Bible reading
The Bible Society is reporting that the last Australian Church Life Survey showed that only 19% of church attendees read the Bible daily or on most days; it also showed that 12% of respondents read the Bible a few times a week, 5% once a week, 27% occasionally and 37% hardly ever or never.
A number of Bible related ministries are working together to try to improve these less-than-impressive statisitcs, suggesting that local congregations set aside a week in each year as Bible Celebration Week—a week when the focus is on helping individual Christians develop the discipline of Bible reading 365 days a year.
For those looking for good resources to suggest for this purpose, may we suggest the three Daily Reading Bible booklets? These resources have a number of real benefits:
- they contain everything you need, including the Bible text for the day—so you can do them just aout anywhere;
- they don't give pat, superficial “devotional reflections”;
- through strategic questions and “points to ponder” they focus on the key message of the Bible passage;
- they model good Bible reading habits in a brief format;
- they are not dated, so people can do them at a pace that suits their circumstances and can change to something else for a time without ‘falling behind’ some imposed schedule
Find out more about Volume 1, Volume 2 and Volume 3. (And look at for Volume 4 soon.)