Trust, confidence, leadership – but the greatest is vision.

I have been the leader/CEO through three institutional turnarounds over the last 25 years. One was a megachurch and two were universities. While each one was unique in some of its challenges, there were issues as well as leadership and management tools that were common and applicable to all three.

Calvary Church in Orlando, FL, had been a beacon of spectacular growth in the 1970s. High-octane worship, cutting-edge innovation and unbridled hubris were the volatile cocktail that first fueled Calvary – then blew it to pieces. Scandal rocked it like a bomb before steady decline dragged it into debt, diminished attendance and finally, bankruptcy.

When I became the pastor in 1990, its cash reserves were gone; its debt was $14.7 million and Sunday morning attendance was down from more than 4,000 to less than 1,200. For the first six months I served there, the church was unable to pay my salary. We were 120 days behind to our vendors the day I first walked in my office. Worst of all, the survivors in the pews were angry, hurt and disillusioned.

In 1999, I became the president of Southeastern College in Lakeland, FL.  No scandal had rocked Southeastern. No financial collapse. It had simply lapsed into a coma. The deferred maintenance was horrific. The buildings were in shambles. The grounds were untended, the enrollment of 910 students was in annual decline, and the faculty was demoralized.

When I became the president of Oral Roberts University in 2009, it was an institution that was closer in many ways to what I found at Calvary than the sleepy academic village I inherited at Southeastern. ORU had been hit hard by faculty lawsuits and scandal and endured the forced resignation of a president who left behind $50 million in debt and at least that much in deferred maintenance.

Each of these three institutions experienced radical turnarounds. The dysfunction was different in each place to an extent, and the practical tactical steps needed for turnaround were not exactly the same. But there were essential steps that had to be taken in each place.

Restoration of trust. Broken trust has to do with betrayed relationships. When trust is broken it is because of ethical disappointment. Scandal and misappropriation of funds shreds trust. So does manipulative and abusive style of leadership. The only way to restore trust is to lead ethically long enough and firmly enough to rebuild the emotional bridge that has been burnt.

The problem is that the more wounded the trust factor, the more painful the process of restoration. Even as the new leadership attempts to make ethical decisions, disappointed followers are slow to believe and will be suspicious and even accusational.

I remember in one difficult board meeting at Calvary, an attorney said, “Give us time, Pastor, we’re just not used to ethical leadership and it’s taking us time to adjust.”

Restoration of confidence. Restoring confidence is not so much about ethics as ability. When a new coach takes over a perennially losing team, his hardest task is not to get them to believe in him, but to believe in themselves. Southeastern had lost hope for itself. New confidence was needed badly. We leveraged to build a new building, hired new staff, replaced resistant, demoralized faculty with new and energetic professors, and changed the name of the school.

After four years a re-energized professor said, “For the first time I feel like a college professor and not a counselor at a church camp.”

Southeastern needed confidence. We needed to win. We celebrated every tiny percentage of enrollment growth like we had grown by multiplied thousands. In the long run we actually did grow by several thousand (from 900 to 3,100 in 10 years), but at first we celebrated incremental growth. Southeastern had to win in the little things to believe in itself as a winner capable of big things.

Renewal. A trusted mentor told me, “What was damaged at ORU was not the institution; it was the dream.”

We had to dust off the vision. That which had become dull and lackluster had to shine again. Before I took over at ORU, a patron family of phenomenal generosity paid off the huge debt. Then later gave millions more. We used it on the campus. You can get a pretty mighty shoe shine for $50 million bucks!

I cranked up chapel. I talked joy and modeled joy until joy saturated the atmosphere. ORU needed to laugh again. To live and rejoice and shine again. A billionaire on board didn’t hurt anything. The New ORU had to build again. We raised $11.3 million from our alumni and built the first new building on ORU’s campus in 30 years.

Semantics experts may argue that I am splitting hairs in making a difference between restoration and renewal. I see restoration as two-fold – to restore trust and restore confidence. Renewal is to make it shine again, to make it dream again.

The realities of a church turnaround, especially in a large church, are distinct in some aspects from a business or a university. In many other ways, however, the similarities outnumber the differences. The principal leadership roles of a large church pastor are strikingly similar to those of a Christian university president. In making the turn in a substantial church, the whole network of systems must be attacked with a comprehensive passion to help the institution believe in its dream. A turnaround, no matter what its unique challenges, is based on these:

• Our leadership is trustworthy.
• We are capable and good at what we do.
• The vision is still wonderful.

And the greatest of these is vision.

Dr. Mark Rutland is the third president of Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, OK. He is a distinguished educator, charismatic leader, businessman and a nationally recognized figure in Christian higher education. www.globalservants.org

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Transformational leadership

Let me tell you about a year of study in transformational leadership – the 2013 National Institute of Christian Leadership. The first of four sessions in 2013 is Feb. 4-6 at Strang Center in Lake Mary (Orlando), FL.

