Category: Immerse

By Paul Caminiti, Institute for Bible Reading

Around 538 BC, the nation of Israel limped home. After seventy years of Babylonian captivity, they returned to Judah to find Jerusalem in ruins. The wall was torn down, the gates were destroyed, and the Temple was little more than a pile of rubble. Nehemiah weeps when he learns of the condition of the city.

The people are disoriented. The glory days of David and Solomon are long gone, and their once world-class city is a shell of its former self. They rebuild the Temple, and those old enough to remember the glory of the first Temple weep tears of mourning. Nehemiah rebuilds the walls and gates surrounding the city, but reality bites. The once-proud superpower has been reduced to a third-rate nation with no king, no army, and no treasury.

Then something amazing happens. Once the basic infrastructure is set up, the people come to Ezra, their chief priest, with a request.

“In October, when the Israelites had settled in their towns, all the people assembled with a unified purpose at the square just inside the Water Gate. They asked Ezra the scribe to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had given for Israel to obey” (Nehemiah 7:73–8:1).

Although the walls and the Temple were standing again, the people sensed that something was still broken: themselves. They believed that healing would come through re-immersion in their Story. Ezra responded immediately by organizing a corporate day of Scripture reading.

“He faced the square just inside the Water Gate from early morning until noon and read aloud to everyone who could understand. All the people listened closely to the Book of the Law” (Nehemiah 8:3).

Church in the Age of Coronavirus

The COVID-19 virus hardly needs an introduction. Over the past few months our lives and habits have been upended. Words like “crisis” and “pandemic” flood our thoughts and our imaginations. We’ve been isolated, cut off from our friends and loved ones, and even spent many weeks unable to even gather for worship on Sundays.

During this time, pastors scrambled to create infrastructures with which to “do church” during these strange and unsettling times. And though slowly we are coming out of isolation, what has been discovered is that returning to “normal” will look different.

During those lonely days, technology helped us to piece together a vague sense of community; it was and continues to be a difficult season of change. Infectious disease specialist Michael Osterholm said while many view the crisis as a “blizzard” that must be waited out with extreme measures for a short period of time, the more appropriate response is to view it as the “beginning of winter.” While the ultimate severity and longevity are unknown, many indicators point toward a likely scenario: things are going to be different for a while.

In their moment of uncertainty and disorientation, the nation of Israel turned to their Scriptures to remember their identity, to recount God’s promises and his rescue, and to be reminded of the kind of people they were called to be. During the winter of coronavirus, could the Body of Christ do something similar?

Returning to Our Story

Shaken from our usual routines and frenetic pace, the virus has given the church an opportunity to evaluate. What can “church” look like in an ever-changing world? Like Israel, we’re faced with a bit of a blank slate. Like Israel, we can choose to return and re-focus on our founding Story told in the Scriptures. A modern-day Ezra Moment, if you will.

To help, we’ve created “Immerse from Home”—a completely free downloadable resource that includes everything you need to (virtually) gather in community for a two-week book club reading of Luke-Acts.

Originally intended as Volumes 1 and 2 of the same combined story, Luke-Acts comprises a quarter of the New Testament. In a period of uncertainty and anxiety, what could be more orienting and grounding than the story of Jesus and the story of the early church?

If you and your group enjoy the Luke-Acts experience, you can continue reading the New Testament together using Immerse: Messiah. If you live in the U.S. there is a 20% off discount on ImmerseBible.com

The Beginning of Something New

In his wisdom, Ezra understood that an emotional one-off event wasn’t sufficient and that he needed to create a comprehensive plan for sustainable rhythms of immersion in the sacred texts. The Scripture Reading Marathon became a turning point for the nation, but only because it was a starting point.

Nehemiah goes on to tell us:

“On October 9 the family leaders of all the people, together with the priests and Levites, met with Ezra the scribe to go over the law in greater detail” (Nehemiah 8:13).

In the same month, during the Festival of Trumpets, “Ezra read from the Book of the Law of God on each of the seven days of the festival” (Nehemiah 8:18).

“On October 31, the people assembled again. . . . They remained standing in place for three hours while the Book of the Law of the Lord their God was read aloud to them” (Nehemiah 9:1, 3).

