Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
On this episode of The Lead On Podcast, Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, discusses practical ways church leaders can make the Bible more accessible to their congregations. He shares actionable strategies to help people engage with God's Word confidently and regularly.
Creators and Guests
What is Lead On Podcast?
Ready to hone your leadership skills and unlock your full potential? Tune in to the Lead On Podcast, where Jeff Iorg dives deep into Biblical leadership.
Hosted by SBC Executive Committee President Jeff Iorg, this dynamic podcast provides insight for seasoned executives, aspiring leaders, or those in ministry who are simply passionate about personal growth. The Lead On Podcast offers actionable, practical tips to help you navigate the complexities of ministry leadership in today's ever-changing world.
From effective communication and team building to strategic decision-making and fostering innovation, each episode is packed with valuable lessons and inspiring stories to empower you on your leadership journey.
Put these principles into practice and Lead On!
Welcome to the Lead On Podcast. This is Jeff Iorg, the president of the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking with you once again about practical issues related to ministry leadership. Well, a few days ago, I read an article about, the American Bible Society releasing its annual survey results about people's view of the bible. And I found the article intriguing, the information informative, but more than that, it raised a question for me. What can we do to make the bible more accessible?
Jeff Iorg:So I wanna talk about that on the podcast today. What you can do as a church leader to make the bible more accessible. Because frankly, the biggest problem in that survey that was revealed by the American Bible Society is that people are not engaging the Bible for lots of different reasons. But we can facilitate that happening more effectively by doing some specific things that help people understand how to access the Bible and how to make it more a part of their lives. So I wanna give you five or six suggestions today of practical things you can do to make the Bible more accessible.
Jeff Iorg:Number one,
Jeff Iorg:read the bible in worship services. Now you might think, well, duh. We, of course, read the bible in worship services, but do you really?
Jeff Iorg:I'm talking about more than reading it as foundation for preaching and teaching, although that is one of the ways to use the Bible in worship
Jeff Iorg:services. But let me
Jeff Iorg:tell you some other methods. And the reason I highlight these is because, again, we're talking about making the Bible more accessible. What we're trying to do is show people who are not Bible scholars, who who who don't have access to the Bible resources that typical church leaders have, who are looking at this big thick book and are somehow intimidated by it, how do we get those people to realize, hey, I can I can read this and and I can understand this? And it can be a normal part of my experience to encounter and understand the Bible. So one way you can help people to feel that way about the Bible is to read the Bible in worship services, certainly as foundation for preaching and teaching, but beyond that.
Jeff Iorg:For example, I was preaching in a church a few months ago where they have had a pattern for some years to read through the Bible as a part
Jeff Iorg:of their Sunday worship service. Now they've been reading through the New Testament for quite some time, one chapter a week. The
Jeff Iorg:Sunday I was there, they were reading Titus chapter two. And that particular day, the way they were reading the passage is the pastor and his wife were reading the scripture passage. He would read a verse, she would read a
Jeff Iorg:verse, and they alternated back and forth. And it was
Jeff Iorg:a simple part of the service. There was some singing, and then that singing moved into came to a conclusion. And the pastor and his wife stepped to a microphone and said, and now this morning,
Jeff Iorg:we continue to read the word of God in the New Testament, the book of Titus chapter two. And they read the scriptures. And as I sat there listening, I thought how powerful and yet simple and yet meaningful this is. They're showing by this modeling.
Jeff Iorg:Here's how you read the Bible. They're showing by their modeling. We can read the Bible together. They're showing by their modeling. You can hear the Bible as you read it and understand what it means.
Jeff Iorg:And they're also showing that all of the Bible, including Titus chapter two, is good to read and to hear even though that's not particularly the foundation or the part of the Bible that we'll be using in the message today. So reading the Bible in a public worship service like this is one way to help people feel the Bible is more accessible to them. Another way, of course, to read the Bible in worship services are are what are called responsive readings. Or sometimes, these are also called antiphonal readings. Now, a responsive reading is typically where you have a, set of scriptures that you're reading together and the leader will read some and the congregation will read some and they go back and forth typically.
