How can churches encourage their members to read and engage in Scripture?

I continue my conversation with Tom Vander Well - host of the Wayfarer Podcast. We talk about the ways churches can encourage a daily reading of Scripture, as well as how Pastors can develop the gifts of preaching and teaching found throughout their congregations.

Excerpt

Reuel Sample: Pastors are still seen as the quote professional Bible readers, but the reform movement, you attend a reformed church, I'm a Presbyterian. The reform movement was based in large part about bringing the Bible to everyone. So how can pastors encourage their people to read their Bibles and develop a healthy worldview out of that?

Tom Vander Well: I think that and probably the pulpit is the place that it starts and the expectations that are set. With technology, there is no excuse for a pastor and a church not to be able to provide resources for the people in your local body, whether that be. We're going to do this together and we're going to post it online, what everyone's going to read each day or we're going to you know what? We're going to make audio accessible. My, you know, so my own pastor and I just talked last week and this is fascinating rule. So here we are in in rural Iowa, which is Iowa, is one of the most educated states in the country. It has one of the best educational systems in the country. And my pastor said that he has. Had several members of our consistory. Uh, they're they're doing a book study within within the Consistory, which is kind of the the leaders within the church. And he said he's had a handful approach him and say and confess to him they can't read. Interesting, interesting. I mean, he blew me away and he was blown away as well, and he's like, What is this mean? And in grappling with that, it's sort of like, you know, let's stop making assumptions that everyone can, and maybe we need to make things accessible by audio rather than just reading anyway. Fascinating. I just think being able to provide resources, being able to set expectations. One of the things that we do among our local body and both spaces that we use for worship is more and more. We are having discussion questions and we're making space on Sunday morning to say. Um, OK, read this passage and talk about it, or here's the question. Get together, we call them with your neighborhood groups because everyone sits in the same spots, right? Everyone sits in the same place every week.

Reuel Sample: And you better not sit in somebody else's spot!

Tom Vander Well: Exactly. So look, you all know each other and see each other every Sunday anyway, because they're all relatively in the same space every Sunday. So just turn around, talk to the person next to you and we give it a lot of grace and say, our pastor is always great, he says. Like, if you don't want to do this, just pretend to pray and it's OK. But over time, what we've what we've seen happen, and it's taken a couple of years to get there, but we do this now almost every week and people are really enjoying. Talking about the scripture together or talking about the question together, and that is making, I think, connection not only between pastor and listener, but now between listener and listener, and we're expanding the conversation even on a Sunday morning. And I think that's been helpful as well.