The Big Reveal
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Fox River Christian Church sits in a quiet, semi-rural community just west of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It looks like countless other churches across America, a simple, practical building that is both a place of worship and a community crossroads.
Fox River recently took the Willow Creek Association's REVEAL survey. Of the metrics reflected in the church's results, senior pastor Guy Conn was struck by the low engagement his congregation had with the Bible. His commitment to deepen Fox River's engagement with Scripture has ushered in a new season of spiritual vitality.
When I saw our results from taking the REVEAL survey, I was disappointed, but not surprised. One of the numbers that immediately stood out was that 80-85 percent of our congregation wasn't reading the Bible at all, let alone with regularity or depth.
A pastor has a sixth sense when it comes to the congregation's spiritual habits. I suspected that Scripture engagement could be an area of weakness for us. Some of that was due to positive trends. We were a body privileged to witness many new people coming to faith in Christ. We also had a high number of attendees that had come from a background of nominal church attendance. That meant many had minimal familiarity with the Bible, let alone a commitment to regularly engage it in their personal lives. Lots of our new brothers and sisters did not know even the basic stories—David and Goliath, Jonah and the Whale, the miracles of Jesus …
Preaching alone wasn't enough to close this gap. Our church was growing, but our depth in the Scriptures wasn't, and something needed to give. We have a passionate, driven leadership team. When we saw ourselves in the lower 50 percent of those surveyed, you could almost hear a collective "NO!" rise from our team. We were faced with a sobering fact: we weren't deepening people's spiritual lives. So we took a deep breath, and decided to do something about it.
Tackling the Problem
The survey pointed out that simply teaching the Bible in church does not lead people to open the Bible for themselves throughout the week. Preaching itself isn't enough to transform deeply. God wants to work with his people individually. Our role as church leaders is to facilitate that process, to free the Bible from the confines of the pulpit and put it in people's hands.
We knew that addressing the problem required more than tweaking or introducing one new program. It had to be wide-ranging and synergistic. So we crafted a strategy that included our preaching, small groups, adult classes, and children's and youth ministries. It could be simple, but it had to be widespread and unified. We centered our efforts on what we called a "New Testament Challenge," one that would likely be difficult for us but attainable. We chose the word "challenge" specifically with our men in mind. Many men balk at reading plans. But their ears perked up when we began talking about this as if it were akin to running a marathon or climbing a mountain. We were very clear: "This won't be easy. You're going to need to commit, to work your butt off to see this thing through. But if you do, you will accomplish something big, something significant."
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Rick Dalbey
I gave my life to Jesus at 20. I repented, was baptized and did all that I knew to do yet the Bible was an impenetrable book. Six months later two ministers laid hands on me to receive the fulness of the Holy Spirit. I woke up the next day and had a deep hunger for the Bible and it seemed to be the most interesting book I had ever read. It felt like the Holy Spirit was sitting beside me highlighting every other verse. Plus my prayer and worship life was transformed. I did not have to be coerced. This has been the experience of virtually everyone I know in the years since who has received the fulness of the Holy Spirit since. Now 40 years later, I read through the Bible from cover to cover at least once or twice a year as well as do weekly Bible studies. The Holy Spirit wrote it, there is nothing like being full of the author.
Elizabeth Havill
I'm always excited to hear of any program that encourages followers of Jesus to a higher level of commitment to know and understand God's guide book for our lives. It's the knowledge of His word that keeps us from sinning, It gives us direction for living. Psalm 119 tells us, and when we go through deep waters, it will be what gives us strength and comfort. Isaiah 41:10 I thank God I was brought up to understand these simple truths, but there is much modern technology, that's good, but it can hinder us from basic bible reading. Certainly small groups are absolutely necessary in our churches. Our Pastor often says, we don't want our Church to be one with small groups, but one OF small groups! Unfortunately, it's the lack of knowledge of what the scripture teaches that is leading our young people to do as they did in the book of Judges, namely, "That which is right in their own eyes." I pray all the time for my family that they'll have a hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Poppy Smith
I came from a non-Christian home and knew nothing. Came to Christ at 17, went to Bible STudy Fellowship at 27 and was grounded in the Word and given a hunger for God. Have been teaching it since my early thirties. It is life-transforming--still is--without reading it, thinking, praying, listening--we hobble through life, stuck in who we used to be and missing the power of God to transform us. So glad to hear of pastors facing facts: people are Biblically illiterate--let's all do our part to feed God's sheep!
Kris Barnett
As a pastor, I made a similar observation. People were not reading the Bible because they had not been challenged to do so, (I like the way the church in WI emphasized the challenge of reading Scripture). Or they had not been given the necessary tools. So, three years ago, I challenged the congregation to read the Bible in a year. I also developed a resource to help them. I provided application questions for each day's Bible reading. This helped the congregation see how the passages they read actually intersected with their lives. These application questions originally appeared in the the church bulletin each week.
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