Jeff Iorg:And depending on how it's designed, they may even read some of it together in unison. An antiphonal reading is a bit different and that it's more of a call and response, where the leader reads some scripture and the congregation responds, and they can be responding with scripture. But it's typically a repeated response that's given the same response to each passage that's read by the leader. Either one of these can be very helpful for helping people to understand how to access the Bible and how to how to see it in its meaning and its context and to understand how they can connect with it. Now, I would emphasize this though.
Jeff Iorg:If you do these kind of readings, make sure that people clearly understand that what you're reading is coming from the Bible. So include the Bibles, the Bible references as a part of the slides that you're using or as part of the printed material that you have so that people are able to see that this clearly is something from the Bible. So one of the ways to make the Bible more accessible to the average person is to read it publicly in worship services so that people who see it or who hear it read and see the screen or look at the printed piece in
Jeff Iorg:front of them can have the subtle message communicated. You can understand the Bible. You can read the Bible. You can read all parts of the Bible and see how they speak to you about life. So read the Bible in worship services.
Jeff Iorg:A second thing I would say is this,
Jeff Iorg:find a readable translation of the Bible that people will use and then use it often. Use it regularly. Now, a readable translation of the Bible means that you, first of all, get a translation of the Bible. Now, there are two broad categories of kinds of Bibles that are available today. There are translations and there are paraphrases.
Jeff Iorg:Paraphrase is when a person takes the Bible and writes, if you will, an interpretation of what it means more than a translation of what it says. A translation on the other hand is using the Greek and Hebrew text to produce a more directly connected translation of the words from those languages into English or to whatever language that you're going to be using. Now, readable translation. I want you to get a translation though that's not a paraphrase, that is a translation as I've just described it. But then, I want you to use a translation that was done by a group, not by an individual.
Jeff Iorg:Now, translation is a an art as well as a science. Yes, there are specific words in Greek and Hebrew that have corresponding equal meanings in various other languages. And that's the science part of it. But the art of it is understanding context and nuance, and then also how language shifts and is shifting over time, and how those words have to be chosen carefully to reflect not only the science or the literal aspect of the translation, but the art or the meaning aspect of the translation. And the reason I like one done by a group better than an individual is just because what the Bible says about group decision making.
Jeff Iorg:In a multitude of counselors, there
Jeff Iorg:is wisdom. And in a coming together of a translation with a group doing the work, you're going
Jeff Iorg:to get, I think, a more balanced translation. Now I'm I'm often asked, well, what translation is best? Well, that's really not the right question. There's several translations that are really good. For example, two that are commonly used today in evangelical churches are the ESV or the English Standard Version, and then the CSV, the Christian Standard Bible.
Jeff Iorg:And these are good translations that were done by groups of people who put together balanced approaches to the translation questions and gave us good useful tools. But if your church worships in Korean or Chinese or Spanish or any other language of the world, you're going to need to think about translation in a different context than just these two that I've mentioned or maybe some others that would be found only in English. You're going to have to think about, is this a translation or is it a paraphrase? And is it a translation that was done by a group? And if it was, then it has produced this translation that I am able to use in my ministry.
Jeff Iorg:Now, I said use a readable translation that people will actually use. It's important to get a translation, but also get one that's readable. That people can actually read and understand, interface with appropriately. And again, some of you on the podcast are thinking only about English translations, but I'm thinking much more broadly than that. All of you in ministry leadership who work in all kinds of different language and ethnic groups have to understand this principle of getting a translation that is readable for the audience you're trying to engage with the Bible.
Jeff Iorg:And I would go on to say that once you
Jeff Iorg:select one of these and use it commonly in your ministry setting, find a way to give that translation away or to give the Bible away to people that they can have confidence that they're using the word of God and one that really does communicate honestly and accurately what what God's message. Now I say that because a few years ago, I went to visit in the home of a family that had been to our church a couple of times, and they they were not Christian family. They had no reference to God or the gospel in their lives. They had no connection or background in church whatsoever. They were well educated people.
