I read it.

I was actually surprised by the variety of the answers given to this question…since the bible is a collection of books/letters/etc, surely the only way to engage with it is to read it! But I guess we all struggle with reading the bible. Why? Most possibly because of three main reasons?

- it doesn’t make sense (at a literary level, at a story level, at a verse level, or perhaps even at a grammatical/syntactical level)

- it doesn’t seem relevant.

- I’ve read this [chapter/verse/book] before, so whats the point of reading it again…

I’ve struggled with all of these since I started reading the scriptures. Random thoughts:

- at a textual level, bibles like the NET Bible help make sense of the actual text. However, its so full of notes you can be quickly swamped and lose sense of the actual narrative and flow.

- reading background info on the relevant culture/history etc is really really helpful. In fact, my understanding and interest of the entire Old Testament has been transformed by reading N T Wright, who manages to pick out the threads of the meta-story. Now whenever I read, for example, Isaiah, I can understand the context of an awful lot of what is being said.

- Hebrew writing is very dense and compact, so there is so much contained within so little text. Its so easy to miss stuff. You can read a passage ten times and still stumble across things you never saw before. So for some books of the bible I just keep reading them again and again, until it makes more and more sense.

- its easy to lose the big picture when reading a long book, such as one of the major prophets. Again, I find that simply reading repeatedly, and scribbling notes in your bible, helps a lot.

So at the end of the day I am at the place where I am just repeatedly immersing myslef into the text.

My problem is not engaging with the bible per se, but this: “how do I let the text of scripture speak authoratively into my life? and “how do I grow closer to the Triune God through reading the text of scripture?” So maybe that is where everyone else is as well, and hence all the different responses…

I’ve had ten years of being taught remember context, think it through, listen to what you are taught and check check and check again. The problem is, it becomes so intellectual that I can shut out the heart and the Holy Spirit’s prmptings and voice. Sometimes I find The Message helpful but then I hear that intellectual voice saying “it’s a paraphrase so you can’t trust everything it says”. Which is annoying!

I fail miserably at memorisation, probably due to lack of effort.

Looking forward to you carrying on this series.

Having both an image plus some text where I can wander around an image (photo, imaginary object, painting, metaphor from the text) as well as dwell on the words in their context opens up different things to me. Having both left brain - analysis, study, logic and right brain activities- wonder, meditation, integration and harmony - seem to provide a good dynamic. Being by inclination and education more analytical I note with interest the pull towards art, poetry and just letting a scripture be and now see the hand of God in that.

Gerard Hughes noted that every experience is recorded in the body which suggests to me that for the Holy Spirit through the Bible to engage fully with me must also engage at a body level, where memories and personal experiences are held, so work with clay, the figures in Godly Play (see above) and touch should at some point come into play.

Practically, if I have one verse for a week and can dip in and out of it wherever I am then it seems to act like a pinboard for God to stick things on to it eg further readings, conversations, connections to other Bible verses etc.

I think that Francis Frangipane has a good way of operating. He has/had a set Bible reading plan for each day. Once in it he would feel free to stop and deviate for that day and then return to the point he left off in the following day’s reading. Wandering and momentum.

PS I think differing forms of Bible ‘work’ that recognise different personality types is a good step ahead too.

I like the sweep of the story and how it influences, engages, challenges and changes the other stories that also compete for a place of dominance as the narratives of our lives…

I agree with Mak that communal exploration is exciting and eye opening - it gives renewed meaning to being people of the book. It is also powerful to read with other traditions and the Abrahamic faiths like judaism and islam - altho i have only read about the last way of doing so but from what I read it does sound profound (for instance it is not about consensus and disagreeing well is a higher value than being right and dirty).

We are just now implementing this more seriously into our community context. It’s really just come into fruition in the context of relationship and we hope to continue to grow it in that way. Those in the “core” commit to living the rhythm and we as a whole community live it out as community and in that way we disciple through modeling - by example.

as me in a year and I’ll tell you how I feel about it then

How do you hold each other accountable to living the scriptures? I don’t think we have ever really cracked that one!

One of the things i am interested in is how much our interactions with Scripture really bring about change in us…
… do we meet with God in Scripture…
How can we help people be changed by God, as they encounter Him in the Bible?

I have another 2 for you - “pray” the Bible and engage in community through dialog.

As for what has had the biggest impact, I’m not really sure I can say - probably engaging through dialog, through community.