For the first time in their history, the Scriptures became central to Israel’s way of life. Synagogues, created expressly for the public reading of Scripture, sprang up throughout Israel. Scattered song lyrics from David, Moses, Asaph, and others were compiled for the first time into the Psalms. By the first century AD, young boys between the ages of 6 and 10 were expected to memorize the Torah.

So we ask: could the COVID-19 virus instigate an Ezra Moment? Could we take this opportunity to re-immerse ourselves in our Story?

We invite you to take action. To try something new—and ancient. Pastors, call your congregations into this experience. Small group and Bible study leaders, challenge your groups to a two-week commitment. Regular “Joes” and “Janes,” try this with your spouse or your kids (use the Family Guide for younger kids) or invite some family and friends to weekly Zoom calls. Invite that one coworker or neighbor whom you’ve never felt comfortable inviting to a Bible Study.

As the Scriptures washed over the nation on that first day of reading, the people began to weep. It’s unclear why—perhaps because they hadn’t heard the Word in so long, or perhaps because they’d never heard it at all. Perhaps because they were overwhelmed by guilt as they realized just how far they had strayed from their calling. Regardless, guilt and shame would not have the final say. Nehemiah jumps up and addresses the people:

“Don’t mourn or weep on such a day as this! For today is a sacred day before the Lord your God. . . . Go and celebrate with a feast of rich foods and sweet drinks, and share gifts of food with people who have nothing prepared. This is sacred day before our Lord. Don’t be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!” (Nehemiah 8:9-10).

“So the people went away to eat and drink at a festive meal, to share gifts of food, and to celebrate with great joy because they had heard God’s words and understood them” (Nehemiah 8:12).

Learn more at Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience

Learn more about the Institute for Bible Reading

Though this COVID-19 crisis has caused many of us to physically isolate ourselves from people we love, we are finding comfort in remembering that God is always with us. For us here at Tyndale Bibles, a light that has shined through this darkness is the coming together of the community of believers to be innovative in sharing God’s love in a time when so many desperately need it.

If you follow us on social media, you will know that we have done several reading plans together these weeks. We also have created some additional free resources we wanted to share with you. Please continue to join us in reading God’s Word, praying, and bringing God’s hope. We are thankful for each of you and pray you feel God’s loving arms around you.

Where did Immerse come from? Turns out, it’s the result of over a decade of research and experimentation by the Institute for Bible Reading (IFBR), the creators of Immerse.

We caught up with Glenn Paauw, Senior Director of Content for Institute for Bible Reading, to dig deeper into the history, research, and mission behind Immerse.

Tell us about the Institute for Bible Reading and its mission:

The Institute for Bible Reading (IFBR) is a nonprofit ministry working to change the way the world reads the Bible. Coming out of a long history in Bible publishing, our founding team members have both the experience and passion to focus on the vital mission of making sure people not only have Bibles but also read and understand them.

We believe that the ongoing research into the place of the Bible among God’s people reveals a glaring problem. The lack of attention to the Bible, of sustained reading, of knowledge and understanding is an epidemic. Some voices are even promoting a “Bibleless Christianity”—growing out of their own inability to understand how the Bible really works and informs our faith. It is crazy that the church has been given this essential gift from God, yet it is not intimately familiar with it. Christian communities often take the Bible for granted. “Of course we’re biblical,” we say. But are we? Do we actually read the Bible? Do we understand how it works? Do we have a good pathway for living out its ancient story in our own world?

These are the questions that animate the work of IFBR. Our goal is to do new, ground-breaking research into what is actually happening with the Bible in our churches. We listen and learn from the finest biblical scholars about the meaning and context of the Bible. We interact with pastors and church leaders to hear their concerns and needs. Then we work hard to translate all this learning into real help and real resources for the life of the church. We provide education and resources like Immerse that are well-informed by the best insights of scholarship yet straight-forward and accessible to everyone.

We’re an activist think tank, therefore everything we do is deeply oriented toward giving people real-world help for reading, understanding, and living the Bible well.

Why did your team feel the need to create Immerse?

The Bible is the bestselling book in this country every single year. But as pollster George Gallup used to say, the Bible is the bestselling, least-read book in America. As we became increasingly aware of the research showing that people owned Bibles but did not know the Bible’s content or live out its message, we shifted the target of our own work to Bible engagement.