Jeff Iorg:They both owned small businesses, husband and wife. They had
Jeff Iorg:a beautiful home, Went to their house and
Jeff Iorg:they said they had a lot of questions about the Bible and about Christianity. So I said, well, let's start with those questions. And the first question they asked me was a question about the Bible itself. And I said, well, that's a great question and I'll be glad to answer that. Now, before I do, could I just ask, do you have a Bible that we could use?
Jeff Iorg:And the man kind of smiled and said, you know, I knew you were gonna ask me that. He reached under his coffee table and he picked up three Bibles. He said, I went to a Christian bookstore today to get a Bible. You people got a lot of Bibles. That was a very confusing experience.
Jeff Iorg:I thought to myself later, that's how a lot of people feel about the Bible. They look in a Christian bookstore or on a online sales portal and they're like, how in the world do I figure this out? What what what what should I be reading? What what Bible is there? If it's this confusing, well, just forget it.
Jeff Iorg:I'm not even gonna try. So when I say choose a readable translation that people will use, get a translation, make sure it's a readable translation, and then make it available to people and let people know that this is the the Bible that we're choosing mostly in our church, and that and we want you to have confidence in it, we wanna share these and give them away and circulate them as much as possible. So we're gonna read the Bible in worship services. We're gonna use a readable translation that people will use. We're gonna promote that and use it and help people understand they have confidence in the Bible because of that.
Jeff Iorg:And then third, and this is still related to the worship experience in the in in the church worship time, And that is practice text based preaching so that people can look at the text of scripture and you and as you explain it to them, they can look at it and say, yes, I I see that. Yes, I I see that. And in doing so, you're reinforcing to them that the Bible really is accessible. That when they read the Bible and look at it and they hear you explaining it, they say, yes, I I see that. I see that.
Jeff Iorg:I see that. Now, let me say a couple of things
Jeff Iorg:about this.
Jeff Iorg:Good text based preaching does not depend too much on Hebrew and Greek references.
Jeff Iorg:Now listen carefully. I believe in Greek and Hebrew studies. I think that they should be required for curriculum in seminaries. I think Greek and Hebrew should be a foundational discipline for people who do preach and teach the Bible. I get that.
Jeff Iorg:I fully embrace that. I'm not talking about what happens in the study. I'm talking about what happens out in front of people. I'm simply saying that if you want people to believe the Bible is accessible to them, don't subtly communicate. It's really only accessible to those of us who know the secret knowledge, especially the Greek and Hebrew.
Jeff Iorg:Now that doesn't mean you can't bring insights into your message that come out of your study, but just be careful about it. Because if you say something like this, the only way to understand this passage is to understand this Greek verb, then what you're telling a person is, well, you know, I'm a computer programmer or an auto mechanic or a
Jeff Iorg:truck driver. I don't even know
Jeff Iorg:what a Greek word looks like. And he's telling me the only way I can really understand the Bible is if I understand the Greek and Hebrew. Well, I guess I'm out then. That's the subtle message you're communicating when you inappropriately reference these languages in preaching.
Jeff Iorg:Now, let me say it again.
Jeff Iorg:I think that studying the Bible in its original language is vital. It's essential. I think it does unearth for you meaning and clarification of meaning that can really happen perhaps no other way. But how you preach that, how you communicate that is what I'm what I'm talking about right now. That if you're constantly telling people, you can only understand this if you understand the Greek, You're telling them really they can't understand the Bible.
Jeff Iorg:So find a way to use what you're learning from this deep study that you're making and then communicate it in plain language that people can understand, oh, I see that. And the Bible then becomes more accessible to them, not less accessible. And when you're using this text based preaching approach where you're reading a text and you're explaining it to your church as your method of preaching, what you're also doing is modeling for them how to read and understand the Bible and even how to explain it to others. And so this kind of preaching really does help people to believe that the Bible is more accessible because they look at it and say, wow, I see what the pastor sees and he really knows the Bible. So if I see what he sees and
Jeff Iorg:I understand what he understands, well, wow, I can understand the Bible too. Text based preaching helps with this. Now, so
Jeff Iorg:far on the podcast, I focused mostly on what happens in the public gatherings of the church. Reading the Bible in worship services, using a readable translation and distributing that and using it over and over again, and practicing text based preaching and showing people, how to look at the Bible and understand the Bible and to explain the Bible. And all of this helps to make the Bible more accessible. Now, let's shift away from the worship practices though and talk about some other things.