In the past 40 years, I’ve been involved in non-profit leadership in small churches, megachurches, missions organizations and two universities. In that period of time, I’ve learned some things. I decided I needed to take my experience and break it down into manageable pieces that are helpful and teachable for people at any point in their career or ministry.

At the National Institute you can learn how to lead with quality and toward quality, how to get the right people in the right position, and how to guide an organization in a transformation shift. This leadership training is intense, personal, practical, relevant and full of real-world applications. This is not just a two-day event. It’s a life-expanding and leadership-expanding process over the span of a year to transform your life and leadership and encourage you to get back into the flow of higher education.

I know this leadership training will not only help you lead your church, business or ministry in the direction you want to go, but will positively impact your congregation and community. One man told me after the first day, “If I never came back, this one day has been worth all the money.” I pray for you to feel that after each session. I truly believe that your decision to join in this intense year of study will be a moment you look back on with great satisfaction.
— Dr. Mark Rutland

Know your target, put metrics in place, and push the envelope are just a few lessons.

Seven years ago after completing a 40-year career in the hotel business, I began a second career in ministry. Once an acquaintance asked me, “What can the hospitality business teach churches?” I didn’t have a quick answer at the time. After some thinking, however, here is my short answer: “A lot.” Here are a few, in more detail:

Define your niche
The hospitality business is very clear about its product niche: budget, limited service, long-term stay, luxury. Ministry, on the other hand, is often broadly – and loosely – defined.  Almost anything that says “We help others” can be seen as ministry. Ministries need to be clear and intentional about whom they are serving.

In the hospitality business, a brand name like Marriott, for example, can stretch up a market niche to Ritz-Carlton and go down a market niche to Courtyard by Marriott. But the Marriott brand doesn’t help you as a budget hotel because the Marriott buyer is not looking for a budget hotel.

In ministry we need the same understanding. We need to be clear about our mission, vision and values. We need clarity on our target market. A church leadership team should be asking, “Who are we really trying to reach?”

Measure results
People in the hospitality business expect to be held accountable to “the bottom line.” There are daily reviews of sales, food cost and hotel occupancy. There are weekly inventory counts. There are monthly reviews of profits and losses, comparing numbers against the current budget and the previous year’s experience.

Church leaders sometimes feel threatened when asked about the validity or success of their ministry. We take our ministry, as well as people’s reactions to it, too personally. We say (sometimes aloud, sometimes to ourselves), “You don’t have any right to ask me about my ministry effectiveness. I am working really hard.”  Bill Parcells, the NFL coach, said, “You don’t get credit for trying hard.” I don’t believe that, but I also don’t believe that trying hard is the only issue to consider. Results are important.

I believe in metrics for ministry, but not just to count the easy things such as bucks, bodies and buildings. We need to hold ourselves accountable to the metrics that show what is really happening in our ministries. How do we measure life change, transformation and spiritual growth? These are hard questions, but I know from working with churches that they can be properly answered. We can put proper metrics in place.

Tap your potential
In my early years in the hospitality business, I don’t think I was so quick to accept limitations. If there was a good idea or a good plan, I was quick to go after it. Yet in ministry, it seems we easily accept the thinking that “We can’t do that; we just don’t have the resources.”

We easily accept being below our budget, when in reality we simply have not done the necessary fundraising work. We need to live within the boundaries that God places on us, but we also need to realize that those boundaries come from a big God and are not self-imposed.

Pick up the pace
The pace of ministry is often slower and more purposeful than most corporate jobs. In many cases, ministry work is also lighter or at least less defined. Sometimes this can result in laziness, procrastination, mediocrity and passivity. I find at times an attitude in ministry that says, “Tomorrow is OK. Next week will be just fine.” In ministry, it is also too easy to spiritualize work efforts and justify things by saying, “I am doing the Lord’s work.”

The corporate world operates at a much faster pace, often motivated by the bottom line. It is easy to be out of balance in either direction. We ought not to be workaholics, and we ought not to be lazy. We serve the most important mission in the world: to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ into the nations. Some of us need to pick up the pace. My experience in the hospitality business was that we were running flat out most of the time for a purpose that was good, even important, but not as important as advancing God’s good news.

Other lessons come to mind, such as concerning customer service, employee training, and the concept of hospitality. What might the hotel business tell the church about those?

Jeff Springer, Miami, FL, is in the Church Discipleship Ministry, Florida Regional Director, for The Navigators. www.navigators.org

Leadership systems tend to reach the outer limits of their effectiveness based on attendance or budget.

The large church is managed through five interdependent leadership systems. When change occurs in one system, it tends to produce change in the others. These systems include:

• Clergy Leadership Roles
• Staff Team Design and Function
• Governance and Board Function
• Acculturation and the Role of the Laity
• The Formation and Execution of Strategy

As daily changes occur in the life of the congregation, these systems adjust but remain relatively stable.

Leaders come and go, policies are formed and adapted, groups form and dissolve, but the basic interaction of the five systems remains constant.

