By Cameron Silsbee
Optional Kids Practice
Invite kids in your group to be with the adults for a few minutes. Once they seem ready to engage, ask them the following prompt.
- What’s something that confuses you in the Bible?
During this series, help the kids practice their memory verse for the months of January and February.
The January memory verse for preschoolers: “A friend loves you all the time.” Proverbs 17:17, NCV
The January memory verse for elementary school kids: “Be strong, all you who put their hope in the Lord. Never give up.” Psalm 31:24, NIRV
Begin with prayer
Gather together as a Community in a comfortable setting. Take a moment in silence, in the presence of Jesus and each other. Have one person read Hebrews 4:12 over the group and then pray to ask the Holy Spirit to lead and guide your time together.
Debrief the most recent teaching
- What stood out to you from the most recent teachings on the Beatitudes? What have been thinking about or has changed during this series?
- What was it like simply reading from the Van City Lectionary last week?
Read this overview
As a church on Sundays, we are continuing to explore the Beatitudes, the good news of the Kingdom for those not expecting good news. During the week, Communities are practicing the discipline of Scripture reading – engaging with the words and stories that shaped the imagination and teachings of Jesus and his followers for the last two thousand years.
Scholars guess that Jesus was probably conversational if not fluent in three languages, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Koine Greek. The assumption is that he spoke Aramaic day-to-day. That would mean that the words of the Beatitudes we read on Sundays were spoken by Jesus in Aramaic, translated and written down in Koine Greek, and after close to two thousand years later were translated into modern English for us to understand. For fifteen hundred years, the only way copies or translations of a Bible were created were by copyists who devoted their lives to meticulously copying each word of the Scriptures by hand into a new Bible.
Words matter. And words can be misunderstood and misconstrued between two people in the closest of relationships. Yet, God chose to communicate to humanity his good news through words. The same flexibility of words that can cause confusion also mean they are adaptable and translatable. Followers of Jesus back around 60 AD, huddled together in someone’s house in the city of Colossae, a church reading an original letter from Paul in Koine Greek, can share understanding of what was said in the letter with you, a person living on the other side of the world two thousand years later.
The words we read in our Bibles have been passed down from generation to generation for thousands of years. People have devoted their lives to copying and translating “the Word of God” so that we can open up the pages and read. And the specific words in the specific translations of the Bible we read today will continue to be translated to successive generations around the world – the Word of God is still “alive and active.”
Discuss the following prompts
- How does the idea of how old the Bible is strike you? Does it fill you with more confidence? More questions? Apathy?
- Describe one or two ways your upbringing and/or life experiences have shaped the way you read the Bible.
- What do you think of when the author of Hebrews writes that God’s Word is “alive and active?” In what ways have you experienced that in your life?
Practicing right now:
If your Community has time tonight, go around the group and have a few people pick a favorite or memorable Scripture verse. Once the verses have been picked, use a Bible app to look up three different translations of each verse. If you have anyone in the group who is bilingual, invite them to look up the verses in a different language. Different English language translations:
NET, NASB, KJV, CSB, NLT, The Message, ESV, etc. (The translation commonly used at Van City is the 2011 NIV).
Read each verse aloud using three different translations. How much different does it sound? Does any of the emphasis or the nuance sit differently with you?
Practicing this week:
The Practice this week is to read through the Lectionary using one or two different translations for each daily reading than the one you typically use. Keep in mind how the differences may shift what you notice about a particular passage.
If you don’t have a physical copy of the Lectionary, you can find a digital copy here. The Lectionary is a way we can be formed together as a church by God’s Spirit through the Scriptures beyond the Sunday Gathering.
Be prepared to discuss with your Community next week what translations you used and what you did and didn’t like about it.
Close in prayer
End by having someone read this passage from the Message as a prayer.
How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.
Because of the sacrifice of the Messiah, his blood poured out on the altar of the Cross, we’re a free people—free of penalties and punishments chalked up by all our misdeeds. And not just barely free, either. Abundantly free! He thought of everything, provided for everything we could possibly need, letting us in on the plans he took such delight in making. He set it all out before us in Christ, a long-range plan in which everything would be brought together and summed up in him, everything in deepest heaven, everything on planet earth.
The Message, Ephesians 1:3-10