Too often we end up using the Bible in minimalistic ways and are guided by our own agenda. But God had his own purposes for giving us the Bible. We have this magnificent collection of books in order to invite us into his story of redemption and restoration. The only way to know this story well, and to live it in our own day, is to regularly read it—at length and in depth.

It’s clear that even highly-motivated people are struggling to read and live the Bible well. They pick up the Bible and it’s flat-out hard to read. It’s confusing. It can be kind of dry at times. So eventually, most of them give up. We knew that just telling people to do better and try harder was not going to cut it. They need new “tools” (i.e., a differently formatted Bible made for reading) and new practices that give them a fresh experience.

But we were also motivated by the positive vision that lies in front of the church: What if people loved reading the Bible? What if more and more people knew the Bible deep down in their bones? What if the majority of Christians were not only Bible literate but actually fluent in the Bible’s story? What would be the new story of the impact of the church in the world?

So we created Immerse as a new resource and a fresh experience for the church with the Bible. We knew that it would take a different kind of Bible presentation and a new kind of communal engagement for churches to have breakthrough encounters with the Bible. So we set out to provide something no one else is providing: a simple yet significant program to help people rediscover the riches of God’s word.

Your website says that Immerse: The Reading Bible was designed with one goal in mind: to provide the best reading experience possible. Can you talk about why the 6 volumes are designed the way they are?

We looked closely at the history of the Bible—the whole long journey from ancient oral tradition to contemporary electronic access. It’s clear the Bible is a cultural artifact that has changed in form over time. People have chosen to design and present the Bible in very different ways in different historical eras. As the medium has changed, so has the way people answer the two crucial questions: What is the Bible? and What are we supposed to do with it?

One of the critical periods for the development of the form of the Bible was the birth of the modern era. Within about 100 years of the printing press being developed, Bible translation took off, and a new chapter-and-verse format came to the forefront. As more people began to get their own copy of the Bible for the first time, what they encountered was a two-column, reference book presentation in which every verse was presented as a new, stand-alone paragraph. Add in new study notes and section headings, and the modern Bible format was born.

This led to a whole new set of Bible practices, adapted to the new form. This wasn’t a reader-friendly Bible, so it became harder and less likely that long-form reading would happen. Think about it: What other book have you ever read that is formatted like the Bible?

In place of long-form reading came the practice of proof-texting and focusing on single verses, often taken out of context. As Philip Yancey has said, we’ve now created an entire culture of Bible McNuggets.

So in order to help the church get back to big, contextual reading, we reverse engineered the Bible to an earlier, more holistic format.

First, by collecting the books into six manageable volumes instead of one massive book, the intimidation factor is reduced.

Next, we placed the books in an order that makes more sense for good reading. For example, rather than using the size of books as an organizing principle (like in the prophets and Paul’s letters), we’ve put the books in those sections back into a better historical order. This allows readers to follow events in a chronological way and make more sense of things. We’ve also reunited books that were split into smaller books: Samuel–Kings, Chronicles–Ezra–Nehemiah, and Luke–Acts. In the New Testament, we’ve gathered books around each Gospel that naturally fit with that telling of Jesus’ story—for instance, Peter’s letters are now with Mark’s Gospel, and so forth with the other Gospels.

Then, in a crucial move to enhance better reading, we’ve removed all the modern additives. So there are no chapter and verse intrusions, no footnotes, no section headings or cross-references—all features that tend to distract readers and work against big, immersive reading of whole books. This allows us to present each book with its natural literary sections intact. So the five natural sections of Matthew’s new Torah can be clearly seen, letters look like letters, songs like songs, proverbs like proverbs, etc.—all across the literature of the Bible. This restores the Bible to the kinds of literary forms that authors chose and God inspired and helps us to have a more authentic interpretation.

Finally, we’ve designed each page for easy and smooth reading. The single-column text, comfortable type size, and generous margins and line spacing—all surrounding the clear, straight-forward New Living Translation text—make for a significantly rich Bible reading experience.

What is your vision for normalizing Bible “book clubs,” and how are these different from Bible studies?