However, every leadership system has a capacity limit, a point beyond which it can no longer effectively function. When the activity level of the congregation significantly increases or decreases, leadership systems hit their limits. A senior clergyperson assumes a particular leadership role that is highly effective in a church with weekend worship attendance of 700. The clergyperson is surprised to discover that the leadership role begins losing its effectiveness when the church adds an additional worship service and now hosts 850 in weekend worship.

Or a staff team that was humming along eliminates a few part-time staff members due to a budget decrease, and suddenly the overall department structure of the church no longer works. The staff team maintains momentum but notices how much more energy it suddenly takes to function well across departments.

Reaching the outer limits
One of the remarkable things about leadership systems is that they tend to reach the outer limits of their effectiveness at predictable moments, based on worship attendance or budget size. We often refer to the period of time that a congregation approaches or moves through these limits as a transition zone. Some refer to transition zones as “attendance ceilings,” because they observe that a congregation’s weekend attendance repeatedly climbs to a predictable level and then drops back down. When a congregation hits one of these transition zones, it must intentionally adapt all of the five leadership systems, or the congregation won’t be able to accommodate added complexity. The systems have reached their effectiveness limits and cannot accommodate additional growth without being repurposed.

In the large church there are natural attendance and budget zones where the five leadership systems stabilize and accommodate complexity and growth without shifting. Each of these zones operates with a basic organizing principle and with predictable characteristics in the five leadership systems.

Congregations occupy a stable size zone when they operate with an annual budget of between $1 million and $2 million or when weekly worship attendance remains between 400 and 800. I refer to this size zone as the professional congregation, because most of leadership behavior is driven by the need to professionalize operations. The congregation realizes that the church’s programming has outgrown the managerial capacity of its lay leaders to sustain excellence, so demand for a staff team of specialists emerges.

Affected by budget capacity
The growth of this size church is related to budget capacity, which impacts the ability to add staff. The pastor is learning to let go of a purely relational style of leadership and adopt a more managerial focus. The staff team is moving away from a generalist orientation and toward a specialist orientation.

The strategic congregation emerges as the stabilizing zone once a congregation is operating with a budget between $2 million and $4 million or maintaining average weekly attendance between 800 and 1,200. This congregation requires a more intentional orientation towards strategy, growth, and alignment.

In this size congregation there are so many decision-making groups at work that it is easy for the church to drift out of alignment and for tremendous energies to be wasted. The pastor is learning to maintain strategic focus. The staff team is learning to function in aligned departmental structures, with the oversight of an executive team.

The church that worships with an average weekend community of 1,200 to 1,800, or with a budget of more than $4 million, is known as a matrix congregation. [The author has not developed the typology beyond 1,800 at this time.] The presenting organizational challenge of this size category is decentralization. The careful work that was done to align church structures in the previous size category suddenly gets in the way of the more organic leadership style needed to function in this very large category.

Growth in the matrix-sized church emerges and is managed everywhere, all at the same time. The senior clergy leader focuses primarily on the overall strategy of the congregation, teaching, preaching, and fund-raising. She has fully delegated the management of the staff team to one or more executive ministers.

The staff is learning new ways to coordinate its decentralized decision making.

A congregation approaching the upper or lower limits of any one of these stabilizing zones will experience leadership stress. Rightsizing the systems requires a fundamental paradigm shift in how the church functions. The congregation that tries to avoid the difficult work of adapting its leadership systems risks stagnation in growth and/or the ineffective use of congregational resources.

Susan Beaumont is a senior consultant with the Alban Institute. Her practice specializes in the unique leadership dynamics of large congregations.

Publishing companies and pastors giving attention to ‘Bible engagement vacuum.’

There’s a renewed focus on the Bible in churches these days, as biblical literacy is making a comeback in congregations and publishing houses in the U.S.

“What’s really encouraging to me is that deep Bible engagement within the congregation is eminently doable,” says Paul Caminiti, vice president of church and Bible engagement for the publishing firm Biblica.

“But people today realize that we’re in trouble and that we’ve not given the Bible its due,” says Caminiti, himself an expert in this area.“There really is a Bible engagement vacuum in the church.

I’ve watched lives transformed when pastors treat Bible engagement like a varsity sport. I’ve watched congregations transformed when instead of little camp fires, a big Bible engagement bonfire is built in the middle of the church.

“We are living in an interesting time. The Spirit seems to be doing a unique work. The soil seems to be unusually receptive to the seed. God help us take full advantage of this season,” says Caminiti.

In several ways, 2012 seems the “year of the Bible.” Caminiti was the Bible publisher at Zondervan when his team in 2005 created The Story. Last year Randy Frazee brought out The Heart of The Story and Max Lucado released God’s Story, Your Story, both now at Oak Hills Church, San Antonio, TX.

Saddleback’s Rick Warren is bringing out a 40 Days in the Word Bible study this month, and American Bible Society has its The Essential 100, all looking to fill the vacuum. “There does seem to be a new zeitgeist in the church for deeper Bible engagement,” says Caminiti.

“In the Reveal study (Willow Creek), when 80,000 church attenders were asked, what do you need most from your church?, 87 percent responded: Help me understand the Bible in depth,” he reports.

