Worship Spaces: Pew Bibles

Worship Spaces is a series of "favorite things" I've seen done in churches. These could be rituals, physical setups, or something else that worked really well. 

Today's post discusses using pew Bibles to connect more easily with visitors, especially people who have never memorized the books of the Bible.

One of my favorite preachers, Wade Hodges, begins every sermon with the same monologue:

Good morning! Please turn in your Bibles to [book chapter verse], page [###] in the pew Bible in front of you...

It didn't notice it for a long time, but there's an important evangelistic tool here: Wade mentions the page number.

If you've grown up in the church, page numbers in Bibles are pointless. Everyone has a different Bible. Different translations, different printings...never the same page number. The only way to find the same place, as a church body, is to use book/chapter/verse (BCV) navigation.

But BCV requires one crucial skill...you have to know the books in the first place! If you're a newcomer to church, you have no clue where Leviticus is. By the time a newcomer finds the specific book, the preacher (or scripture reader) has already finished reading the text!

BCV also creates an emotional barrier for newcomers. If I were a newcomer, I'd feel embarrassed not knowing what appears to be common knowledge. That embarrassment impedes my spiritual growth. And unless a newcomer's memorization skills are top-notch, it'll take them a long time to memorize the books as an adult. (Imagine the conversation: "can you teach me a kids' song so I can learn this basic information you've known since you were 10?")

But there's an alternative to BCV: use the same Bible, and use page numbers. It's faster, actually, and it's newcomer-friendly.

One of my former coworkers Carmelo Cuellar (who spends much of his time evangelizing) taught me this method in the first place. He brings multiple copies of the same Bible, then shares a copy with each person he meets. They get to keep the copy, and he is able to easily point them to the passage he wants to discuss.

We can use this method in congregational worship as well. Many churches don't need a hymnal in every pew spot. Instead, stock half of those spaces with gift Bibles! You can use them for corporate worship, and you can encourage visitors to take one home.

(If you employ this idea, please consider using a contemporary translation. I'd recommend either the latest NIV or NLT. They're not perfect, but I feel comfortable recommending them to newcomers, because the translators used contemporary, easy-to-understand words and phrasing.)

Youth ministers can do this too; we did! For entering seventh-graders, we bought them all the same edition of gift Bible, and we stocked the Jr. High room with extra copies. It helped us all read the text in the same translation, and it gave newcomers an easy way to find the text quickly.