Caz McCrone (00:01)
I almost feel like a lot of people that coming into church have a greater head confidence in scripture than people who have necessarily been Christians for a long time. I think it's a really good challenge for us in churches that people are coming in with questions and if our head confidence isn't there, we've got something to answer to.

Matt Frost (00:17)
There are just so many ways to engage in it. Please engage. You can listen to it, you can watch a drama of it, you can colour it in, you can sing it. And to encourage people to do that in the midst of the lies that they actually live, not some fantasy monastic life

Sian Rees (00:30)
There's a level of spiritual openness and curiosity that we haven't seen in recent times, right?

Caz McCrone (00:37)
It got the whole church reading the New Testament in eight weeks and people who'd been Christians for 60 years saying, I don't think I'd ever read that bit before.

Sian Rees (00:45)
Hi and welcome back. I'm Sian and I'm joined again by Andrew Olyton. We're exploring ways that we as leaders can raise Bible confidence and mobilise effective mission that meets this spiritual moment.

Andrew Ollerton (00:59)
Today in this episode we'll hear a conversation that Sian had with Matt and Kaz from Sire and Sester Baptist Church in the Cotswolds. They've got stories of how they're mobilizing their whole congregation to engage with the Bible. And they've got some great insights too, so we look forward to hearing your thoughts on this conversation. And do stick around to hear a reflection I'll bring on how two kings in the Bible can speak to this spiritual moment.

Sian Rees (01:25)
Matt and Kaz, thank you so much for joining us. You are heavily invested, I know, in raising Bible confidence within your congregation. How are you helping people to move from simply reading the Bible to understanding it and applying it to their lives?

Caz McCrone (01:42)
I think it begins for us with us engaging with scripture, but being very honest about what that looks like. We've got a couple of situations where we meet with different people and we talk about that. So we've got a small leadership group that we meet with once a month. We're doing some spiritual practices stuff with them. I think starting there, even in those one-to-ones small group situations, as much as standing up the front and preaching or running big courses.

Matt Frost (02:10)
and stuff. I would say that we throw the Bible at everything, not physically. Our conversations, our prayers, our public stuff, our one-to-one, that it's part of that and you would describe our church as fairly charismatic, so we do introduce that prophetic element in what we do, so there'll be things that aren't specifically scripture, you know, I feel God's saying X or Y. However,

You turn up at anything that we do, we'll be throwing stuff for the Bible at it, whether it's small bits, larger bits, whether it's the big story of it, that that does permeate all that we do. And say for the two of us, that would be just normal. What we do is that that's how you approach things. You talk about it, you use it, you tell stories about how it applies in my life or in your life or other people's lives in an ordinary, everyday way, as well as in that more teaching expository.

pattern.

Sian Rees (03:10)
Amazing. Are there any tools that you particularly use that you found helpful in terms of raising the standard of confidence in the congregation?

Matt Frost (03:19)
Part of it's saying to people that there are so many ways to engage with it, which we might do within our own lives, but that we encourage that. Some years ago I did a rather bad video called, it was inspired by the Bob Dylan song, 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, and it was called 50 Ways to Read the Bible. And still out there on YouTube folks, you can watch it, but there are better things out there, trust me. But it was that idea, there are just so many ways to engage with it, please engage, please engage.

listen to it, you can watch a drama of it, you can colour it in, you can sing it, whatever it is, and just engage. And that encouragement to do that, and to encourage people to do that in the midst of the lies that they actually live, not some fantasy monastic life that they don't actually live. So how do I deal with this when I'm driving to work? How do I deal with this when things are busy? How do I deal with this with the fact that I really don't like reading and hardly read anything? So why should I open and read this two, two and a half thousand year old book?

and just trying to encourage that and say, this is normal, this is what a Christian does. In fact, this is what someone who's not a Christian might consider doing and just explore it, dig into it, find it, tell the big story. And of course, there's so many tools out there now to do that so easily that previous generations just didn't have access to it.

