreflect on what I’m saying and you’ll soon get the point.’

Nor did he write: ‘Pray about it, and the Lord will give you insight into all this.’

Rather, he wrote: ‘Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.’

We use our mind and we pray.

Mark also encouraged us to identify the oddities in a familiar story, taking the parable of the tenants in Luke 20 as an example. What the tenants did was appaling, and surely some sort of punishment would be expected; but the reaction comes in an odd place – 20:16 – because the listeners sense a correlation between the tenants and themselves (cf. 20:19)… but it is this response that provokes Jesus warning about the rejected stone becoming the cornerstone.

So, the final top tip is to make a point of looking for the surprises.

In short, Mark’s talk was an appeal to embrace the ‘ancient shock’ of Scripture, to relish it, embrace it, and allow it to change us. Hence:

• We need to overcome our chronological snobbery
• We should expect to be challenged
• We meditate on its strangeness, looking for unexpected, and asking the right questions

Mark finished by saying that the most exciting phrase to hear in a laboratory is not (as we might expect) eureka, but ‘Hey, that’s funny…’ – because that can lead to a whole new body of study.

So, let’s learn to embrace the shock of the old.

Having made these notes, I now see that Mark has himself summarised his three points on his blog here, and made available the full text of the talk as a pdf here.