Caminiti says: “The Story (Zondervan), The Bible in 90 Days (Zondervan) and Community Bible Experience (Biblica) have something in common: they help the reader see the Bible through a telescopic lens whereas most Bible studies look through a microscope, so we see what Randy Frazee calls the Bible’s ‘upper story.’”

Church Executive interviewed Paul Caminiti about the concern for biblical literacy and what publishers are doing about it.

Are you able to summarize or document the state of biblical knowledge generally in America today? What does research tell us about Bible reading?

At Biblica we do watch the research carefully, and for the most part, researchers agree that we are losing ground at an alarming rate (something pastors would tell you without studying the research data). Recently we extrapolated some data that shows 700 people in North America quit reading the Bible every day. If we were in any other industry and saw that kind of drop-off, we would be alarmed.

Are we worse off in knowing scriptures than a decade ago? Your own literature says: “The number of people who think the Bible is a fairy tale has doubled in the last 30 years. Bible reading has stagnated.”

I would say yes. There are numerous societal shifts that the church has been slow to respond to.

Information technology has exploded. In the 1970s we were members of the “Baskin and Robbins generation.” Think about the number of choices today.

Added to the explosion of the Information Age is the diminishing face-time the average pastor has with parishioners. A decade ago people might be at church on average three or four hours a week.

Now with the diminishing Sunday evening services and adult education, if parishioners show up three times a month, we consider them to be faithful attenders. We’ve never really adjusted to these cultural realities, and we’re paying for it in diminishing Bible engagement.

Any telling examples of the low level of bible engagement today? What are the “hard questions” we should be asking?

I think we have to own up to the reality that the modern church has created a culture of a “Bible McNuggets” and assumed they are nutritious. So people who read at all, usually read verse-a-day devotionals, or a chapter a day — pretty much a “Bible vitamin” approach. Few “read big.” Not to be irreverent, but reading fragments is boring. Read any book one page a day and it will be the worst read of your life. Yet that’s how we’ve been trained to read the Bible. Little wonder that 700 give up reading every day.

Are there ways that pastors might preach the Bible that improves retention and application of life?

Better preaching is a big topic, but if I had to choose one thing I’d go with N.T. Wright’s challenge:

We have to teach people to read the Bible with 1st century eyes and ask 21st century questions. I think pastors, in attempting to be “relevant,” end up teaching the Bible as though it were a modern book. But the richness, intrigue and complexity – the stuff that makes the Bible and God really interesting – really comes to light when we are serious about the history behind the text. I also think we’d preach better if we were less focused on the application of the text and more focused on the implications of the text.

Randy Frazee said in our October 2011 interview with him, “Many Christians don’t know what they believe or why. Our faith is not rooted in Scripture. We revere the Bible but don’t read it.” Harsh words after all these centuries and today’s huge Bible publishing industry?

I agree with Randy. Church people will spill blood to defend the orthodoxy of the Bible but they’re just not that into it. But I believe the problem runs deeper than Bible literacy. Literacy might make us better at Bible Jeopardy. What we really need is more Bible lovers.

It seems an uphill battle in relating biblical lessons to the world we live in. What is at stake here; how can the church stay ahead of culture?

I think research has firmly established that Christians live almost as badly as those outside the church. I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but I believe our failure to thrive goes back to our failure to engage people deeply in the Bible.

If there’s to be step change, we need to confess that status-quo Bible engagement is no longer working. Let’s be honest about our current strategy. For years we’ve given people reading plans (usually near the beginning of the new year) and challenged them to go home and read the Bible.

Somehow (although it’s seldom measured) we’ve assumed that this methodology is successful. A few succeed, but the overall truth is that the reading plan strategy has been a colossal failure.

There’s loads of shame and self deprecation from failing again and again.

What can bible publishers do to enable people to read and learn from the Bible?

For starters, I think Bible publishers have to be more worried and focused on whether consumers are actually engaging the Bibles they produce and sell. When I was the Bible publisher at Zondervan, I had a consultant tell me I was lazy and that if I were a doctor, I’d be sued for malpractice, because the medicine I was distributing clearly wasn’t working, but we kept dispensing it anyway.

It was only when we started feeling some responsibility for declining Bible reading that our publishing got creative. Bibles like The Message (NavPress) and The Archeological Study Bible (Zondervan) were birthed out of a sense that we needed better Bibles, not more Bibles.

You’ve spoken about the need to “shift the way we think and use the Bible.” Explain.

The modern church has unintentionally developed some bad habits in the way we think about and use the Bible. First, we read the Bible in fragments – a verse or two here and a chapter there. The Bible wasn’t given to us in sound bites, but that’s how we consume it.

Second, we read the Bible outside its original context. The average reader never gets into a historical mindset. Third, we read the Bible in isolation. The Bible wasn’t written to individuals, it was written primarily to communities of faith. But most of us read as lone rangers. Reading begins and ends with “me.” In the aggregate, these three bad habits have negatively impacted Bible engagement. What we need is The Complete Bible, Understood in Context, Experienced in Community. That’s the DNA in a Community Bible Experience.