The original experiences of God’s people with the Bible were all communal experiences. Before the books were written down, ancient stories were being recounted and passed on to new generations; prophets were delivering their oracles openly and publicly at city gates and Temple entrances; and regular, ongoing Bible readings and discussions were organized in local synagogues. Traditions about Jesus were being told and retold in villages and early Christian gatherings. All of this was done in community.

Then, even when the Scriptures were first written, the copies were few in number and always read aloud in groups. Think of the apostles’ first letters to churches as an example. These would have been written down, transported, and then read to gathered followers of Jesus, most of whom were not literate. People overwhelmingly heard the Bible read, and they listened together.

It was only much later in church history that technological advances gave individuals the chance to have their own copy to read alone. Personal use of the Bible began to replace the previous communal experiences.

Personal reading of the Bible is, of course, a great thing, and none of us should stop that. But something different and very important happens when we read the Bible in community. It’s crucial to remember that the Bible’s own goal is the formation of a distinctive Christian community of people. It is addressed to communities and meant to be lived out as communities.

When we read and discuss the Bible together, we get beyond our own biases and filters. We get to hear how the sacred text impacts others. We see more and learn more. Our own personal understanding is enhanced. It is also important for us to practice the virtues (the fruit of the Spirit) required for true community. Patient listening, striving to understand the point of view of my neighbor, and shared learning are all critical parts of being a genuine Christ-following community.

Traditional Bible studies tend to focus on dissecting smaller parts of the Bible text. While there is certainly value in doing that, what’s been missing from the church’s experience with the Bible is taking in the messages of whole books and having bigger, more open-ended discussions about them.

A book club approach to our gatherings around the Bible is a fresh way for Christian communities to read, learn, and even struggle with the Bible together. And if we were to embrace this as a regular, ongoing pattern of the Christian life, we could begin to see more serious discipleship in understanding and following the way of Jesus. Not just in our personal lives, but our community presence is meant to be a witness to the coming of God’s gracious rule into the world.

The first vision of God’s people for engaging the Bible was a pattern of lectio continua—the continual (weekly or even daily) immersion of the community into whole books of the Bible. Ongoing penetration into the depths of God’s word allowed gatherings of believers to understand all that God had said before and to effectively live into the story in their own day. A re-envisioning of church life today—around deep engagement in the word of God—could strengthen our struggling churches and empower a new sense of identity and calling.

How do you think Immerse and the other work of the Institute for Bible Reading can help the church?

Once upon a time, God’s people were known as the People of the Book. Israel developed the only religion in the ancient world that was so deeply oriented toward a set of sacred texts. Then the earliest followers of Jesus, who were all Jewish and were shaped by this orientation, continued this profound commitment to reading, knowing, and living by the Scriptures.

The early church did whatever it took to make sure every new congregation of believers in the growing movement had access to the Scriptures and were regularly engaged with them. This happened in a world where 90% of the population was illiterate. The practice of reading through the Bible in regular cycles was brought from Judaism right into Christianity. At one point, being a lector, or Bible reader, was an official church office. It was considered essential in early Christianity that all of God’s people were consistently and significantly occupied with God’s word.

We have fallen from this. The work of the Institute for Bible Reading is geared toward helping the church regain this status and rediscover God’s story found in the Bible. We believe that a renewed commitment from church leaders, together with great new resources that surprise people with the Bible, are the things that can feed genuine renewal in the church. The Scriptures are infused with the power of God to bring real transformation into individual lives and into the life of the world. We believed and practiced it once, and we can do so again.

Learn more about Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience

Learn more about the Institute for Bible Reading

One of the most beautiful aspects of being a part of God’s family is that no matter our background, race, culture, nationality, or education level, we are all children of God. The Bethesda Community Church in Fort Worth, TX, is a thriving multigenerational, multicultural, multilingual congregation. Though united in love for God and each other, the congregation of English and Spanish speakers were looking for a way to grow together in community as well as in understanding God’s Word. Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience was a perfect fit. With all six volumes and resources available in both English and Spanish, the Bethesda family is growing close to God and each other by studying his Word.

Hear from members of the Spanish congregation about their experience. (The video includes English speakers and has English subtitles when the speaker uses Spanish.)