Caz McCrone (04:36)
And I think there's probably three things in terms of us as a church wider that spring to mind straight away. One, we do some of our own resourcing. So we do write some of our own stuff, particularly around our sermon series, small group materials, devotional stuff sometimes as well. ⁓ But actually two more kind of course like things that we find, number one, we're not just in here for this, but the Bible course is something. currently we're just, going into week eight of the Bible course. So final week.

but not just using it for those that have just become Christians or those that are exploring, although we do our Alpha group that happened just before Christmas, they've used this as a follow-on as well, so they take part. But we've opened it up to the whole church and encouraged house groups to take part. So on a Tuesday night, we've got people who are exploring faith right through to people who've been Christians for 60 years going through the Bible course, and then lots doing it in their house groups as well.

So we've used that as our teaching stuff on a Sunday. So trying to bring some kind of connection and structure as well through that. So it's not just the Bible course happens on a Tuesday night if you turn it up. That's what our preaching is based on on a Sunday as well. That's what we're talking about all the time. It's coming out in everything that we're chatting about because we're talking about the big story. so actually just trying to give people a bit of that confidence of understanding the big story in it as well.

And the other thing we found really helpful is the Immersed Bible reading stuff. So as a church two years ago, did Messiah, which is the one that's the New Testament, a chance to read through the whole New Testament in eight weeks. Again, we built it into everything we did, so we encouraged House Scripts to do it. We met on a Tuesday night to chat about it. It was our preaching series, but it got the whole church reading the New Testament in eight weeks.

again increasing the confidence of what's there and people who've been Christians for 60 years saying I don't think I'd ever read that bit before ⁓ and that was the New Testament and so using that and because they do that as a podcast as well as actually reading the book we found more people engaged with that of all different ages as well and different kind of reading abilities.

Matt Frost (06:52)
reading through the New Testament together with the bulk of the church, the majority, the congregation, including some from outside as well, was brilliant. And it threw up at the end. We invited people as they came across questions that they couldn't answer, what the publishers of the Inverse Bible call coconuts, ones you can't crack. What was it? Apples? Apples are really easy. You just take them off and eat them. They're quite simple. Bananas, you have to unpeel them. And then coconuts are really hard. You need a hammer.

Caz McCrone (07:13)
apples, bananas, and

Matt Frost (07:22)
those inevitably, you can imagine the sort of questions that float to the surface in groups discussing and reading through the New Testament. And we had 14 that floated to the surface and then we collected them together and then Kaz and I wrote the definitive answers on those 14 questions. So if anyone's got any questions on anything, we have the answers to all 14 of them. We never need to consider them again. Bible colleges can close down, seminaries are all done. We've nailed it. But it was just a way of saying,

We recognise this throws up some interesting questions, but here's our approach to them, it's just our thoughts on it, but this is reasonable. Don't be scared of it, don't run away from those things that you think, oh I can't deal with that and I'll just go and read the nice fluffy bits and just encourage people to do that and just saying this is normal, this is what we do as Christians, not just folk like us who are professionals, it's what we do for a living, but it's actually this is just what we do within the constraints of the lives that we...

live, so I love it. It's exciting to do that and just keeps an ever-ending process, it never stops. You keep doing it and finding ways to encourage it and make it engaging and with all ages as well, not just with the things we've missed particularly around adults, but actually with children and teenagers of whom there's a lot in our church, just making engaging with this stuff quite normal.

Sian Rees (08:41)
Amazing. So the church is extremely well set up in terms of opportunities to engage with the Bible, different tools that you use, but we also know that engaging with the Bible is quite difficult for some people. just talk, if you will, into some specific barriers or challenges that you've come up against in terms of engaging and also being able to understand the different texts.

Caz McCrone (09:05)
Well, I think the one that probably most of us find across most of our churches is, don't have time to do it. Or that's another thing I have to add into my already very busy life, very full life. viewing it really as a burden, this is another thing that I have to tick off on my list of things. And I know it's something that comes up a lot in the kind of individual conversations that we have with people.

