Snippet: Do You Want to Read More Nonfiction Books?

Snip·pet | ˈsnipit | noun a small piece or brief extract.

Here’s one from Tevin Wax in a post called “Work Out Your Body and Your Soul”:

“If you read for just 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening, you’ll get through multiple books a year, even big books that demand your attention and focus”

I read a lot related to my work. Two of my StrengthsFinder strengths are "Learner” and “Input.” So researching a topic for a sermon is fun for me. Listening to podcasts and reading articles is fun and easy. These “snippets” posts are a way I try to leverage something I love to do.

But for some time now, listening to podcasts and articles (on the Voice Dream app) has been cutting into the time I use to devote to reading and listening to whole books.

So there’s a book I’ve been wanting to read for weeks now. Not just listen to it but read it carefully and mark highlights.

Reflecting on the above snippet, I realized I could have finished the book weeks ago by developing this simple 15/15 habit.

So I did it and finished it in about five days.

I’m a fairly slow reader so I have a hack I use when I want to read faster but need to highlight the book.

I download the book on Kindle and, as I read it on my iPad, I listen on Audible or Scribd at high speed on my iPhone.

It’s amazing!

I don’t know if it can work for most people, but I doubt just “giving it a try” is sufficient to determine if it works for you. You may have to train a little with practice.

But even reading slowly without my hack, the snippet is still true. You can read a lot of substantial books.

You can do the same thing with one of the new BibleProject courses or prayer or focused conversation with your spouse or a friend.

It adds up quickly. Three and a half hours a week by taking two 15 minute slots.

Give it a try!

Photo by Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash

Snippet: How to Help Your Kids Get Bored with the Bible Fast

Snip·pet | ˈsnipit | noun a small piece or brief extract.

Another one from Jon Collins (BibleProject Podcast, Dec 13 episode):

“My experience had been these {Bible] stories were given to me at a very young age, and they became overly familiar and they became dead and boring. And so I wasn’t interested in them anymore. And it happened quickly. I can remember in grade school [thinking], ‘I’m tired of these stories.’ …I think they felt dead because we were just moralizing them. …I’ve heard that one. I get it. I get the point. Don’t tell me again. Versus an opportunity to start to see all these patterns and beauty and then [how they are] connected to deeper more interesting questions I have about life, that kids actually want to think about too.”

This was from their end-of-the-year series on their paradigm for reading the Bible, a paradigm that fits what the Bible authors are actually trying to do. It’s amazing.

And the snippet is from a Question and Response episode in that series where someone asks about helping kids read the Bible.

If we treat the Bible as just a lesson book on how to live (i.e., a manual for living), we tire of it quickly. Each story seems to teach one moral lesson. Once you get it, you want to move on.

While it may be a very big manual and hard to get through it, do you go back to a manual once you’ve read it and once you now know how to do whatever you wanted to learn to do?

And think of the four gospels. They’re not a big collection yet so important. But how sad to treat it like a manual and feel like you’ve conquered its meaning.

And how many people hate manuals altogether anyway?

The Bible does show us how to live, but it’s so much more. And the meaning is layered by design. On the one hand, there are some simple things we can understand. And we can understand all that’s necessary without being Bible scholars.

But the more time a normal people spends reading it, the more the layers the authors intended becomes evident.

This series is about the “so much more” the Bible is and how to read it for all it’s worth.

In this same episode, Tim Mackie offers an example. He’s starting Proverbs with his kids in their family Bible club and showing them Proverbs’ connections to Genesis 1-2 (a connection beautifully and skillfully portrayed in their video on Proverbs in the Wisdom Series). This is something accessible to kids and adults alike. Check it out.

And check out their paradigm series on their podcast if you want to reignite a love for reading Scripture or take your reading to a new level.

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash