The hardest book I’ve ever written is a children’s book called Exploring the Bible! I just finished it on Friday and sent the manuscript in to Crossway for publication in Fall 2017.
What made it so difficult?
It wasn’t its length. It’s only 14,000 words.
It wasn’t its complexity. It’s a very simple concept – a Bible reading plan for kids.
It wasn’t its novelty. Over the years, I’ve put together a few Bible reading plans for kids.
The challenge was writing a Bible reading plan for elementary-level kids that would cover the whole Bible in a year!
Of course, that’s not possible without asking them to read more than three chapters a day. So I had to pick a selection of chapters and passages that would take the kids from Genesis to Revelation in the course of a year while still maintaining the substance and continuity of the biblical story. And that’s where the difficulty was.
The first challenge was deciding on how many verses a day. Too much and kids will give up. Too little, and we won’t make any progress. Readings, therefore, are about 4-6 verses a day with a slight increase to about 6-7 verses towards the end of the plan as kids build reading stamina.
The second challenge was how much Old Testament and how much New Testament? I decided on 24 weeks of the Old and 28 weeks of the New.
The third challenge was what to pick from each Testament. At a pace of 4-6 verses a day, six days a week (we’ve reserved the seventh day for recap and writing notes about the pastor’s sermon), I had a “budget” of about 25-30 chapters in the Old Testament and about 35-40 in the New Testament. So which ones to choose?
Without going in to all the detail, I ended up with five chapters from Genesis, two from Exodus, a handful from the historical books, samples from each poetic book, a few chapters from the prophets, sixteen from the Gospels, five from Acts, four from the New Testament epistles, and two from Revelation.
But no matter what I did, however I sliced and diced it, I ended up with many wonderful chapters that I just couldn’t squeeze in. It was an agonizing choice. I just had to keep telling myself that it was better to get the kids into the habit of daily and doable Bible reading that they would want to continue rather than aim too high and overwhelm them.
Now maybe you’ll see why I say it was the most challenging book I’ve ever written.
Did I succeed? I suppose I’ll get some idea when I hear back from the editor in a month or so. And I won’t know for sure until parents start using it with their kids next Fall and giving feedback. But I was encouraged by the “Mom’s Focus Group” I tested it on from time to time. They especially loved the interactive elements and other learning tools throughout.
What I’m perhaps most excited about though is that Crossway has planned some wonderful graphic design ideas for Exploring the Bible. They are investing a lot of time and talent into making this a beautiful and attractive book for kids.
Our hope is that Exploring the Bible will teach children the holy habit of daily consecutive Bible reading that will continue to grow and develop over the years. Maybe some adults might benefit from it too!