How can congregations help their people better in gaining knowledge of the Bible and how it applies to their lives?

The greatest need, as I see it, is for churches to have a serious plan for engaging the congregation in the Bible. Simply having people come to hear sermons is not a serious plan. Read the online journals for pastors, and the most common topic is: how to be a better preacher.

Virtually nothing is written about a serious plan for engaging the congregation in the Word. I really believe the future lies with senior leaders who will be multi-dimensional, who will go beyond preaching and adopt or develop Bible engagement plans for the laity.

Any other thoughts about churches engaging the Bible?

What’s really encouraging to me is that deep Bible engagement within the congregation is eminently doable. It’s true that people are crazy busy, and that we’re drowning in information, and that Google is making us stupid. But people today realize that we’re in trouble and that we’ve not given the Bible its due. There really is a Bible engagement vacuum in the church.

Over the last eight years I’ve watched what happens when that vacuum is filled. I’ve watched lives transformed when pastors treat Bible engagement like a varsity sport. I’ve watched whole congregations transformed when instead of little camp fires, a big Bible engagement bonfire is built the middle of the church.

We are living in an interesting time. The Spirit seems to be doing a unique work. The soil seems to be unusually receptive to the seed. God help us take full advantage of this season.

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Treating the Bible as a ‘varsity sport’

Senior Pastor Jeff Manion: In my preaching ministry at Ada Bible Church (Grand Rapids, MI) I have a twofold desire. My first aspiration is to present the biblical narrative in a way that explores the richness of the context and people involved. Where did they live? What were there hopes and fears? What personal tragedies and dilemmas were they experiencing? My second desire is to bridge the biblical narrative to my congregation exploring the implications for our lives.

For our fall series the last several years I have taken filming trips to Israel and Turkey in order to bring the land of the Bible to our people. Last fall, to prepare for a series from Ephesians, I traveled with a photographer, rented a car and the two of us zipped around the region filming the ruins of Ephesus and other archeological cites in the area. We then played three to five minute clips in each of the sermons in this series. This time and effort was really appreciated and gave our people a better understanding of the world that Paul was writing to.

Senior Pastor Ray Johnston: I’ve been known for preaching biblical sermons at Bayside Church (Granite Bay, CA) that featured the themes of encouragement and hope. Even though this style of preaching has been enormously successful, I became convicted that it was time to unpack each book of the New Testament in a systematic way. After announcing this new course for preaching, Bayside experienced record-breaking attendance throughout the 27-week series on the New Testament books.
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Digital ‘natives’ dig deeper

The Millennial generation is connecting with the Bible more through digital means than print, which means if a bible publisher is going to make it, offering digital options is extremely important. With foresight into the bible market, Broadman & Holman Publishing released MyStudyBible.com last year aimed at pastors, lay leaders and especially at digital natives.

“We wanted to provide a way for digital natives who have grown up on the Web to actively engage in biblical study, beyond just reading the printed Bible,” explains Aaron Linne, executive producer and digital marketing manager for B&H Publishing. “We came up with the idea to create a digital Bible portal with every resource needed to study God’s Word in-depth right at your fingertips in one spot.”

Filling the need is MyStudyBible.com, created for people who rely on technology to do everything; as people are reading the biblical text, additional tools dynamically populate with rich content to provide the reader with opportunities for deeper learning and understanding.

The publisher decided to make the HCSB Study Bible notes completely free online through this service, so that people engaging in biblical study would have a great tool right there for them, at no cost.

“The key for digital biblical study is deep integration,” Linne says. “With this digital study tool, the platform actively brings relevant content to you based on the text you’re reading. For instance, if you are reading a commentary on John 3:16, the platform knows you’re at John 3:16 and can present to you appropriate content to your topic—both content you own and other content in the system that you should be made aware of.”

That’s the benefit that digital resources bring to the world of biblical study: the ability to offer multiple resources, all in one place online, with the ability to add commentaries, dictionaries such as Strong’s Greek and Hebrew Dictionary, devotionals, and other books into a reader’s online profile.

While some content is paid, MyStudyBible.com offers a plethora of content at no cost so that many people can benefit from using MyStudyBible.com even if they never login. Bottom line: digital natives will feel at home using this site to strengthen their faith and walk closer with God.

“This integrated study can even take place beyond the screen and back into the text, like we have done with integrating 1,500 videos into the print edition of the Life Essentials Study Bible,” notes Linne. “We are moving towards a place will all kinds of Biblical content will be fully integrated with one another.”

MyStudyBible.com features the Holman Christian Standard Bible that was written by 100 scholars and English stylists from 17 denominations, and is considered one of the most significant Bible translations available.  — Lauren Hunter

www.ChurchTechToday.com

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New formatting increases Bible literacy

Biblica’s Community Bible Experience: The Books of the Bible “soft launched” with 50 churches last fall. Paul Caminiti explains the approach:

Four years in the making, The Books of the Bible removes modern formatting like chapters and verses and creatively re-orders the books. For example, the New Testament begins with Luke and Acts, which gives the reader a framework for what God does in the first century. The rest of the books are in a better historical order. The Books of the Bible is designed to be read from cover to cover.