Jeff Iorg:Another challenge I would put before you is to develop something that I call a discover the bible class. Discover the bible. Now this came out of my experience
Jeff Iorg:in church planting. When I moved to Oregon to plant the church, I moved into a community that was not churched, to say the least, but also largely biblically illiterate. And so as we started connecting with people in the community and reaching out to them and inviting them to our church or trying to engage them with the gospel, I learned early on that many of the people I was talking with, even though they were in their thirties, they had been to college, they were in business, or they were in their careers, They really didn't have any idea what I was talking about when I started referencing the Bible. When I said something like, you know, the Old Testament when David their eyes would just glaze over. Like, Old Testament?
Jeff Iorg:David? What what what are we talking about here?
Jeff Iorg:So I learned early on that people were essentially biblically illiterate, and that even though, again, they were adults,
Jeff Iorg:well educated in their careers, they really didn't know anything about the Bible. And so after some trial and error, we developed a short course, four to six weeks called Discover the Bible.
Jeff Iorg:And I taught it multiple times a year, where we would say like every other month, we would start it and go four, five, six weeks, whatever whatever it was at each time. And I would say in promoting it, this is for you who have an interest in the Bible but don't know anything about it. And in fact, you're you're afraid to even ask your questions because you think everyone else knows what you're supposed
Jeff Iorg:to know. And I will also say, and for some
Jeff Iorg:of you who maybe even have been Christians for a while, you'd like to know more about the Bible itself, this might be a good class for you as well. Now remember, this was not a permanent class. This wasn't a two or five year class. This was four to six weeks. And the idea was they would come to my class first, and then I would feed them into the regular Bible study program of our church where they could go into a class and feel comfortable doing that.
Jeff Iorg:Now you say, wait a second. Why wouldn't they just go to your regular Bible study classes?
Jeff Iorg:Well, here's why. Can you imagine how you would feel if you
Jeff Iorg:got dropped into a calculus class and you didn't know how to
Jeff Iorg:add and subtract? That's what it feels like to the average person getting dropped into a typical Sunday school class. They're dropped into
Jeff Iorg:a Sunday school class and the teacher says, Well, we're so glad everyone is here today. Open your Bible to the book of Daniel where we're gonna be talking about And they're like, The book of Daniel? What are we
Jeff Iorg:talking about here? And you
Jeff Iorg:start rattling off these names. We got Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego, you know, who who who are these people? What what are we doing here? And pretty quickly, most folks just shut down because they don't want to be embarrassed by revealing what they don't know. So that's why the Discover the Bible class became very important for our church.
Jeff Iorg:Now you might think, oh, did you have like a 100 each time? No. I would have six to 10 people each time. Maybe sometimes a big class would be 15. These were small groups of people that would meet during the bible study hour on Sunday, and I would walk through this discover the bible curriculum.
Jeff Iorg:And it was this basic. First class, I handed out copies of the bible so we'd all have the same one to look at, and I would say, now open your Bible to the third page to the table of contents. You'll see at the top, it says Old Testament. You'll see at the middle of the page, it says New Testament. These are the two large divisions of the Bible.
Jeff Iorg:The Old Testament, well, that's all the part from creation up to Jesus. New Testament, that's Jesus through the development of the early church.
Jeff Iorg:The word testament means covenant, a way of God's relating to his people. Now,
Jeff Iorg:that's the way the class started. Now, you're possibly listening to this podcast and thinking,
Jeff Iorg:there is no possible way that people don't know that. I'm telling you, they don't know it. Especially if you're serious about reaching unsaved, unchurched people with no reference to God or the gospel in their lives. They do not know what you're talking about when you just launch in to the Bible.
