Daily Bible Study

Daily Bible Study July 21, 2012

In his study of Christian teenagers, Mike Nappa, The Jesus Survey, probed belief in daily Bible reading and practices of daily Bible reading. It has been said that evangelicals have a problem with bibliolatry, and it can be seen at times (belief that the Bible is God, or something far too close), but there’s another approach here: if the Bible is God’s Word, if God has worked specially so that in the Bible we have revelation from God, then Christians ought to be reading the Bible, listening to God, and acting upon what God says.

How much Bible study do you seem among teenagers at your church? Do you think parents differ much from teenagers in the numbers below?

So asking the Bible question is a good question when asking teenagers about their faith and practices. So Nappa’s statements are “Followers of Jesus should study the Bible daily” and “I study the Bible daily.” Pretty simple. The word “daily” complicates things, though. Every day, forever and ever? Imagine making those statements to a 14 yr old.

1. 31% strongly agree while 42% somewhat agree. (I’m convinced “somewhat” is about as positive as many teens can be!) 21% somewhat disagree and 5% strongly disagree.

2. Correlation: Unshakeables are 63%, Uncertains are at 22%, Unsettleds at 17% and Unbelieving at 4%.

3. Here is the big one: 5% read the Bible daily; 27% somewhat agree; 32% somewhat disagree; 35% strongly disagree. In other words, Yes, read the Bible daily but it’s hard to do. This number is on a slight decline from about 20 years ago — in a different study on a different group (so not sure how reliable the comparison is).

4. His Confident Christian group is at 19%.

 


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