In a Community Bible Experience, the congregation reads The Books of the Bible New Testament in eight weeks.  There are five readings a week, with two “grace days” if you need to catch up. Then the church comes together in small groups, once a week, to talk about their questions and discoveries.  Because people are reading about 10 to 12 pages a day (about a half hour for the average reader), they are full, and the observations and insights are breathtaking.

We deliberately modeled the small group experience after a book club instead of a traditional Bible study. In my opinion, questions in the participant’s guide often get in the way of a full and rich reading of the text. In our post-campaign interviews, we’ve discovered that people love The Books of the Bible, they love reading the entire New Testament, and they love it that their whole church is doing it together!  www.biblica.com/CBE

By Jay R. Akkerman

With unemployment rising sharply and national budget deficits ballooning to their worst level since the Great Depression, many feared the country’s looming economic calamity. While this scenario seems fresh from today’s headlines, the setting was actually in 1982. And the futurist who thumbed his nose at pundits was John Naisbitt, author of the bestselling Megatrends, a business and leadership classic that was hailed for more than two decades as a roadmap into the 21st century. Naisbitt won acclaim for anticipating 10 far-reaching business and cultural trends. Today’s Christian leaders face new challenges in a world marked by economic, technological, and cultural changes. A growing number of women and men are responding to God’s leading with an eye to the future. But many who would have once been seminary-bound now find it increasingly difficult to pull up stakes.

Other more seasoned Christian leaders are also looking for new handles to strengthen their ministries in churches and communities that have morphed seemingly before their very eyes. What educational options are available for leaders who have no sense of release from their current ministry settings?

New learning models
When residential programs are impossible or the cost of travel, lodging, and time away from home and work make modular programs difficult, what learning models are available to burgeoning and established Christian leaders? In growing numbers today, online education is proving to be a helpful way for men and women to respond to God’s call and to engage their ministries in meaningful mission. Many today are surprised by the advantages of online education, which has evolved greatly from unaccredited correspondence courses to much more academically robust degree programs offered by accredited educational institutions. For many students today, online is “Face Time 2.0.” Prior to joining the faculty at Northwest Nazarene, I served for many years as lead pastor and staff member in several dynamic congregations. My ministry in these settings had been shaped in no small way by classroom educators at the college and seminary level who invested themselves in me personally. In 2002 while still in the pastorate, I was asked by NNU to teach a spiritual formation course as an online graduate adjunct.

To be honest, my knee-jerk reaction to the proposal was less than enthusiastic. Initially, online education seemed somehow less personal to me. It took me outside the comfort zone of the classroom encounters I had known as a student and into other venues where I had served as an instructor. Community is still important; I soon discovered two important lessons: first, I was not alone; and second, I was wrong about my perceptions. Like me, all of the adult students in my first course were also new to online education. As a theological educator with experience in both the classroom and online, I have found community to be an important megatrend for those in our fully online Master of Divinity and Master of Arts programs. While individualized correspondence courses are abundant on the Internet, NNU has made a commitment to ground student learning in a relational model: students progress through their programs together, one course at a time. Thriving as colleagues in their learning communities, my students are neither lone rangers nor competitors vying against each other in the classroom.  NNU’s learning communities model a formula Naisbitt called “high tech/high touch.” The author observed in Megatrends: “Whenever new technology is introduced into society, there must be a counter balancing human response — that is, high touch — or the technology is rejected. The more high tech, the more high touch.” In my experience, students in our online learning communities experience as much — and possibly even more — community as students in traditional residential-based seminaries. Given that so many seminaries must now offer block classes a day or two a week to accommodate busy student schedules, these traditional campuses often become commuter islands with little time available for the development of meaningful community between students and faculty. But consider three examples as alternatives:

Keegan is a gifted youth pastor in a large California megachurch. Shortly after entering our program, he and his wife were devastated when their infant son was diagnosed with cancer. “I began asking myself, ‘Can I continue on with this degree while dealing with the hospital and trying to work full-time?’ NNU’s staff and faculty were highly supportive, constantly sending me emails saying, ‘Our team lifted you up in prayer today.’ There was a lot of grace shown to me which enabled me to continue on in the program and finish on time.”

Despite the fact that Simon serves in ministry in Bangalore, India on the opposite side of the globe from most of his professors and fellow students, the asynchronous design of our programs enabled him to log in and participate in course-related dialogue at the time of day that fit his schedule.

Lane was seemingly in the latter chapters of his ministry when he entered our fully online program. He now reflects on how his online course work compressed the gap between theory and practice, noting that “the opportunity for fleshing out what I had learned was exciting.”

Today, I am continually reminded that my online students are so much more than mere words or even an image on my computer screen.

