Thinking about Bible engagement thinking …
This post is compiled with Bible ministry colleagues in mind. It’s for people working in the fields of Bible preaching, Bible translation, Bible publishing, Bible storying, Bible study, Bible teaching, Bible resource development, and Bible engagement.
Here are ten primers to get us thinking about our thinking:
- The entertainment industry thrives on the power to distract and hypnotize. What are the Bible engagement strategies, methodologies and technologies are required to capture the attention of people caught in the grip of an alluring hotchpotch of images and fragments of visual stimulation?
- Biblical scholarship requires a major paradigm shift. The perception and interpretation of the Scriptures must shift from engaging with silent print to engaging with the Bible in the context of electronic media. What are the implications of this premise?
- Since most people hear the Bible’s message rather than read it for themselves, greater attention must be given to the importance of communicating the message with dialogical language (vs. dialectic language). What adjustments in our Bible delivery systems/methodology must be made to help people hear the Word more reliably and dynamically?
- In recognizing that there are more people outside than inside the church, intralingual translations (e.g. English to English) of Bible versions/paraphrases must be developed to better enable people to relate to the Word. How might a multi-media-rich environment help or hinder intralingual translations?
- Multiple tools, forms and avenues are available in the sciences and arts through which connections with the Bible may be made. How might the sciences and arts be more creatively accessed to help people see, imagine, contemplate, tell, hear, remember and share God’s Story?
- It was mainly Christians who pioneered the transition from orality to literacy. Now that Western cultures are more abstract, wouldn’t it be great if Christians pioneered the transition to secondary orality again? So what are we presently doing, and what should we be doing, to communicate and invite interaction with the Bible in the context of a more deliberate self-conscious orality?
- Robotics and artificial intelligence will dramatically alter society’s landscape in the coming years. What impact might the changes in technology have on how we provide access, develop approaches/methods, and invite engagement with the Bible?
- Social networking sites have changed the way we communicate. The linear reasoning that’s been nurtured by print culture is being augmented or replaced by non-sequential thinking stimulated by visual effects, wired to sound bites and punctuated by the exchange of one-liners. With this in mind, what are the implications for discipleship, given that Bible reading/reflection (drawing on linear reasoning skills) has been the primary means of nurturing mature believers?
- What can we learn from the past that can help us in the future? The biblical texts were originally recorded to assist oral presentation and the development of communal piety. The spoken and rhetorical features of the biblical text have been largely overlooked or ignored by commentators, pastors and teachers for hundreds of years. How can electronic media be harnessed to recapture the original oral underpinnings of the Bible?
- What new thinking, arrangements, reorganization of translation processes, and development of production and delivery mechanisms are required to enable people to engage with the Bible in a way that they can encounter God and live lives that bring honour and glory to Him?
Thinking about Bible engagement thinking. Please share your thoughts.
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Improving Bible Engagement in the Church
Bible Engagement Barriers and Bridges
Summary
This post explores key considerations for engaging people with the Bible in today’s digital, media-driven world. It challenges Bible ministries to rethink strategies for delivering the message, focusing on shifting from traditional print-based engagement to utilizing electronic media, multimedia tools, and dialogical language to make Scripture more accessible. It also raises the question of bridging cultural shifts, such as moving from literacy to secondary orality, while fostering meaningful Bible engagement through technology, arts, and social media. Ultimately, the post encourages a reevaluation of how we can use new methods to make the Bible relatable and transformative in the context of modern society.
© Scripture Union Canada
