Exploring the Bible: A Bible Reading Plan for Kids has just been official released. Apart from Amazon, you can also buy it at Reformation Heritage Books or Westminster Books. Access sample pages here. It can be used with any version of the Bible. Here’s the introduction that explains a bit more of the thinking behind the book and it’s aim of getting our kids into the happy habit of daily Bible reading.

We were totally lost with no idea which way to turn. A few hours earlier forty of us boys and six adult leaders had set out to climb a mountain near our church’s summer camp.

We started out with great excitement as we looked forward to the challenges on the way to the summit: a mysterious forest, swampy fields, fast-flowing streams, sharp rocks, slippery paths, and steep climbs. But it would all be worth it for the view at the top.

But now we were wet, tired, hungry, cold, scared, and very, very lost.

LOST ON A MOUNTAIN

What went wrong?

Our leaders had forgotten to check the weather forecast, which would have warned them about the fog and rain that met us halfway up the mountain. They had also failed to provide us with maps, compasses, and whistles, in case we got separated from the main group.

And now, four of my friends and I were on the side of a cold and dangerous mountain, with no leader, no compass, no map, no food, no raincoats, and no idea where to go. We longed for someone to appear out of the mist to show us where to go next and lead us home. We’d long given up hope of reaching the summit. Obviously, I’m here to tell the tale, so I must have survived! If you hang around, I’ll tell you how.

LOST IN THE BIBLE?

Perhaps sometimes you feel lost and confused when reading the Bible. You start to read it as an excited explorer, looking forward to discovering amazing truths about God and the gospel. But after a few chapters you feel lost in a fog, not knowing where you are or where to go. You keep trying to push forward but you lack a leader, a map, and a compass. You wish someone would not only help you take the next step but also lead you to the summit so that you might see the Christian faith in a new and wonderful way.

That’s where this book, Exploring the Bible, comes to your rescue. It will act as your leader, map, and compass to the Bible. It won’t take you to every part of the Bible, but it will take you to the main peaks and give you an all-round view of its beautiful landscape. At times we’ll slow down and look at some parts more closely. Other times, we’ll speed up in order to get to the next major mountain peak in the Bible’s story. By the end of a year, you’ll have learned skills to help you explore the Bible on your own with safety and success.

EXPEDITION

We’ll go on one expedition a week. Unlike my disastrous camp, we’ll begin each expedition with a plan to map out the chapters of the Bible we’re about to explore.

PRAYER POINTS

We’ll then pray for God’s blessing on our travels and write down a couple of extra prayer points for the week. For example, we might pray for help with schoolwork. Or we could pray for our parents, our friends, our church, or for different nations and the missionaries that work there.

SNAPSHOT

I still have a couple of photos from my doomed climbing trip. Every time I look at us, soaked by the rain and surrounded by fog, the bad memories come flooding back.

But I want us to take snapshots of our expeditions that will bring back good memories. That’s why I’ve selected a memory verse from each week’s trip. Write it out from your Bible, and then try to memorize a bit of it each day so that you will build up a bank of wonderful memories from your travels.

DAILY LOG

The daily log has a title that sums up that day’s trip and a note of what verses to read. It has space to write out a verse or answer a question. That’s to help us keep thinking about what we have been reading and to remind us of what we have learned along the way.

EXPLORING WITH OTHERS

Sunday is rest-and-recharge day. Instead of continuing our march through the Bible, we’ll pause and think about what we’ve learned from the past week. We’ll look ahead to what God will show us later in the Bible. And we’ll think about how to live out the Christian life. This is where it’s good to involve Dad or Mom. Perhaps ask them to look at your daily log and chat with them about anything you found difficult.

They can also help you with the discussion questions, which are designed to connect our week’s reading with the rest of the Bible and with our lives.

Another fellow-explorer we can learn from is our pastor. He’s an experienced traveler in the Bible and can teach us how to explore it better. That’s why there’s space in the log for you to write down your pastor’s sermon text and his main sermon points, and what you will do in response to his message.

I’m looking forward to exploring the Bible with you and enjoying the beautiful views of God and of salvation that we will discover.

Oh, yes, I almost forgot to tell you how my friends and I were rescued. A strong wind blew away the fog so that we saw a road in a distant valley. When we got to the road, we flagged down a driver who then took us all the way back to our camp. I hope this book will blow away the fog from the Bible and lead you along a road that takes you all the way home to Jesus Christ.

Your Fellow Explorer,

David Murray

Ruthless and rigorous preparation will result in shorter and sharper sermons.

“Leave space and say less.” That’s the advice TED talks specialist Nicholas Negroponte gives to new TED speakers. It tracks with what President Woodrow Wilson said when he was asked how long it took him to prepare a speech:

“That depends on the length of the speech. If it is a 10-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now.”

That’s why, whenever you hear a sermon that goes on too long, the reason is not that the preacher prepared too much. It’s that he prepared too little. It takes much more time to prepare a 40-minute sermon than a 60-minute sermon.