Dr. Jay Richard Akkerman is associate professor of preaching and missional theology at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, ID, where he also directs the university’s graduate theological online education programs.  www.nnu.edu/online

By Ronald E. Keener

Wesley Seminary at Indiana Wesleyan University, Marion, IN, was formed last year from the former Indiana Wesleyan University — College of Graduate Studies in Ministry and has 250 students pursuing programs, including the Master’s Degree in Divinity. [ www.wesley.indwes.edu ] Like many graduate schools and seminaries, online education is a focal point for Wesley Seminary. Church Executive talked about how Wesley uses the online and social media revolution with Nathan Lamb, director of Admissions and Recruitment, for Wesley Seminary, himself in the class of 2013.

What are the trends in online education that enable pastors and business administrators to gain a graduate degree today?

The advances in online learning technology over the past few years have really closed the potential communication gap between classroom and online learning. Many seminaries are taking steps to begin offering at least a portion of a graduate degree online. The programs at Wesley Seminary were designed from the beginning to be offered in a flexible, primarily online format. We have pastors from all across the country and missionaries from around the world in our seminary, creating an educational environment that wouldn’t be possible at a more traditional seminary.

The trend in theological education is certainly moving toward more accessible degrees. Some seminaries have responded to this trend by creating shorter, more focused degrees as an alternative to the three-to-four year traditional M.Div. Other seminaries also have re-imagined the M.Div. to make it work for today’s pastors and leaders. For example, we have a two-year Master of Arts in Ministerial Leadership degree that has been an excellent option for leaders who don’t want, or need, an M.Div.

Do you have students who come from the business world?

One of our recent M.Div. students is an executive pastor at a large church in the Indianapolis area. He comes from the business world where he was the founder of a large company and was called to bring his administrative and entrepreneurial gifts to his local church. He joined our seminary to get seminary training with a practical application to his context. We also have a significant number of church planters in our program, several of who feel called to, and have the gifts and graces to, grow their congregations into large churches.

What is unique about the way Wesley takes its degree programs to the student?

Both our M.Div. and Master of Arts degrees are designed from the ground up as “in ministry” degrees. By offering degrees in primarily online formats, students from around the world can come together and benefit from each other’s unique ministry context. These students begin their program together and move through the sequence of courses as a group, which leads to a strong sense of community despite the geographical separation.

I understand that Wesley was created for the very purpose of empowering the local pastor to change the world. How does that play out in real life?

Students are trained to think critically and strategically about their personal mission as well as the mission of their local ministry. Typically pastors are well-trained in theology, scripture, etc., but are not equipped to actually put this training into practice. We focus on practical application so that students learn to carry what is in their hearts and heads into the world to make a difference for the Kingdom. Our students are already world changers, we simply help them to be more effective.

Social media and online education are changing every six months. Are there ways in which the seminary is working to keep apace and utilize these technologies?

We engage students at each stage of the admissions and enrollment process through Twitter (@WesleySeminary), Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, etc. One of the potential challenges that we face with our online programs is staying connected to students outside of the classroom. Social media certainly aids in that connection.

By Stan Jantz

On a recent Sunday morning at my church, I saw the future of content and publishing in the face of a woman named Laurie, one of the members of the adult Bible study I teach. At the end of our class time on this particular Sunday, Laurie approached me with her latest purchase, a sleek new Kindle 2, the popular electronic book reading device produced by Amazon.

Laurie’s face was glowing as she proceeded to give me a quick demonstration, explaining several of Kindle’s amazing features. Before I could utter a “gee whiz,” she went on to show me her iPhone, complete with the Kindle application that allows her to sync content between the two devices.

In less than five minutes, in the face of a woman named Laurie, I saw the future of content and publishing. It’s a future too that pastors with a “book in their head” had better heed.

The content revolution

As someone who ministers in a church, you have also seen the future of content. If you spend time communicating in front of an audience — whether it’s a congregation, a class or a small group — you are accustomed to seeing people use their mobile phones, iPods and Kindles right in front of you, often accessing information almost as fast as you can give it.

For most of the last 550 years — since the invention of the printing press — people have accessed content primarily by reading books, newspapers and magazines. In the last century, with the advent of motion pictures and broadcast media, people have also been able to access audio and visual content, but for real information — the kind you can trust — nothing has replaced the printed page.
Until now.

While traditional print publishing is still a behemoth — total book sales are projected to be just over $35 billion this year — the industry is declining in a way that will only accelerate in the coming years. The book may not be dead, but it’s now competing with other delivery formats that are changing the way we access and interact with content.

Whether it’s the woman in my Bible study gushing about her Kindle, or your high school kid texting messages faster than you can think, the evidence is all around us. There’s no question we are in the middle of a content revolution. And it’s affecting the pastor who wants to “get into print” with his idea of a book.

Driving the revolution

There are at least three factors driving this revolution. First, there’s technology — with the development of the Internet and the related software and hardware.

Second, there’s changing demographics — the millennials or Generation Y who have absolutely no loyalties to the printed page. If anything, they won’t even touch a book until they have first sampled the content electronically. Most wouldn’t be caught dead holding a newspaper.

