The Bible for Bored Christians

‘Can I have a volunteer to read one verse please? It’s a well known verse, you’ll probably recognise it: turn to Jeremiah 29:11.’

Alexandra volunteers, finds the verse and smiles - ‘you’re right: it’s underlined in my Bible!’ She reads the verse out and there are smiles and nods - it is well known. (You might know it without looking it up, but you might as well look it up to be sure).

It’s the fifth training session at The Wave 2020, our IFES Greece summer beach camp. By now the team are used to the format: we introduce today’s topic (‘Will life with God go well for me?’), get them discussing, dig into a Bible passage (just the one passage: no hopping around between verses with the exception of any crucial OT/NT fulfilment passages), and then aim to dig out the God-intended meaning of the passage by allowing the text to interpret itself.

Here's what it looks like (this was discussion on the feeding of the 5000):

By the end of our 45 minute session, I observe the kind of reaction I’ve come to expect with the approach to Bible training that I now normally take. People (not all, of course, but most) are listening and concentrating, thinking of questions, making connections, and often either frowning with thought or smiling with the realisation that God actually speaks in his word (I mean, the Bible is not just lots of words about God but words from God, living and active) and that his word is a word of grace in Christ not law and burden.

I'll rewind briefly.

We’re IFES. Of course we believe in Bible study.

I doubt many people need persuading of that. But to what end? And how? Because we all know that it is possible to get the Bible open with students and see little gospel growth. We were finding that we were opening the Bible with bored Christians - 'We've heard it all before (or least might think we have).' It’s become a bit of a dry routine. And so it has become boring. Why? Well, I've been wondering about this and maybe there are two common tracks we head down that lead to boring Bible teaching.

One is the track that looks to give something practical. We are concerned about not being applied enough, so we look for something that we can tell people 'to do'. I've heard this stated explicitly many times. And so when we get into a passage we are quickly looking for practical lessons for life - the result of which is often burdensome to the people we're to whom we're speaking. Do this, or stop doing that, or do this better, or learn this, or take on this principle, and so on.

Is it right to apply our Bible teaching? Of course. But if our starting point is 'what practical application can I take from this passage?' we may well end up at the wrong destination. And the goal of giving people clear instruction on what to do can easily end up being burdensome, and that ends up being joyless, graceless - and boring.

The other common track is to aim merely for rigorous orthodoxy: to be satisfied with laying out truth and leaving it at that, with no application to real daily life. This comes from a laudable desire to keep us in the truth, which of course needs doing. But if all we do is restate what is already agreed with and not show how that leads to transformation of life and thought and heart, it can end up being joyless, directionless - and boring.

Let me say clearly: what we did at The Wave was not about being more interesting, more exciting. I think I am one of the less interesting public speakers I know (ask my family). But there is something simple and refreshing that we can do to help bored Christians get into the Bible, and I’ve been trying to take this approach more and more over the past couple of years with students (and others) in Greece.

In a nutshell, we want to hold up two approaches to the text side by side and let the Bible itself show which one is better. Do you want to make the text about me, or about Jesus? We’d noticed that although people were very familiar with the Bible, and didn’t need persuading that it is God’s word or important, more often than not the message that people were hearing from Scripture was one of what we must do, and not so much what God has done for us in Jesus. Jesus himself tells us that we should read the Bible as about him (John 5:39-40, for example). So it’s not that surprising that making the Bible about ourselves makes it less captivating, and it’s not surprising that boredom is the result.

What we do is take often-familiar passages and get people to try and dig out a message. Invariably (I’m not exaggerating) we can second-guess the kinds of messages that people pull out. For example, in 1 Kings 19 where Elijah goes to Horeb, the message is often that you have to learn to listen carefully to God’s voice because it can be hard to hear (you know, the still small voice, or the sound of silence). With David and Goliath, it’s about being courageous, and how we can overcome obstacles if we have faith like David. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the application is usually how we ought to be like Jesus, not like the disciples, and learn to stay alert and pray and so on.

Our students are in the habit of looking in Scripture to find out what we must do. If we miss Christ in the text, we miss the main thing. So we are trying to help students to learn to hear God’s word about Jesus in his word and work out how that word about Jesus impacts the way we live and think.

So, back to Jeremiah 29: how will life with God go for me?

Well it's obvious...isn't it? The promise is that God has good plans for my life, so my life will go well...right? That’s why we have the verse underlined, because it sounds so good! But of course the promise in verse 11 (I know the plans etc) comes right after verse 10! And so with just a little bit of proper reading, and resisting the temptation to put myself in the centre of the passage, we see that this is God not actually speaking to me, but to the exiles who want to believe a false prophecy: that their exile will be over in two years. Not so says God: it’s 70 years! So, dig in for the long haul and wait for the promise of being restored to be fulfilled in the end (by which time, if we’re honest, most of the hearers will have died...).

It’s a picture of God keeping his promises for the long haul, isn’t it? Of being brought to the place where God dwells, and dwelling with him, because Jesus brings us out of exile truly and forever. It’s not about being comforted by the promise of employment again when we’ve been made redundant, or a new relationship around the corner if we’ve been through a painful break up, or healing when we’re sick. (Those might all happen of course, it’s just that this promise isn’t about any of those sorts of things.) It’s about something much better and lasting and truly wonderful. A Christ-centred application of this passage takes us to hope in the long-term future fulfilment of a promise - hope in the new heaven and the new earth brought about by the life and work of Jesus. An attempt to apply without Jesus driving that application leads to expectations of a life here and now that just isn't promised to us, and fixes our eyes on nearer and narrower horizons, rather than broader and more glorious ones that truly motivate and encourage us to keep going.

Our horizons contract and our hopes shrink when we make the Bible about me, or when we make Bible study more of an intellectual/theological exercise. Our Christianity becomes boring, because it’s not about something really great. But when we make it about Jesus (what am I talking about? When we see that it is about Jesus!) our horizons expand, our hopes are brighter, our life takes its rightful place in Jesus with him in the spotlight.

This is just the start of a long process of disciple-making. It’s relatively straightforward to help people have this eye-opening moment of seeing that the Bible is about Jesus and not about me. That application that starts with having Jesus at the centre leads to growth in the grace offered by the gospel. It needs to be done consistently and regularly and comprehensively, but it’s a good start.

Get some bored Christians reading the Bible with Jesus at the centre!

[If you're interested in looking into any of the passages that we've covered in Floga, I'll post a link here soon to a separate site with a summary of each one]

A bit of white stuff

Well, we're still not really getting into regular updates but we have a few things to write about and here's something for starters.

Between Christmas and New year we spent a few days in the mountains of the Peloponnesos in a lovely apartment complex. Turned out that it was owned by a good friend of some of our friends from church in Athens, so it was good to make some links there. We liked the apartment and the location so much that we'll be back.

It was in a lovely gorge, not far from the main ski resort in southern Greece and part of the plan was to see some snow, which we did by driving quite high up to the ski slopes. For much of the winter the snow hangs around much lower down but there'd been a few warm days so it was really only the ski runs themselves which had snow.

Anyway, we got a toboggan for a few euros for one of the days. Joel and I headed into the mist for a bit of zooming down the hill (Hannah lasted a few minutes before getting too cold) while Dawn had to stay in the (hired) car with a sleeping Esther. We hadn't agreed where to meet up when our fun was over so Dawn texted me let me know the girls were awake and ready to head back to Kalavrita town for lunch. The only problem was I'd left my specs in the car, not wanted to crush them in any toboggan/cliff disasters that Joel and I might have had. You may know that I really need them for reading, being longsighted, and I couldn't make a single thing out on the text.

I've never been particularly bothered about the ageing process but this tickled me. My wee five year old had to read the text aloud to me. A healthy reminder of mortality.



As Joel and I were alone on the slope it was a bit tricky to get decent footage of his intrepid sledding. I considered just letting him go and filming 'til he disappeared from sight, but opted instead to get him to hold the brake until I was a bit downslope then hope he could steer straight into me. Have a look at the short clip. For a few seconds just before this was taken the fog vanished, revealed a stunning, sparkling mountainside. We'll be back, making sure we get some clear days. (The photo on our last prayer letter was of this mountain from afar).

There's other stuff to blog about that short trip which hopefully we'll get round to in the next couple of days, including a little-known but moving WW2 episode from the town of Kalabrita itself.

Language Learning is tough...

It's over a month since we re-started our language study at the university. We thought we'd take a moment to describe our classes and how we're getting on. I'll be writing in navy blue and Jonathan will write in maroon.

In some ways I've pretty much picked up where I left off last year. My lessons are still between 3pm and 6pm but are now every day. This is the least popular time of the day for the language course, so there are only 4 classes: 2 beginners, 1 intermediate and 1 advanced. I'm VERY glad that I was 2 points off being in the advanced class as I've found the intermediate class enough of a struggle.

There are about 17 of us in our class and almost all have lived in Greece for at least 2 years, most more like 10. Consequently most people can speak quickly and understand most of what is said at whatever speed it is spoken. Most are in the class in order to improve their job prospects as, although they can speak quite well, they know very little Greek grammar and struggle to spell. (Did you know there are at least 5 ways to write the sound 'ee' in Greek? We have endless questions about this as people begin to see and spell words they have been hearing and using for years.)