Learn more about Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience

by Glenn Paauw, Senior Direct of Content for the Institute for Bible Reading

At the heart of the Gospel is the stunning realization that God is creating a new worldwide family through Jesus. The First Testament is the story of Israel – the Family of Abraham. God launches his project to restore the world by making Abraham a big promise. “This is my covenant with you: I will make you the father of a multitude of nations! I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation. . . . I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you.” Since their inception, the nation of Israel knew that they were God’s family.

This is the story that Jesus was born into – the long, winding, up-and-down story of Israel. Then surprisingly, shockingly, Jesus fulfilled God’s promise to Abraham by giving up his life for the life of the world. Israel’s story became everyone’s story. All people are now invited to join God’s family, and the boundary lines that formerly ordered society – nationality, language, economic status, gender – are now superseded by membership in the family of God.

This means the Story of the Bible is the story we’ve all been adopted into. It’s our Family Story.

This beautiful reality is why we at the Institute for Bible Reading believe everyone should be welcomed to the table to feast together on the Word of God. And we intentionally crafted Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience to allow for that.

We were thrilled to hear how Bethesda Community Church used Immerse to create unity between their Spanish and English congregations (watch video story). They used the Family Guide to invite families with young children to read and discuss together. They (and others) have used the custom Immerse Audio edition for those who struggle to read or simply prefer to listen.

We realize there’s still a long way to go: more languages, more resources, and more adaptability for every kind of context. But our vision is for everyone to have the tools to read big, read real, and read together. This vision for God’s new family to go deep into God’s Word is already beginning to happen.

The Kingdom of God is brown, white, black, young, old, educated, uneducated, healthy, disabled, rich, poor, and everything in between. We speak a multitude of languages. But we are united in Christ. What a beautiful gift it is to come together and feast on our Story.

Learn more about Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience

Learn more about the Institute for Bible Reading

Bethesda Community Church in Fort Worth, Texas, is a thriving multigenerational, multiethnic, multilingual congregation. Watch this video and discover how Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience has helped them grow together in unity and community.

I read an interesting article a few months ago that poses the question: As Christians, do we put our needs and wants for our families above our sacrificial living to God? It is an intriguing question and caused me to pause, pray, and reflect on my priorities.

As I continued to think about that question, I was reminded that as parents, mentors, teachers, and anyone who has influence in a child’s life, we are instructed to train the children in our lives in the truth of Scripture and to help them understand what it means to live a life fully surrendered to God. We do this when we live sacrificially. This is emphasized throughout Scripture, but check out Deuteronomy 6, Proverbs 22, and 2 Timothy 3 as a start.

In our house, we want reading the Bible together to be a priority, but it can be difficult with varied reading levels, maturity, and understanding. Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience offers us many options to overcome these hurdles, like audio of the day’s readings, videos to help us have an overview of what’s going on, and the family reading guides.

The family reading guides are resources designed to assist parents, guardians, and other family leaders in guiding their families through the transformative Immerse experience. Essentially, it’s an abridged version of each Immerse volume. So, it’s an excellent way for young readers in your family to participate in the Immerse experience without becoming overwhelmed.

The readings are shorter and always drawn from within a single day’s reading when following the volume’s reading plan. This helps everyone in the family to stay on the same reading path. Each daily Bible reading in the family guide is introduced by a short paragraph to orient young readers to what they are about to read. This paragraph will also help to connect the individual daily Scripture passages to the big story revealed in the whole Bible.

The readings end with a feature called Talking Together, created especially for young readers. These provide reflective statements and questions to help them think more deeply about the Scriptures they have read. (Talking Together is also useful for guiding your family discussions.)

The readings in the family guide are intended primarily for children in grades 4 to 8, but they can be adapted to help younger children too. High schoolers and college students can easily read from the full volumes. In fact, many in this age group have found this experience life-changing. (Watch the videos of a high school class that read Immerse: Messiah and hear from students in a University New Testament class.)

Sometimes the best way to get everyone on the same page is to read something out loud together. If your family enjoys reading aloud together on a regular basis, that may be the most natural way for you to use the family reading guide.