There is a bit of habit building that is about saying, I'm going to commit and I'm going to do it even if it's hard. But there's also that bit where you almost kind of break through a barrier and suddenly it becomes you recognise that without it, you're not being fed. Actually, you can't survive without it. But that takes time and effort to put it in in the first place. ⁓ And I think we're so used to in our lives today thinking that we just need to keep adding. So we keep adding on.

other things that we have to do or other ways we need to be or other rules to our lives. But actually it's the looking and saying what in my life needs to come out because actually this needs to be a priority. This needs to be more important. And so we have a lot of those conversations a lot of the time. What's coming out of your life that leaves space for this stuff rather than it just being another thing.

Matt Frost (10:25)
So lots of conversations around that first thing you do in the morning when you wake up and the temptation to scroll. For most people that's either social media or the news and just saying that simple thing of just make a swap. It's not add it in, just swap out. And most people recognise that the scrolling habit has, you know, there's reasons not to do it or to do it less.

So actually that's not a big choice. It's not like I'm giving up something so valuable. It's just swap it out, swap it out. And that thing of saying this is life-giving, at times challenging, but ultimately rewarding and quite engaging and fun, you know, once you start digging. And then it's trying to encourage people to have, just not be scared of it. It's that fear of that if I read it and I don't quite get it, I'm now worried.

and therefore there's nothing I can do about it. And actually trying to say to people, it's there. And with the click of a button, you can find someone else who's actually got some really good stuff with it, like the Bible Project, which we encourage people to use a lot, who just find lots of accessible ways, visual ways of simply saying that you can understand. It does make sense. It does fit together. It's great.

The of the Bible course that we've been doing lately is that it tries to join the story together and just say, look, it makes sense, it joins up. There's good thinking behind this. It's not just, I've opened the book, I've no idea what's going on, run away. Actually, no, it's great digging. It's brilliant.

Caz McCrone (12:04)
I think there's a fear as well about the questions thing. So that thing of, don't understand it, therefore I just don't engage. So it becomes difficult to do it. And I think giving space to say, it's okay to have questions. So that was one the things we loved about IMAERS was because it actually said questions are normal. So it just gives you four questions to work through in your groups. And the second one is, what questions do you have this week? And it's totally normal to have questions. It really permissions them.

And I think doing the coconuts thing permissions the whole, oh, we've got questions that even in our small group we can't find the answers to, or we're not sure what the answer is. Or to even say, when we were writing the answers to the coconuts, to say, here's some options of what the answer to this could be. And I know we had one or two where it was like, Matt thinks this, Kaz thinks this, other people think this. It's all right that we don't, there's a whole pile of stuff we don't 100 % agree on, as long as we've got the core stuff.

⁓ That's fine, but we can all sit slightly differently on a lot of that. And I think we're in a real privileged position here. Some might not see it that way, but we are a Baptist church, but we're so multi-denominational because we're in a small town and there are some other options, but there's not every option around here. And lots of people come and join us for kids and youth ministry, which is amazing.

but they come from very different denominational backgrounds and that brings lots of exciting things into the mix and people do sit in different places on a number of different issues. But that's okay. Yes. Absolutely. We're all still Christians and we can still be friends. We can still be friends and it may have slight implications for how we do certain things, but we're going to work through those. But as you read the Bible, you will have questions because if you don't have, you're not reading the Bible.

Sian Rees (13:44)
I'm

Caz McCrone (14:02)
Or if you don't have questions, you're skimming or just reading the bits that are easy to approach. You're not actually fully engaging with the Holy Scripture. But to say that that's okay and that's normal.

Sian Rees (14:15)
That's wonderful. mean, is there a sort of strategy in terms of how you're building Bible confidence? ⁓ Or do you have moments where you think, no, we just need to pause here and just ⁓ respond sort of partly prophetically perhaps to whatever the Lord is saying in that sort of moment? How do you plan?

