Formation—Reading Scripture Together

By Matt Royal, Church Plant Team
Durham, North Carolina, U.S.

Ordinary Time is the season in which we practice this resurrection life we’ve been given by the resurrected Jesus. Through the Spirit, Jesus is personally discipling us. Jesus has not left us as orphans. He participates in our formation as we attend to his presence.

Christian communities have always met Jesus together in the sacraments. Those of us who are fortunate to have access to the scriptures have also heard his voice in their words. And just as the sacraments are something we celebrate with Jesus in a group, reading scripture together helps us hear and respond to the voice of our master and friend, Jesus, as he speaks to his Bride.

Listening to the Spirit

Our fellowship has a long history of richly detailed Bible study. That has its place, especially when we have questions about what the Bible says. I believe reading Scripture together is different. Bible study can provoke or satisfy our curiosity. In contrast, Bible reading in community is focused less on what we are learning and more on who God is and who we are becoming; or even better, who we are being revealed to be in Christ. Instead of studying Scripture, we read it aloud and listen closely for the Spirit’s message for us in our time and place and especially, for our community.

Until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, to preaching and to teaching. 1 Timothy 4:13

My Community’s Practice

In our GC Durham connect group, we’re connecting with God and with one another as the scriptures guide us into our place in God’s life and his place in ours. For twelve weeks at a time, after our meal, we gather in a family room with comfortable seating. One facilitator takes us through a series of readings agreed to in advance. For example, our group has read Ephesians a chapter at a time and selected readings from Isaiah. One of us, not necessarily the facilitator, reads; all of us listen. We’re listening for phrases or images that stand out to us: points of intersection with our life stories; expressions of God that deepen our faith; and good news and our hopes for how it can help our world. When we hear, we share what we have heard. We challenge one another to listen and share more. We prompt one another to receive God’s comfort and healing as he corrects our misconceptions.

This kind of engagement with God through the scriptures has elements in common with Lectio Divina, but it doesn’t have to be exactly that. Our method is less structured and more conversational. We learn more about one another and our individual life stories and as we do, our sense of who we are as a community becomes clearer. As a church plant, there’s one prompt we return to again and again: what do these scriptures tell us about Jesus’ mission to the world through us, his Church. Our sense of how Jesus is uniquely forming us as a group for his mission in our own neighborhood also becomes clearer.

Practically speaking, our connect group gatherings take about two hours: one hour for food and conversation, thirty minutes for reading together, and thirty minutes for prayer. Because we’re listening together instead of teaching, we don’t have to spend hours preparing, although it is a good idea for the facilitator to be familiar with the selected passage. For our Ephesians reading, I listened to Ephesians in audiobook form during my commutes. I also spent a few minutes each week planning two or three questions to kick off the discussion.

Here are some tips that can help.

• • Think of chapters, not verses. Reading long passages helps reduce the interpretive risk of reading verses out of context.
  • Consider agreeing on using a single, natural language translation. This reduces tangents about variant wording.
  • Ask open-ended, probing questions.
    • • What does it mean for you that “God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family”?
      • What has it been like for you to “grow in your knowledge of God”?
  • Wait expectantly. Allow plenty of time for the Spirit to speak. If you sense that some are uncomfortable with the silence, acknowledge it. Give permission. “It’s OK not to speak right away; we can be quiet while the words wash over us.”
  • These meetings aren’t about teaching, so you don’t have to have every answer. If the discussion begins to head into points of confusion or controversy, recognize what’s happening and bring the discussion back to the community.
    • • That’s an interesting question. Can we think about that for next week?
      • That’s a hard situation. How is God for us in this?

Our connect group has expressed how meaningful this time is, and they make every effort to show up every week. We’ve been surprised how quickly we have grown close to each other. This practice of reading Scripture communally has strengthened our connection and belonging.