Re-entering the Bible

So I'm a bad pastor!  Okay not really, it is just that I know that I could do better in some areas.  

One such area that I have been struggling with recently is personal reading of scripture.  I LOVE group bible study, being able to gather with people and hear different perspectives on a certain text and how people relate scripture to their personal lives.  And quiet honestly I enjoy bible study with non-pastors more than with pastors and other church leaders. 

Currently I'm involved in three weekly scripture studies, yeah I know that sounds like a lot, but I'm a pastor.  On Sunday mornings, during the education hour at church, a very small group, often just Bob and I, have been reading through Genesis, re-learning some of the stories you first hear in Sunday School.  It has been a little disheartening to have only Bob and I, but I hope eventually that number will grow.  And I'm willing to do Bible study with just Bob and I instead of waiting for a larger group to form. 

On Tuesdays I met with the other Lutheran pastors in the county to discuss the coming week's lessons.  While I love it when we really dive into the meat of the scripture, we hardly get there.  Some times we spend a lot of time discussing what is going at other churches in the area or at the national church or people bring issues that have arisen in their congregation to get support on how to handle the issue.  When we do discuss the scripture, sometimes it seems that some of the pastors are burned out with the text because they have been preaching on it every 3 years for the last 50 years.   But often I do get insights on how to approach the text for my sermon, in fact that is where I got the idea last week to talk about vision. 

And on Wednesday evenings, a few members of Bethlehem, normally 4 or 5 of us, meet at the parsonage and discuss the upcoming text for Sunday.  Sometimes we talk only about the gospel, other times we talk about all 3 lessons.  This group I love!  Sometimes I go into Wednesday evening with a good idea of what to write for my sermon and after bible study I have an entire new outlook on the scripture.  I know I have "stolen" some of the others ideas about the text for the sermon. 

So I read scripture a lot in a group, but hardly by myself.  And I have tried.  And have failed.  Like many things that I do, I'm really good and keep up with my attempts for multiple weeks or months and eventually stop for some reason and then it takes me months to get back to it.  I have tried daily devotional readings like "Word in Season" or "Upper Room."  But when I miss a day I feel like I have to go back and read the day that I missed and when I miss multiple days that is a lot of extra reading and I soon get frustrated and give up.  Knowing that I like getting more indepth to the text, I tried reading smaller sections of text and then a corresponding commentary.  I tried this starting with Matthew last June and was very good reading this a few days a week until we moved then started again in the fall after we had settled in.  But even after several months, I still had not finished reading Matthew and gave up.

So after a conversation with a parishioner the other week, I've gone back to what I used to do in high school and college, when my bible was so marked up and used that it broke in two - just reading a few chapters each night before I go to bed.  If I'm super tired I'll only read a chapter or none at all.  But even if I'm really into reading the scripture I'm stopping at 5 chapters a night.  There is not an end date, a goal to have the bible read by, but just some time each evening for me to read scripture.

I have also started reading the Message, which is a more modern paraphrase of the bible.  It is not an accurate translation but it is not meant to be one either.  Instead it is meant to read more like a novel, chapters are marked, but verses are not.  This has allowed me to read scripture that I have read so many times in a new light.  And within the last week and a half, I have finished Genesis and just read up to the 10th chapter of Exodus last night.  Hopefully this will stick, and I'll be able to continue through all the laws of Deuteronomy.