I felt like I was, once again, drowning in language at the beginning: not understanding most of what was discussed but understanding all of what was taught. As a result of this and my previous experiences of Greek language learning I enjoyed the grammar parts of the lesson and the exercises (when I understood the words!) but completely shied away from speaking and didn't ask questions when I didn't understand. I spent ages in the evening with the dictionary looking up words I'd written down in class. This meant that, in retrospect, I understood the lesson but was not really equipped to take part.

My lowest point was when a very friendly and nice stand-in teacher, Vangelis, asked me to introduce myself and went on to ask me a lot of questions I wasn't quite prepared to answer. My name is top of the register, sadly, so I often get 'picked on' first. I cried. It was SO embarrassing and I couldn't stop. I didn't leave because I knew it would be even harder to go back if I had, so I just sat there. And every time I thought about it I cried again. Wrong. It was wrong. Still, it totally shot down any pride I might have had and helped me to realise how stressed I was by the whole process and how much I just needed to relax and trust the Lord. He knew and knows how this language learning business is going to be for me and we need the language. I got through the rest of the lesson and was ok about going back the next day. I still find the anticipation of the lesson a little stressful but once I'm there it's fine.

That was a couple of weeks ago. Now I'm a bit more confident about speaking, much less bothered about making mistakes and I have quite good relationships with at least some of my classmates. I think that, as we bond a bit more every week, we will help each other to improve. Most of my class struggle with the things I find really easy - correct conjugations and spelling are my speciality (I'm such a loser!) - so we help each other!

As we warm up to each other, the mood of my class is relaxing and improving. My class teachers have changed a little too, which helps (the most austere teacher has gone on paternity leave!). I have Giorgos Mondays and Wednesdays, Aliki (when she's there, family problems have kept her away for a fortnight) Tuesdays and Thursdays and Maria - who is the most gentle teacher! - on Fridays. We both get opportunities to talk about what we're doing here and so pray for us to take them wisely and use them well.

I've taken up watching the odd soap opera on tv (recommended!). I don't understand much of the language but get the gist and it's good for my general listening skills. I'm also reading through 1 Corinthians (VERY slowly) in my Quiet Times with Modern Greek NT in one hand and NIV in the other. I'm also reading Harry Potter 1 in Greek - again VERY slowly, painfully so, but the language isn't TOO difficult and it's good to see how sentences are constructed and translated.

I'm still amazed how, every week at church, I understand more and more of what is said: it might be that I recognise a word or tense that I've learnt in something that Giorgos says in his sermon or something that we sing. I'm encouraged by that and have not lost heart, although I think I was faltering a bit for a while.

I'm extremely glad that I like my classes. If class was onerous or I felt intimidated by it there would be a significant cloud over each day. As it is, I like my three teachers (Vangelis Monday/Friday, Giorgia Tuesday, Menelaus Wednesday/Thursday) and am beginning to get to know my class mates. Each teacher focuses on different things to an extent - vocabulary, verbs, grammar - so we're getting a good variety of input and homework. My spoken Greek is probably only better than one other person in my class - same as with Dawn's group, most have been here for a long time and/or are married to Greeks. They are beginning to be good fun too, and I'm spending more break times chatting with them. The Englishman's disadvantage is that they all speak English so it's way too easy to revert to English when the Greek runs out. I need real discipline to stick with Greek. They are patient with that, so I have no excuse really.

I've found that I have been a little less confident to speak and make mistakes compared to pre-summer. Regarding language study, my main prayer need is to be bold to open my mouth to chat about anything, and be convinced that making mistakes is fine and also a good way to learn. The great thing about Greeks is that they genuinely appreciate foreigners speaking their language, and if asked they will correct us when we speak.

I am on the 9-12 shift so I head up to the university ('up' being the operative word: it's a steep hill from our house to our department) after taking first Joel then Hannah to pre-school. As long as breakfast goes smoothly and I have my bag packed (with my three large books, bible, notepad, coffee flask and water bottle...) and we're all ready in time this is a pleasant journey. The kids are happy on the way and we chat about the things going on around us. Our journey always takes Hannah and I past the DVD shop with a Gollum model crouching by the pavement. She never fails to notice that he's grumpy because he lost his ring.