Matt Frost (14:34)
So there's a prophetic element to that. So we, often I, will go and sit and pray and say, Lord, is there anything you're saying right now? Or come out of a conversation where stuff's come up and we thought we should approach that. And so that may inform the decision, okay, we're going to do this, which might be a theme, but we will seek to regularly be returning to going through a book. So we're in a season now and then...

as we're recording, come out to Easter, but after Easter we're going into books. We can do an Old Testament book in the morning and for our morning services and a New Testament book for our evening service and we will just work our way through that and try and engage helpfully with that in a service and then invite a house group or however other people are dealing with it to engage with that passage and try to encourage people and this is think one of the challenges. It's really interesting and we

We visit a lot of our house groups and one of the things that can surprise me in a slightly negative way is the fact that a lot of the Bible studies that I sit in, people find it really hard to engage with the actual text. They'll read it and then off they go. Could be anywhere. It might be somewhere else in the Bible, but it could just be, know, something they heard on the radio or whatever. And actually that ability just to say,

that simple question, what does this say? That, what did it say to them and then what's it saying to us? Which is at the heart of the Bible course, The Bible course is structured that very simple approach. What does it actually say? Does it throw up any questions we don't know how to deal with? But then also, how do we apply it? That simple thing. That's effectively all we're doing with this. And I'm recognizing that a lot of Christians, even those that would say they're

Bible believing or a real regard for the Bible, find that quite difficult. So we're probably always trying to encourage that. And so therefore what we do when we're preaching is trying to say, effectively do that, albeit in a one person speaking or one or two people speaking approach rather than in a discussion. Not to say, this is what it says and this is how we're engaging with it. We're trying to get some sense of what it said then and then we're trying to do something with it today.

Caz McCrone (16:56)
We're big fans of context. Or at least I am. It's a joke in the church now. ⁓ You've got to have a good Cazzie's Context Corner on a Sunday. But actually just getting people to a point where they're expecting the context to be laid out when we come to preach. They're kind of waiting for that and expecting it and looking for it and what they're doing then as well. And the Bible course really helps with that because you're into the big story. ⁓ But even kind of in the smaller...

each individual passage, what's happened before, what happens after. And we do regularly encourage people to pick up a paper Bible. So we keep a load of them downstairs as well. We've got some really large print ones as well for people that find it more difficult to see. ⁓ But actually seeing if you've got a paper Bible in front of you, and don't get me wrong, there's lots of good things about digital ones, but paper Bible in front of you makes it really obvious what comes before and what comes after, because you see it on the page ⁓ and your eye is more likely to glance over.

something and so it's great that we've got loads of different ways to engage but having it on a page in front of you is actually one of the most helpful things and again going back to when we used Immersed they take out chapter and verse numbers they take out title headings and how it's written up and actually that helped people a lot because they weren't just you don't read in the smaller chunks you read bigger passages and so you might sit down and read an entire

Book of the New Testament, one of the letters in one sitting. ⁓ And you're not splitting it, well this is what it's talking about here, this is what it's talking about there. And so I think that's just become part of a vocabulary as a church.

Sian Rees (18:37)
And it's interesting, isn't it, because you wouldn't take any other book and believe that a chapter didn't relate to another. And obviously, know, chronologically, we're not talking about a sort of linear path through the Bible, you know, ⁓ just to be able to understand that that relates with this and that that foretells what's coming here, that's critically important, isn't it, for the overarching story of the Bible? Fantastic. I mean, it's just wonderful to hear about the impact.

on the congregation, but what about the wider community? How is it affecting the town of Sirencesto?

Caz McCrone (19:11)
I think one of the really interesting things we're finding is people coming to us who have already engaged in some way with scripture before they come through the doors. Guys and girls, we're seeing that, particularly that kind of 17, 18 year olds, ⁓ and I can think of maybe three or four actually just now, all have very similar journeys of having some questions, looking on the internet to try and find some answers.