Jeff Iorg:So we created this Discover the Bible class. It started at the most basic, and it moved into discussion about where we got the Bible, how we can trust the Bible, how the Bible's organized, what kinds of subjects are covered in various parts of the Bible, why we tend to emphasize some parts of the Bible over other parts of the Bible, in our Bible study, in our Bible reading, in our preaching and teaching, and that
Jeff Iorg:kind of thing.
Jeff Iorg:So develop a discover the Bible class that assumes people don't know very much about the Bible, if anything, and really establishes the foundation for them feeling more comfortable going into a regular Bible study program. And then I would add one other thing about this. Don't make fun of people who don't know the Bible. Don't make fun of biblical illiteracy. Don't make fun of it from the pulpit when you're preaching.
Jeff Iorg:Don't make fun of it in a classroom context. Don't make fun of
Jeff Iorg:it when you're talking to people individually. Listen, people don't like to be
Jeff Iorg:made fun
Jeff Iorg:of about what they don't know or understand, and the Bible is no different. So have some kindness, some understanding, and a sense of support for people who are trying to discover the Bible. Now, a part of that discover the Bible class was getting people to engage the Bible in regular Bible reading. Now, when I talk today about making the Bible more accessible and using some of these methodologies that I'm describing, what we're really
Jeff Iorg:trying to do is get people to personally engage with, or encounter the Bible itself. So that leads me to number five, and that is continually
Jeff Iorg:promote personally reading the Bible. Continually promote personally reading the Bible. Because while we're trying to make
Jeff Iorg:the Bible more accessible and communicate to people by a number of these subtle and sometimes straightforward methods, you can understand the Bible. You can read the Bible. You can interpret the Bible. The Bible is accessible to you, we wanna make it even more
Jeff Iorg:so. What we're really trying to get people to do is actually read the Bible, Leading, of course, from
Jeff Iorg:there into more serious Bible study, but let's just start with reading. So how can you continually promote personally reading the Bible? Well, first of all,
Jeff Iorg:promote some kind of all church Bible reading plan. Now, a lot
Jeff Iorg:of churches do this in January, but that really doesn't suffice because people start reading the Bible in January and they get discouraged and stopped by February, and now you're waiting till the next January to issue the challenge again. There has to be a way to periodically challenge people to read the Bible. Now, how are some ways you can do that? Well, of course, the first one is to launch an annual bible reading plan like I've just described, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it just has to be more than that. The second thing you can do is to post a Sunday or weekly reminder either in your Sunday bulletin or in your website or your other printed or electronic materials where you say the Bible reading plan for this week is, and you list out the seven days and the seven Bible readings that you selected for that particular week.
Jeff Iorg:And by reminding people of this on a weekly basis, you are periodically, reengaging and encouraging people to read the Bible. And as I said, this can be done with a starting plan at the beginning of the year, but then followed up weekly with Sunday bulletin reminders or web based reminders or even text reminders. Right? So this is a way to continually promote personally reading the Bible throughout the year. And I I would say that there's so many ways to do this, so many methods to do this, so many apps that are out there and all this kind of thing.
Jeff Iorg:But I'm talking here about you driving the reminder to people and letting them know that this is something that you're encouraging them to do and you're equipping them to do and you're reminding them to do on a regular basis. And then another thing you can do that promotes personally reading the Bible is to occasionally, in sermons or teaching moments, reference your own Bible reading with a simple statement like this. I was reading the bible recently and I discovered this verse. I was reading the bible recently and God really encouraged me with this psalm. I was reading the bible recently and I was confronted by what I read in this passage.
Jeff Iorg:So as you're preaching and illustrating your your, preaching or teaching and illustrating what you're communicating, one way to do that is to reference your own Bible reading. And even by referencing your Bible reading, be reinforcing for people the importance of reading the Bible themselves. Well, finally, another way to make the Bible more accessible is to develop some methods for memorizing scripture and making that part of your ongoing ministry as well. A couple of things that, I've done with this or that I've seen done well with this. The first is a church selecting a verse or maybe a couple of verses each month and including that verse in its worship service every week for say four to five weeks with a goal of the church itself memorizing that passage during that time.
