Help for Those Beginning to Read the Bible

Have you ever read all of the Bible? If not, what is stopping you? A follower of Jesus should read the Bible every day. We should also read all of the Bible––and then read all of the Bible again and again and again. Here are a few pointers. In this article, I will mainly provide help for those beginning to read the Bible. Next time, I will give further advice on your “whole Bible” project. Read More

If you want to discourage people from reading the Bible, suggest that they read the King James Bible, or the Authorize Version. It is written in a language that people no longer speak and they will have difficulty in understanding it. At the small Continuing Anglican church where I used to preach, someone had unwisely put a provision in the church bylaws requiring the reading of the King James Bible in the church's services of public worship. The jurisdiction with which the church is affiliated permits the use of more recent translations of the Bible at services of public worship. The members of the congregation who read the Bible at home use one of these translations. Preaching involved explaining what the King James Bible was saying in modern-day English and then unpacking what the passage meant and its implications for the congregation. Whoever put that restrictive provision in the church bylaws had forgotten or never learned that a longstanding principle of Anglican worship is that the Bible should be read in the vernacular, the everyday language of the congregation.