#versefirst

OK - so, hands up, we may be a bit biased as we have a daily verse programme called VerseFirst that we LOVE. But we know the “get your inspiring verse in the morning” kind of approach to the Bible is easy to knock. It encourages a fragmented view of the Bible. It doesn’t clue us in to the big story. It turns reading the Bible into a series of positive motivational messages, and it just picks and chooses the “nice” verses.

So what on earth are we doing with VerseFirst?!

Well - first off, we all start somewhere. And VerseFirst began in one youth group in Sydney, with a leader who wanted to get his young people STARTED with reading the Bible - by texting them a verse to think about each day. For young people who have never picked up a Bible (and when they do, put it down again pretty quickly) this seemed a good place to start. It’s not the only way we want to read the Bible - but it’s somewhere for us to begin. 

That text message quickly turned into a social media message ... and VerseFirst was born. Loads of us look at our phones and check our social media feeds before we do anything else in our day ... So now VerseFirst became a way to make the Bible part of the first thoughts in our day. Now a simple - even single - Bible verse becomes a potentially powerful thing. What if you could plant one thought in your mind out of which to live your day? What if that was a reminder of how Jesus calls us to be in the world? Or a challenge to the false scripts in our head, re-setting them afresh each day. “Love one another”. “What good is it for you to have faith if your actions don’t prove it?”, “Jesus said give money to the poor and you will have riches in heaven.” You get the idea. Here begins reflective practice - engaging with a thought or teaching, and letting it shape our lives. 

So we spend time thinking about the verses we post. We try to post things that are uncomfortable and honest. as well as things that are easier for us to hear and good for our souls. We try to build a picture of what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus. We try and keep it real, and let current events disrupt our planning and influence what we read and post.  

And we use images that help those verses stay in our heads, and - more than that - get into our hearts. “Post-literate” generations are primarily visual in the way we think and feel and interact with the world - so the images are not just “extras” - they’re an integral part of how we engage with the thoughts and emotion expressed in the text. That makes the choice of images an interesting and fun job for designers (generally aged 18-30) who get involved with the project. 

So there you go. Not the only way to read the Bible. Not the place to stop and be satisfied. But a good place to start - with a verse a day.