Matt Frost (19:39)
That's what's changed, sorry to cut in, that's what's changed. It's changed the game that the internet, particularly the more recent versions of it in the last 10 years, have just changed that conversation with people, again generally younger but not entirely, engaging with Bible stuff and other Christian stuff from the safety of their own home and their own phone.

My nephew who's 17, not a Christian, my family are all devout atheists apart from me, but when I go and visit, he asks me questions because he knows I'm the Christian, but it's prompted by YouTube videos and almost entirely, and he's been watching things and listening to stuff, Christian stuff, some Islamic stuff, but he's asking me questions because of that, and it's just changed the game. And people sit at home.

They've got the sort of question that you've got, and that's the first place they go. And we're hearing the AI conversion stories now, where they go and ask chat GPT what to do about this. There was one I was sharing a few weeks ago, this is a chat probably in his late 30s, 40s, who got to the point of thinking, what do I do? And he asked AI, how do I discover, find out about Christianity without going to church, because he didn't want to go to church because his associations were bad.

which actually told him to go and do an alpha course. And so this is only a few months ago, just down in Wiltshire. he, so he did. And then of course he ended up going to church, because that's kind of what happens and got baptized a few weeks ago. but it was that journey. So I do think the internet's just changed the game and so many people, they're accessing this stuff and accessing.

Bible and it's that's the first way, the first way in and yes they might then sit and read but it starts there again and again and again.

Caz McCrone (21:38)
Quite often it's a number of the stories that I'm thinking of, it's been a really specific question. So something's come up in a conversation they've had with somebody or a question's come to mind. Another story of somebody who just woke up in the middle of the night, needed to know why Jesus had died and who'd killed him. And just this coming from nowhere and thinking, what on do I do with this? ⁓ Trying the internet, eventually getting hold of a Bible and...

bless her in the King James version, reading the whole of the Gospels and then turning up to church and saying, I've got a million questions, can you answer my questions? And then the next week having read the entire rest of the New Testament and having even more questions, but just starting from that place, one question, where do I go? I'll check the internet, the internet says the answer's in the Bible, I'll go to the Bible and then come in with those questions.

Sian Rees (22:35)
I mean there's a level of spiritual openness and curiosity that we haven't seen in recent times, right? And you're seeing that? Yes.

Caz McCrone (22:44)
We are definitely, but it's not just young people. We are actually seeing it across the board. ⁓ increased openness. There's a number of stories of mums or parents kind of going through that. We've had a number of people around in church in the last six to eight weeks who, that's their story. They're married, got kids, and there's just been questions.

What do I do in my quiet? And that spiritual awakening in people. there's something as well that is nudging them to say, well, it's the Holy Spirit, isn't it? We know that. But something nudging them to say, where do I go on my questions? OK, I've tried the internet. I'm getting something, but I don't know. I'm getting everything. I'll go to church. And often that coming to church has actually come through scripture as well. So they've actually gone to the Bible first and then come into church.

Sian Rees (23:41)
That's amazing, it? I love it. in terms of growing, coming back to Bible confidence, terms of growing confidence within the sort of community of the church, the family of the church, how are you measuring whether that is being raised or not?

Matt Frost (24:01)
Are we measuring it? Okay. I guess one of the tests is when people face things that are difficult and whether what they've come to understand through the Scriptures or are going to try and understand in that moment, whether that's actually changing, shaping the way that they live or the decisions that they make. And that's true for any of us, isn't it? That's real test is, okay, I've read about what Jesus said is about...

loving my enemies, but now there's this person at work that really winds me up. What do I do? There's this person in my family that I actually never want to talk to again, but Jesus says I'm not allowed to do that. So, okay, how do I approach that? And that's where the rubber hits the road. It's engaging it as a personal spiritual exercise, and that's great, but then the test is how does it apply? That's good evidence of the fact that this is more than just an interesting intellectual...

or emotional exercise that are going because reading the Bible makes me feel nice or I like the intellectual engagement, but actually when push comes to shove, am I finding my resources in the words of Jesus or stuff in the Psalms that's helping me feel different but also make choices that are hopefully more godly choices than they might be otherwise. So that would be the test. That would be the test of it.