For families that haven’t tried this, you may want to experiment. Begin each daily reading with the introductory paragraph to give context, followed immediately by the daily Scripture passage. Then the Talking Together feature can help you lead a family discussion. And don’t forget about the audio and video resources that are available at ImmerseBible.com.

This doesn’t have to be just your nuclear family. Why not get extended family involved so more generations can be gaining insight and wisdom from each other. The family guides are also a great way for full congregations to be immersed together in God’s Word. Bethesda Community Church in Texas is a multigenerational, multiethnic, multilingual congregation. Watch this video and hear how using Immerse has brought not only unity but community to this thriving family of God.

Learn more about our partners at the Institute for Bible Reading

Learn more about Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience

Do we make the Bible too hard? Or do we think that because the Bible is our foundational truth it should be hard to validate its immense meaning? The Bible is what we build our lives and faith on. We need to be grounded in the Word, and God in his wisdom delivered it to us in letters, poems, books of history—ways that we could understand and that would bring us closer to him. But in our attempt to go deeper, have we created barriers to the powerful simplicity of reading God’s Word?

Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience was born out of the necessity to help people engage or reengage with God’s Word. Hundreds of people stop reading their Bibles every day, and if we aren’t reading God’s Word, how can we build our lives on its truth? Without Bible reading, lives are not being built on that foundational rock and are instead resting on the shifting sands of others’ beliefs and cultural norms.

Immerse focuses on three core ideas: reading a naturally formatted Bible, reading at length, and having unmediated discussions about it together. By simply reading and then gathering once per week in “book club” style groups, people have a place to voice their questions, talk about their concerns, and celebrate “aha!” moments together.

Each Immerse experience is designed to take a group through a significant portion of the Bible in eight weeks. It’s intentionally uncomplicated. It simply gives people the opportunity to read the Bible, discover its story, and journey through it with their community. By returning to a more natural Bible reading experience, we believe people can truly read and understand God’s Word.

We’re delighted that entire church congregations, small groups, book clubs, families, and even unexpected communities (read how Immerse is being used in Angola Prison) across the country are reading Immerse together. By creating an environment where people feel encouraged to share, it invites people into a better understanding of God’s Word and a deeper relationship with him and each other.

Learn more about Immerse.

by Paul Caminiti, Institute for Bible Reading

Angola Prison, nicknamed “The Alcatraz of the South,” is one of the world’s most notorious prisons. Located outside Baton Rouge, LA, it’s the largest maximum-security prison in the country, with the property bigger in area than Manhattan. It began in the mid-1880s as a slave plantation, named “Angola” after the African country from which most of the slaves came.

When Angola was converted to a state prison in 1901, the inhumane practices from the slave plantation carried over. Convicts were frequently abused, underfed, and subjected to unregulated violence. Prisoners were often worked to death under the harsh conditions.

I was recently invited to Angola to present Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience to the 28 Protestant churches that operate inside the prison. Thanks to a partnership with New Orleans Baptist Seminary, there is a seminary program within the prison that has trained and ordained over 100 prisoner-pastors.

Our relationship with Pastor Jim Cymbala at The Brooklyn Tabernacle (BT) opened the door at Angola. (Hear what Pastor Cymbala has to say about Immerse.) After Immerse was successfully launched to 5,000 people at BT, Pastor Cymbala caught a vision for Immerse in Angola. BT has a long partnership with Angola, with groups traveling there every year to visit the prison hospital and minister to the men on death row.

Louisiana has one of the strictest penal codes in the country. Nine out of ten prisoners will die there, either by execution or by natural death. Many of the men I met committed crimes when they were teenagers and will never taste freedom again.

There is a long history of violence and abuse at Angola. I talked to men who told me how before going to bed, they would stuff magazines under their T-shirts and into their shorts to keep from being stabbed to death in their sleep.

We toured a housing unit referred to as “Red Hat,” named after the red paint-coated straw hats that its occupants wore when they worked in the fields. The building, located next door to the execution chamber and electric chair, consisted of 30 cell blocks. Each cell measured 5 feet by 7 feet, with a cement bunk and no mattress. Dinner was served in stinking buckets splashed onto the floors. During times of overcrowding, fifteen prisoners, often naked, were pressed into a single cell. Red Hat officially closed in 1972.