I usually have to spend about 2-3 hours cutting material out of most of my sermons. It’s the most demanding and painful part of the preparation, yet it’s these extra few hours that make the difference between an average sermon and a good sermon.

TED speakers are allowed a maximum of 18 minutes. The organizers have found it’s “short enough to hold people’s attention, including on the Internet, and precise enough to be taken seriously. But it’s also long enough to say something that matters.”

Now, I’m not advocating for 18 minute sermons (most congregations have been trained well enough to listen for longer), but most preachers would benefit from being forced to preach an 18-minute sermon from time to time.

According to Chris Anderson (author of  TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking) some TED speakers make the mistake of just speaking twice as fast, as they try to cram a 40-minute speech into 18 minutes. The result is usually a dry, conceptual, and superficial speech that falls flat. As Anderson puts it:

Overstuffed equals underexplained. To say something interesting you have to take the time to do at least two things: (1) Show why it matters . .  . what’s the question you’re trying to answer, the problem you’re trying to solve, the experience you’re trying to share? (2) Flesh out each point you make with real examples, stories, facts.

But this all takes time, which means the only option is to slash the number of topics covered to a single connected thread — your throughline. The result is “you cover less, but the impact will actually be significantly greater.”

Anderson tells the story of one of the most popular TED speakers, Brené Brown, who also struggled to meet TED’s tight time demands. She recommends this simple formula:

“Plan your talk. Then cut it by half. Once you’ve grieved the loss of half of your talk, cut it another 50 percent. It’s seductive to think about how much you can fit into 18 minutes. The better question for me is, ‘What can you unpack in a meaningful way in 18 minutes?’”

I’ve often dreamed of a “TED talks for preachers,” where we would be forced to “leave space and say less.” The long-term effect would not be more 18-minute sermons, but more 40-minute sermons that feel like 18 minutes rather than 80.

Ruthless and rigorous preparation will result in shorter and sharper sermons.

More articles in the Preaching Lessons from TED Talks series.

Blogs

What Is The Pastor To Be?
I think this is a parody:

After hundreds of fruitless years, a model minister has finally been found to suit everyone. It is completely guaranteed that he will please any church…”

An Open Letter to the Weary Pastor
Now back to reality:

In his wisdom and providence, God often calls his best servants to trust him by working without the immediate reassurance that comes when we see spiritual fruit. God will use your labors, perhaps not in your timing and perhaps not in the ways you had envisioned. But you can be sure that nothing done in the service of Christ is ever a waste of time.

6 Truths about Parenting Tweens in the Digital Age
By the author of  Screenwise: Helping Kids Thrive (and Survive) in Their Digital World. I’ll be speaking at First Presbyterian, South Carolina, on this topic in a couple of weeks. More details here.

Matt Walsh: I’m not ‘forcing my morality on you’ — you’re forcing your immorality on me
I’m not a big Matt Wash fan but he hits the target with this one — with minimal collateral damage.

How to Be Teachable According to the Proverbs of the Bible
“If you’re wondering how to grow in teachability, perhaps there’s no better place to turn than the Bible’s wisdom book.”

Jesus Is the Multiplier
This is an excellent chapel address on the feeding of the 5000. His points are: (1) Start where you are, (2) Use what you have, (3) Do what you can, (4) Trust Jesus as the multiplier. Young people everywhere would benefit from this passionate and practical message.

Kindle Books

Fool’s Gold?: Discerning Truth in an Age of Error by John MacArthur $2.99.

The Story of Christianity: Volume 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation $1.99.

Christian Leadership Essentials: A Handbook for Managing Christian Organizations by David Dockery $2.99.

The church has often emphasized the soul to the exclusion of, or the minimizing of, the body. As a result, neglecting the body is sometimes seen as a virtue or a mark of super-spirituality. One pastor explained his struggle with this to me:

Somewhere along the way I equated recreation with worldliness. If it wasn’t directly advancing the Kingdom I didn’t need to be doing it. I secretly thought that God would look down and see that I was taking ministry so seriously that he would bless me. But I wasn’t living like a human being. I didn’t realize how much I needed these things. I needed to experience beauty and creativity. I needed to enjoy God’s gifts without guilt. It was a matter of survival.

He’s right. And such errors can be defeated only with truth, with the Bible’s theology of the body. Yes, the Bible does have a theology of the body, much of it is contained in 1 Corinthians 6:9-20. Read the rest of this post here where I explore the Paul’s teaching in this passage:

1. Your body is damaged by sin (vv. 9-11).

2. Your body is saved by God (v. 11).

3. Your body remains vulnerable (v. 12).

4. Your body is for the Lord (vv. 13-14).

5. Your body is a member of Christ (vv. 15-17).

6. Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit (vv. 18-19).