Sian Rees (25:23)
People encountering God on an intellectual level, having that experiential moment where it affects the heart and then the sort of outworking of it missionally, is that the case?

Caz McCrone (25:33)
Yeah, was reflecting on this actually last week and I think for a long time, and this has been my experience not just here but working in other churches around the UK, heart confidence has been really high. So that idea of, I have an experience of God, so I might read my one little verse or whatever, but I have an experience, I have some kind of encounter, an emotional thing.

but actually the head confidence being very low in our churches. how do I go and find something, something's going on in my life? Where do I go in scripture? How does scripture fit together? How do I understand the big story? How do I even just navigate an actual paper Bible? How does that all work? That kind of stuff actually being relatively low. And I grew up in a denomination where our head confidence was super high.

but I would say heart confidence was much lower. But then my experience in ministry has been kind of the opposite way round. But seeing the head, I think we're in a stage where the head confidence is actually growing. ⁓ Alongside, we're not losing the heart confidence. The heart confidence is still there and actually being enriched by the head confidence. And you hope that all of that feeds into that actually go out, do it, hand confidence thing as well. But yeah, I think it's...

I almost feel like a lot of the people that are coming into church have a greater head confidence in Scripture than people who have necessarily been Christians for a long time. It's amazing, it's They're looking for the heart confidence, they're looking for that, difference is it going to make to me? But, I've read this thing and I can tell you where it says this in the Bible and I've now got questions about it, whereas you weren't necessarily getting that from people that have been Christians for longer. But we're starting to see that change as well. But I also think it's a really good challenge for us in churches that

People are coming in with questions and if our head confidence isn't there, we've got something to answer to.

Sian Rees (27:36)
So let's just think for a second about you've got this new influx of ⁓ people who are intellectually informed, perhaps from digital sources, online, whatever. We've got the existing believers, the faithful who have been here for ⁓ perhaps decades, certainly years. But how are you integrating the two kind of communities as one?

Matt Frost (28:01)
that changes the dynamic, it does, and it's going to change relationships. And one of the things we talk about and actually pray quite explicitly quite often is, one of my prayers is that the people that are new attenders on a Sunday or wherever it is, that they fairly quickly find some friends. Somehow that has to happen. You have to find friends, particularly in a church that's of a reasonable size like ours is. I've got to find someone I'm actually a friend with and I'm happy to go for a coffee with.

or talk about my life with, or go around their house, and that that has to happen. And that's not a simple process. And for someone who's been here for 50 years and has got established friendships, welcoming someone new into that isn't that easy. But a lot of people are pretty good at that. And I regularly, when I'm in church gatherings, I look at...

Okay, how many people in this room weren't here when I arrived? Because I use that as a measure because obviously I can work that out. And actually thinking, and you're friends with people. Yeah, you are new in my terms, but you're friends with them and you go to their house and your kids hang out with each other or whatever. And so with these new folk coming in, it's a cultural thing. It has to be a cultural thing that you've got a culture within the church community where we're nice to people we don't know.

And ultimately, and it takes time, it recognizes that, that people have to find friendship. Yeah, that doesn't just happen, that is a culture over, and I would say that to a degree that was the culture when I arrived, and I would say probably more so now, that's a precious thing, and it doesn't just happen, and you have to pray and keep working at that and encouraging that, and modeling it for those of us that lead particularly.