In 1995, a work of redemption began with a new warden, Burl Cain. Cain adopted the posture that if you treat people like animals, they’ll act like animals. He built several dormitory-like units where inmates could move for good behavior. He started a rodeo where prisoners could become cowboys for a day and where artistically-gifted inmates could sell their creations to the 10,000 spectators who come for the rodeo. It was Warden Cain who invited New Orleans Baptist Seminary into the prison.

The presence of Christ’s church in Angola has been palpable. The most violent prison in America went from 1,387 assaults in 1990 to 371 assaults in 2012.

Immerse immediately captured the imagination of lead chaplain Jim Rentz. A Bible in the New Living Translation that was easier to read, with no chapters and verses and with the books in a better historical order. He also liked that Immerse is more of a book club than a Bible study.

Chaplain Rentz told me there’s lots of good preaching in the churches, but structurally it’s always been very top-down. Immerse provides what’s been missing: the invitation for the inmates to simply read and dialogue together. Another chaplain, Liz McGraw, is excited. “The churches have been pretty siloed,” she told me, “but Immerse offers us the opportunity to come together as one, all different denominations, to read God’s Word!”

But how would the pastors react? I was able to present and explain Immerse to them for about 90 minutes. During my presentation I sensed they were tracking with me, but then came the moment of truth. With some trepidation I asked for a show of hands: “Who is interested in taking this to their church?” Without hesitation, all 28 hands shot up. We’re all in.

Later that night, to a packed house, I shared the Immerse vision with a larger group of 400-500. The meeting ended, and I was swarmed with inmates who were full of questions, wanting to know when the Bibles would arrive. There were tears. The hope of the gospel and the power of the Scriptures has shone a light into the darkness at Angola.

This year, all 28 Angola churches are reading the New Testament together with Immerse: Messiah.

This is a powerful story in the making, but it needs your prayers. Already we’re seeing the domino effect. A large state prison in Michigan, upon hearing about Angola, has launched Immerse to 300 inmates.

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to comfort the brokenhearted and to proclaim that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed.” ~ The prophet Isaiah

Learn more about Immerse

Learn more about the Institute for Bible Reading

Glenn Paauw, Institute for Bible Reading

Many adults are struggling to read the Bible. We know this. At some level it’s understandable because the Bible is a big, complicated, and very ancient book. Yet 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.

If adults are struggling, what should we expect from kids? If the Bible is tough going for the grownups, it’s going to be even tougher for young readers, right?

In a word . . . yes. 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 for kids?

Where We’ve Been

Simply from looking at our standard Bible curricula, it would seem that what’s actually happening is that we have other goals besides fluency (spiritual formation, teaching morals, building faith, etc.) that cause us to use the Bible in certain ways. The intended purpose is not often to foster a deep engagement with Scripture itself. As a result, within any given lesson the Bible is encountered merely 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 young and not yet proficient. That makes sense, right? Well. . .

The problem with giving children only a verse or two is that this approach tends to stick around as readers get older. Even into adulthood we continue to show and teach the Scriptures by referring to select Bible verses. The consequence of this 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).

And the problem with an ongoing diet of paraphrased Bible stories is that such narrations 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 the essence of a particular story.

All of this is appropriate in a sense, 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 teenagers and then young adults. This means that young readers often wind up not learning the way biblical language actually sounds and actually works. And older kids never learn to engage with 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?

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

So are we discipling kids into not being Bible readers?

What would the 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?

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 any inkling of the big story? Are they falling in love with Jesus—that is, with Jesus as understood in the context of the overall narrative?

What To Do?

At the Institute for Bible Reading, we’re working on answers to these reading problems. As young people within the church grow up, graduate, and head out on their own in various ways, a healthy and hearty appetite for Bible reading doesn’t seem to be going with them. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that there is a low number of adults in the church who are engaged in Bible reading and comprehension. People are following the path that’s been laid out for them, and then we scramble to convert adults into Bible readers. We are failing to show them the way in the first place.

So what would change look like?

The downward trajectory of 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. A Bibleless Christianity won’t be a vibrant and affective Christianity.

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

Read more about Bible engagement from the Institute for Bible Reading

Learn more about Immerse: The Bible Reading Experience

Hear what happens when a group of high school students read the New Testament