7. Your body was bought with a price (v. 20).

Blogs

How to Be Teachable According to the Proverbs of the Bible
“If you’re wondering how to grow in teachability, perhaps there’s no better place to turn than the Bible’s wisdom book.”

How Hugh Hefner Hijacked Men’s Brains
The key paragraph:

The unfortunate reality is that when he acts out (often by masturbating), this leads to hormonal and neurological consequences, which are designed to bind him to the object he is focusing on,” Struthers wrote. “In God’s plan, this would be his wife, but for many men it is an image on a screen. Pornography thus enslaves the viewer to an image, hijacking the biological response intended to bond a man to his wife and therefore inevitably loosening that bond.

5 Common Mistakes When Helping Wives of Porn Addicts
Picking up after Hefner:

I have heard stories of the amazing support and care that sexually betrayed women have received in churches around the world. However, sadly more common are the horror stories–the stories of an already traumatized wife suffering a secondary trauma due to poor advice and invalidation, experienced at the hands of (mostly) well-meaning yet misinformed ministry teams and church leaders.

Do You Wish You Could Read Faster?
David Mathis wants to start a slow-reading revolution.

10 Things You Should Know about Dementia
So glad to see this subject getting more attention these days.

12 Reasons to Have Monthly Lunch with a Senior Adult…or a Bunch of Them
What a great idea:

If you’re a church leader, you need to spend intentional time with a senior adult – or with a lot of them. Even a monthly lunch and conversation will pay dividends in your ministry. Here’s why you need to prioritize this time.]

Is Your 50-50 Relationship Ruining Your Marriage?
Time to duck:

Researchers Karen Kramer and Sunjin Pak at the University of Illinois examined data on nearly 1,500 men and 1,800 women between the ages of 52 and 60 and found that the more women’s paychecks increased, the more women reported symptoms of depression. But the opposite effect was found in men: their psychological well-being was highest when they were the primary wage-earners. “The results supported the overarching hypothesis: well-being was lower for mothers and fathers who violated gendered expectations about the division of paid labor, and higher for parents who conformed to these expectations,” said Kramer.

Resilient Ministry: What Pastors Told Us About Surviving and Thriving
“Resilient Ministry is a summary and analysis of American pastors’ reflections considering long-term fruitful ministry and the effects of stress. It considers an extensive array of subjects to include spiritual formation, burn out, strategies to improve longevity, emotional intelligence, marriage and family etc. It reaches a number of conclusions that are presented in a clear and helpful way. It is sprinkled with pithy and often wise observations that should benefit pastors living with the burden of their calling.”

New issue is here: The Reformation of the Family
The latest issue of Credo magazine is out and it focuses on how the Reformation impacted the family.

Kindle Books

From Topic to Thesis: A Guide to Theological Research by Michael Kibbe $2.99. Every single seminary student needs to buy and read this. It will save you so much time and your teachers so much grief.

God and Government Kindle Edition by Charles Colson $3.99.

Just because a sermon has points, doesn’t mean it’s got a point.

One of the best preaching books I’ve read in the last decade is Denis Prutow’s So Pastor, What’s Your Point? If someone like Tim Keller or Don Carson had written it, it would be a bestseller. Prutow’s basic point is that most sermons don’t have a point. They may have points, but they don’t have a point. They have hundreds of sentences, but they can’t be summed up in one sentence.

The world of drama and storytelling calls this a “throughline,” the connecting theme that ties together each part of a narrative or speech. TED Head Chris Anderson says “Every talk should have one.” In TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking, he says:

Since your goal is to construct something wondrous inside your listeners’ minds, you can think of the throughline as a strong cord or rope, onto which you will attach all the elements that are part of the idea you’re building.

A talk can cover more than one topic and have more than one point, but all the topics and all the points must connect. If you think of your talk as a journey, the throughline is what connects all the major stopping points. Here’s how Anderson puts it:

A good exercise is to try to encapsulate your throughline in no more than fifteen words. And those fifteen words need to provide robust content. It’s not enough to think of your goal as, “I want to inspire the audience” or “I want to win support for my work.” It has to be more focused than that. What is the precise idea you want to build inside your listeners? What is their takeaway?

Most preachers (and I include myself in his) hate being asked for a throughline (or “sermon proposition”). That’s partly because it’s hard work to produce one. But it’s mainly because it usually exposes the lack of one, forcing more work on the sermon in order to create a credible and compelling throughline. But it always results in a better sermon.

A “throughline” should be as comprehensive as possible (incorporating each point of the sermon), as clear as possible (a simple rather than a complex sentence), as brief as possible (max of 15 words is about right), as memorable as possible (so that someone can take it away with them), as interesting as possible (intriguing rather than boring), and as unique as possible (so that it could only fit that text and no other).

If you can’t produce a throughline for your sermon. You don’t have a sermon.

Just because a sermon has points, doesn’t mean it’s got a point.

More articles in the Preaching Lessons from TED Talks series.