Caz McCrone (29:49)
And I think we're really intentional with trying to connect people. I think in terms of the connection, working out really practically what it looks like with those that are coming to faith and those that have been Christians for a little while longer, our Young Adults House group are brilliant at this. And Abby, who leads that group, she's got an amazing head to knowledge as well as heart, head confidence as well as heart confidence. She is an RE teacher.

you know, she's got a theology degree. So she's got that, so she's great at taking the questions and helping the group to respond to the questions. So she wouldn't just answer them all herself, but she helps the group to respond to those questions, making anybody that's coming in feel like their questions are welcome. But then also still bring a challenge to those that have been around for a longer time and saying, this isn't all on her, it's a shared thing. But just seeing that group and how that group's very quick to welcome in.

anybody but then also they meet when we're not doing something like the Bible course they meet in this building on a Tuesday night because they're too big for any of their living rooms ⁓ but one of our longest established house groups that probably is the completely opposite end in terms of average age ⁓ now meets here because practically for the people in that group it's slightly easier to use the church building ⁓ and they meet in the rooms next door to each other and so

they make coffee together and chat to one another and are planning socials together. And that group, the older group, saying we want to pray intentionally for this other group, where it's great that those young people coming in are building connections with other young Christians, but we're taking responsibility for them as well. We see them as part of our responsibility. during the Bible course, both those groups saying to me, we want to be in our usual rooms, we want to be near each other.

because there's something important for them in that, but that older group saying, oh yeah, we're still praying for them through this. And knowing that that group's also taken on to pray for the Alpha group that are doing the Bible course, because they see that as part of their role in the family is to do that. So, yeah.

Sian Rees (32:02)
Well Matt and Kaz, thank you so much for sharing what's going on here in Siren's Esther. Honestly it's just so exciting to hear stories of real life and people becoming you know alive in Jesus so thank you for sharing.

Caz McCrone (32:15)
Thanks for having us.

Matt Frost (32:16)
It's been a pleasure.

Andrew Ollerton (32:19)
Sean, what a great conversation. I loved hearing that. I've got to say personally, to hear so many... How many was doing the Bible course?

Sian Rees (32:25)
think they said 170 people. Incredible. This time round. This time round. is not the first time they've done it.

Andrew Ollerton (32:30)
It's so encouraging. We've sweated and toiled for that new edition and it's so encouraging to see what it's doing. It really is. But what else? I mean, you were in that conversation. What else stood out to you?

Sian Rees (32:40)
I think that what stands out for me is how well thought through their pathway to Bible engagement is and that they've clearly joined the dots between their Sunday services and thought long term about what is taught during the week using resources that move people forward and fix people's eyes on Jesus. But Andrew, you're going to bring us a reflection from the Old Testament from a time where the Scriptures were not front and centre, right?

Andrew Ollerton (33:07)
Yeah, that's right. Let's turn back to the Old Testament and ⁓ specifically to the book of two kings, a little known story there that I feel speaks to this moment that we're in and feels almost uncomfortably close to our context. Now, the important thing here is to get the backstory. The people of God haven't rejected the Bible, the scriptures, but they've lost it. They've lost sight of it. It's been hidden behind other priorities. Not physically at first glance. It's still there.

The text of Scripture is still there, but it's lost in the temple. It's functionally present, but effectively absent from their corporate life, no longer shaping the way they're thinking. But in the time of Josiah, when the Book of the Law is rediscovered and read aloud to the king in 2 Kings 22, his response, King Josiah, is immediate and visceral. He tears his robes. Why? Because he realizes that this is wrong.

He realises this is not just a text, but the Scriptures bring the voice of God to the people of God. And that diagnosis matters for us as leaders. Because one of the great challenges in our cultural moment is not opposition to the Bible, but just distraction and drift away from it. If you like, not rejecting it, but displacing it with other priorities. In a world of constant noise and competing priorities and endless distractions,

Scripture can quietly slip away from centre stage to being pushed backstage, still affirmed in our creeds, still present in our pockets, but no longer forming the imagination, habits and the identity of God's people. And the result is a kind of shallowness, a lack of rootedness, a church that struggles to sustain depth because it's no longer consistently feeding from the source.