Like Dawn, I can't keep up with the others in the class in what I say but I struggle far less than some with what's being taught, and don't make the spelling or grammatical mistakes as much. It means that although I am and feel way behind, my language is being built on a good foundation of correct Greek. I really need to find a way to pick up a wide range of vocabulary AND USE IT. I need to watch the news (I can't quite bring myself to watch soaps) and more than anything I need to be in the company of (sympathetic) people speaking Greek around me and to me. I also need to be extremely disciplined in doing homework and looking up the words I don't understand in the evenings so that each day I expand the useful vocabulary. An obvious point struck me today - I need to proactively learn the words and phrases that I want to use, both in conversations with random people I come across, and with believing students that we begin to meet and plan with.

Another thing on my mind about my class is that by May when the course ends we will have spent many hours together and will have had opportunities to talk about many things. I am sure none of the others are Christians and yesterday I had my first mini-opportunity to talk about the gospel - well, the implications of it at any rate - with a French girl of Catholic background. It would be great to build real friendships with these folks and be a light each morning.

It's good to be home

Birthday balloons! Esther was 1 whilst we were in England.

We've been back in Athens since Sunday night after 7 weeks of rather hectic Englanding. We thought we ought to blog a bit to catch you up. People were right to urge us not to travel around too much, and we intended to take that advice, but a combination of our natural instincts and some unforeseen circumstances meant we didn't. The other thing was that it was a long time to be away from home, and we reckon that next summer we'll have quite a different time of it.

Without going into reams of detail here's a quick summary of what we did:

The first week back (from 10 July) was Dawn and kids in Sussex with her family while I went to the IFES World Assembly near Toronto, Canada. This was a great privilege. The highlights were definitely seeing representatives of some of the newest movements, particularly those in the Middle East and North Africa, report on how things have started in their countries in recent years. What most struck me (not for the first time with IFES) was how God has worked through the faithful witness of normal people in tough places to save people and establish a witness for himself in many universities where there was previously nothing. This is a great encouragement for us in Greece! I think it's worth noting that Western Europe is still one of the most unfruitful places for the gospel on the globe, even compared to some Muslim countries. We ought to still be praying for workers to be sent into this most convenient (for UK believers at least!) of harvest fields.

Anyway, this is already looking less brief than intended. Mid-July to mid-August we were in Beeston with a week in the south east in the middle. People from Beeston Free ('home' church) provided us with homes and car and we had a great time catching up with the church family as a whole and many of our friends there. (The downside of a summer visit is that you miss some people away on their holidays of course, but such is life.) The week in the south east included three days in London (friends at Oak Hill one day, tourism the next, a funeral third) and time with Dawn's parents and sister and brother in law.

Hannah, Lucie (niece) and Joel, exploring at the Natural History Museum

We packed up from our final Beeston home mid August (oh - it was lovely to visit our friends the Pratts in our Thorndyke Close house: several people asked us about this and it was good. Reckon they've improved the place actually. There are even strawberries growing.) to go to Liverpool (my little bro and other friends) and Cheshire for a long weekend including a day trip to York before heading south west to see old uni friends and be in the right part of the country for IFES orientation at Monkton Coombe, Bath. Crazily, we managed to squeeze almost 24 hours at the UCCF Relay 1 conference at Quinta, Shropshire, into this. This 300 mile round trip was so worthwhile though: an opportunity to see the old place again, be part of Relay again, AND talk to the group about IFES in general, year-teams in Europe and our plans for Athens specifically. We hope to have a team here soon (i.e. next September) so we have sown the seeds in 60 potential minds! We also celebrated Esther's 1st (ever) birthday at the IFES conference (see pictures below below). The final act was a Clark family weekend in a youth hostel in Milton Keynes (as my parents are waiting to move into a new home) for dad's birthday.

Outside one of our favourite places: Café Concerto, York.

Those are the bare facts - what of our reflections this side of the scooting around? Well, seven weeks away from Athens was a bit long in some ways. It was lovely to be in England, and we enjoyed it from day one, despite the miserable summer at the start. However, from the off we were really encouraged that it felt as though we were away from home, and so it's good to be back. We were also encouraged by the people we saw - we are so glad for the friends, family and church we were blessed with before heading here in January. Finally, although there have been the occasional moment of melancholy this week (and despite having to put toilet paper in the bin again), we're glad to be back, looking forward to getting back into Greek, and anticipating spending more time with students this year.

We'll post again soon, with news on new school stuff for Joel and Hannah. We'll also try and get some more photos up. Our camera needs replacing so we hardly used it this summer and have to borrow other people's pictures.

The birthday girl - she has the family gormless look off to a tee!

'Super' Joel (he prefers 'Special' Joel!) in birthday party mode!

It's true, Hannah ate all the party rings (or at least licked a lot of them!)...

Happy Birthday to you ... (sing along!)

Thanks to Tim for shielding the candle.

Thanks to Lily for the birthday photos!