The Story

We began a new series last night called "The Story." Our students will (hopefully) be reading through the books of Luke and Acts over the next 8 weeks. The text we're using comes from a campaign called Community Bible Experience by the publishing house Biblica. It's the NIV version, but with chapter and verse numbers removed from the text to improve readability. (I am grateful to CBE for sending me the text as a free sample after I attended the National Youth Workers Convention! I am also thankful for my wife, Lauren, who bound all the booklets for our students!)

The people over at Community Bible Experience share three problems with the way we read the Bible:



1. Too often, we read in fragments. The problem with this is that "God's word is, first and foremost, a story--one that was designed to be engaged in its entirety."

2. Too often, we read without context. We should remember that "the Bible is an ancient collection of books written by ancient scribes who spoke foreign languages. It's the product of a culture vastly different from our own." Therefore, we NEED context to truly understand God's story.

3. Too often, we read in isolation. We've turned the Bible into a personal discipline, when it should be a communal practice.

With these problems in mind, here is the purpose statement for our series: "We will read the complete story of Luke-Acts, seek to understand it in context, and experience it in community."