At a recent conference for pastors and church leaders on discipleship, the speaker emphasized how important it was for disciples to be able to read, understand, and apply Scripture for themselves. Yet, he lamented: "In the church, far too few followers of Christ are able to do this."
He then shared an illustration about a pastor who worked with a tribal people who cooked their food by burying it in a sand pit. Apparently, in the process of cooking, a lot of sand would get into the food, which tended to wear down the teeth of the members of the tribe. In this particular tribe, older people who had damaged teeth would get younger people in the tribe to chew the food for them. Unfortunately, because much of the nutrition in food is released during the chewing process, many of these older members of the tribe were suffering from malnutrition. After sharing this illustration, the speaker looked out at the crowd of pastors and church leaders and said, "This is what we do every week in our churches." We prepare our sermons and our Bible studies by chewing on them all week. Then on Sunday morning we take the already chewed food of God's Word out of our mouths and plop it into the mouths the people in our congregations. This is the only intake of God's word many Christians get, and they are starving spiritually because the real nutrition of God's word comes from chewing it for ourselves. If we want to be healthy mature disciples, we must learn to to chew God's word for ourselves. This means learning how to read, understand, and apply the Bible in our own lives. It also means that we must have a strategy for engaging the Bible daily. Here are some resources that can help us learn to chew our own food. Scripture Union Center for Bible Engagement Bible Reading Start-up Guide Mentoring Disciples (Bible Study Tools) Bible Reading Plans George Guthrie (Read the Bible for Life) Comments are closed.
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Tony HoffmanCampus Pastor at First Baptist Church in Leesburg, FL where his passion is to help people discover and live out their calling in Christ. Tony regularly consults, speaks, and teaches about discipleship and Christian education. Archives
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