Which is why Josiah's next move, after they rediscovered the Bible in the temple, is so instructive. You know, he brings it decisively from being pushed backstage, he puts it centre stage. In the book of 2 Kings 23, he gathers everyone in Jerusalem, from the least to the greatest. I love that phrase, from the least to the greatest. Everyone's got to be there to hear the words of Scripture read aloud.

This is not a niche activity for the spiritually keen. It's not delegated to the experts. No, no, it's a whole community moment. Because Josiah the leader understands something vital. The Bible does not belong to a few elite people. It belongs to all the people of God. And for leaders, this has profound implications today, I believe. If we want to see confident,

mature disciples, people who can sustain faith, navigate complexity and participate in God's mission, then we cannot outsource engagement with Scripture. We have to lead on it. We have to normalize it. Not just teaching it from the front on a Sunday, but cultivating a culture where ordinary people expect to open the Bible and be shaped by it, wrestling with it.

feeding from it. Because the way in becomes the way on. If new believers arrive into a church where Scripture is peripheral, occasional, and haphazard, they will assume that's normal. But if they arrive into a community where engaging with the Bible is simply part of what we do every day life, spoken about, talked about, wrestled with, then their confidence grows from the grassroots.

And that requires intentional leadership, as we've heard from Sirencester. You see, Josiah doesn't rely on good intentions. He creates a culture-defining moment, a kind of hard reset in their community life, where the Word of God is publicly back at the center. Perhaps that's what many of our churches need. Not just encouragement, but a kind of sense of clarity, a line drawn in the sand. We are going to be focusing on the Bible.

intentionally. And when we make scripture not accidental, but intentional, the church, the culture begins to change. You know, busyness is so challenging here, isn't it? Digital distraction, the pressure to keep things accessible or even lightweight. But what is non-negotiable in the rhythms of our church life? Ask yourself that question. What are we signaling by what we platform, what we prioritize, what we practice?

Is the Bible a non-negotiable centerpiece in our public life? Now, at the same time, we need to hold together two realities here. First, the Bible is deep. I mean, there are difficult passages, complex themes, controversial moments that require time and maturity to understand. The coconuts, right? But they're also accessible. So much of this is accessible through the Spirit of God. Ordinary people can engage meaningfully.

with the Word of God. So our task is not to flatten Scripture out or to make it intimidating, but to create pathways for different people to journey in. Spaces where there is a genuine way in for everybody to go deeper, to take their next step. A culture where questions are okay. Where wrestling out loud is normal. Where there's a sense of a shared posture of trust that we sit under the Word rather than over it.

And when that begins to happen, something shifts. In Josiah's day, the rediscovery and re-centering on Scripture doesn't just change a few individual lives, it actually reshapes the whole nation and community at the time. Culture is transformed when leaders re-center on the Bible. Not overnight, it's not a quick fix. Not superficially, but when we do it deeply and pervasively.

That's why this matters so much. Because if we want to see churches that are ready for mission, grounded, resilient, multiplying new believers, then Scripture cannot be optional. It is essential. It has to be central. Not just in what we say, but in what we actually do, the practices that we model. So perhaps the question for us is simple, but a searching one. Is the Bible truly centre stage in the life of our church?

Or has it over time drifted quietly to the margins? And what might it look like? Not just to affirm it again, but to lead our communities in placing it back where it belongs, back at the centre.

Sian Rees (40:05)
Andrew, thank you so much again for challenging us and for prompting us to engage with scripture and figure out how it speaks to us today. We hope you've enjoyed this episode. Please do share it and subscribe if you haven't already.

Andrew Ollerton (40:21)
And don't forget to send us your questions for our upcoming Q &A session. Send them to podcasts at biblesociety.org.uk or go to our website, biblesociety.org.uk slash questions. We look forward to seeing you next time.