Jeff Iorg:So that you say the passage together on Sunday, you repeat it several times throughout the service. You may be in the service by saying it, but there's a way of repeating a passage that communicates that we're memorizing this together. So as I said, you can have a verse for the month, you can repeat it weekly in worship, you can have times to practice it, or to say it together in the service, those kinds of things. You can also reward particularly children for memorization. I'm not talking about some kind of bribe thing or some kind of cheapening of the Bible or anything like that, But children get rewarded for learning things all the time.
Jeff Iorg:And so there's nothing wrong with rewarding a child with a certificate or a ribbon or a small small token like that for memorizing a passage of scripture or memorizing something from the word of God. So rewarding people, particularly children, helps
Jeff Iorg:with memorization. But one last thing I did,
Jeff Iorg:which was really a really good thing that that I worked in for
Jeff Iorg:a whole year one time, and
Jeff Iorg:that is I I got in a group that we called the scripture memory club, and it was a group of us that met together and decided we're gonna memorize scripture together and really improve our capacity for doing this. And there was about eight or 10 of us that banded together to do this and decided we're gonna we're gonna make this happen. So we decided we would meet once a month, and we all happened to work in the same vicinity. So we decided we would meet once a month for lunch and just brown bag type lunch, and we would meet together to to select our scripture for that month. And anybody could nominate a scripture or mention one, and we just had kind of a collegial discussion, we'd pick one.
Jeff Iorg:These were usually like three to five verses that were formed a paragraph of scripture that was meaningful to us.
Jeff Iorg:We would then pair off to have a memorization partner for the month. Now, you might say, well, did you have
Jeff Iorg:to get together every day? No, we didn't. We we discovered that we could practice our scripture and say it to each other
Jeff Iorg:over voicemail. So we would call our partner and say, Hey, this is Jeff. I've been working on the
Jeff Iorg:scripture and I think I got it. And then I would say it to you, my partner. But if you weren't there and I got your machine or your message and I said, hey, listen, I'm just calling to see if I can say the passage. And I would try to say it to you on that voicemail. And then when I get my phone back, I'd get it back and there'd be somebody saying it back to me.
Jeff Iorg:It was just a fun way to keep working on a scripture throughout a month until we felt like that we really had it. Now, each time we met, once a month, we did two things. We picked our scripture, and then second, we got our partner. Now, here's what's interesting. We learned pretty early on for higher accountability, different partner every month.
Jeff Iorg:That way there doesn't get to be any pattern of of any kind of behavior or any kind of sloughing off or any kind of anything other than just getting it done. And so we changed scriptures and we changed partners every month. And for that year, we worked on passages. And that was the most productive year of scripture memory in my life because I was doing it in a fun way with a group that we called the Scripture Memory Club. And we were doing it one on one, and we weren't having to meet together.
Jeff Iorg:We're doing it We're working on it privately while we're driving or while we're working out or whatever. Then when we started thinking like we had it, we'd call our partner and say, Hey, think I've got the scripture. I want to say it for you. And we'd say it, and if we didn't get it quite right, I'd okay, I'm gonna have call you back tomorrow. And then we'd keep doing that, and it became a fun way to do scripture memory together.
Jeff Iorg:Alright. The American Bible Society says people need to access the Bible more. I get that. How do you do it? Well, use the bible in worship services.
Jeff Iorg:Use a readable translation people can use and put it in their hands. Practice text based preaching in a way that people understand the bible and feel like they can access it because they see the meaning of it. And then develop some things like a discover the bible class, a bible reading plan that you can continually promote and hold before people, and even a scripture memory club or group or partner that will help you to access the bible even at that level. Look, the bible is the word of God. It's a powerful, powerful force in our world.
Jeff Iorg:It only loses power when it's ignored, but when it is engaged. It changes lives. So let's find ways to make the Bible more accessible so that people who lack confidence in using the Bible, who've not had opportunity to learn how to understand the Bible, or are simply intimidated by this very formidable book will be able to access it more effectively. Think about how you can put some of these practices into your ministry setting as you lead on.