The third factor driving the content revolution is social media. This fairly recent phenomenon is embodied by such Internet-enabled content vehicles as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn, not to mention the ubiquitous blog.

John Blossom, author of the book Content Nation, estimates there are now more than 100 million people around the world who use social media to influence others. “It’s not just that people are using social media more and more,” he writes. “It’s also that they’re generating more and more content that begins to challenge traditional publishers to get people’s attention.”

You can’t get rid of print because there will always be people who prefer the tactile nature of ink on paper. But you also can’t ignore new media, especially if you’re interested in reaching just about anybody under the age of 40. And that’s every church in the country.

Now you can publish

If you have ever aspired to write a book, you undoubtedly dream of someday seeing your book in print. Yet the costs of publishing a book in the traditional way — including editing, design, printing and distribution — make it almost cost-prohibitive. The only reason a publisher would be willing to take a chance on your book idea, no matter how compelling it seems, is if the publisher is reasonably certain your book will sell tens of thousands of copies in the first year. Short of that assurance, it’s unlikely that you will ever be published in the traditional sense.

Publishing has always been a tough, discouraging business for aspiring authors, mainly because the business model has been the same for hundreds of years. Thankfully, that model is breaking down, due to the three factors I’ve already mentioned. But there’s a fourth factor.

The fourth factor in the content revolution is Print on Demand (sometimes known as Publishing on Demand) or POD technology. As compared to “offset” printing, where the unit price of a book is determined by the number of copies printed, POD technology enables a publisher — which could be a company, a church or an individual — to print books only when an order is placed (thus the term, “on demand”).

The scalable economics of POD are achieved through technology that has been developed in just the last few years. The largest POD company in the world is Lightning Source Industries (LSI), located in Nashville, TN. Through a sophisticated data management system, combined with state-of-the-art print technology, LSI can produce a single copy of a book from digital file to completion in a single day. And the cost of printing one copy of an average-size book is less than five dollars.

Companies to check out

Companies like Xulon Press, an established company that helps authors self-publish, and Conversant Media Group, a new media publishing company linked to the content and social media Web site www.ConversantLife.com, are employing POD technology to help aspiring authors produce books for a limited audience.

For example Conversant recently partnered with media expert Phil Cooke to produce his latest book, The Last TV Evangelist. In just three months Conversant produced his book for a fraction of what it would have cost a traditional publisher. Cooke promotes the book on his Web site, and whenever he speaks he orders as many books as he needs for that occasion.

You don’t need thousands of people to buy your book to make it a success. Your circle of influence and the way you connect with people in your personal network can create a valuable and willing market for your best ideas, especially if you link your book to a personal Web site or a larger media site like www.ConversantLife.com.

I’ve seen the future of content, and so have you. It’s vertical and accessible and instant, and like all content informed by the truth of God and His word, it has the potential to change lives in ways that were unthinkable just a few years ago. CE

Stan Jantz is the co-founder of Conversant Media Group, Huntington Beach, CA. He has co-written, with Bruce Bickel, more than 50 books, including the popular Christianity 101 series for Harvest House Publishers. [www.conversantmediagroup.com]

• Conversant Media Group (www.conversantmediagroup.com)
• Xulon Press (www.xulonpress.com)
• Lightning Source Industries (www.lightningsource.com)
• WinePress Publishing (www.winepresspub.com)

By Ronald E. Keener

Cecil Murphey is known as “The Man Behind the Words” in his role as the author or co-author of 112 books, including the New York Times bestseller 90 Minutes in Heaven (with Don Piper), on that list since October 2006. His books have sold millions and have given hope and encouragement to readers around the world.

In May he was given the 2009 Extraordinary Service Award, which is a prestigious honor of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.  Murphey lives in Tucker, GA, with his wife, Shirley. [www.themanbehindthewords.com]

For pastors and others who might turn their hand to writing and getting published a book, article or curriculum, Church Executive asked Murphey a few questions:

What is the place where you do your best writing?

I have a home office. I don’t write anywhere else and I write five days a week. When I was a pastor and began my writing career, I came to the church office at least an hour before my secretary, turned off the phones and wrote. Throughout the day, I thought and edited material inside my head. The next morning as soon as I sat at my desk, I was primed to write.

How do you pull together the research you do on the books?

Because much of my career has been writing for other people, I tape every interview I conduct and have someone transcribe it for me. As much as possible, I put my research on my hard drive. I keep a file folder handy for anything I don’t have on my hard drive. I also try to read widely on a topic before I begin to write. I don’t want to duplicate what’s out there.

I recently finished a book on male sexual abuse. I used 12 books for resource and eight downloaded articles from Web sites. I carefully document everything.

How do you decide on getting started?

I get an idea for a book or article and I play around with it inside my head until the material seeps or explodes. I continue to play around with it until I have the opening sentence/paragraph clearly in my mind. I might edit that several times, but it tells me where I want to start and assures me that I’m ready to write.

For an article I do a rough outline. I write a full synopsis for a book. For books, the writing may change once I get into writing. That is, I may delete or shorten a chapter or I may decide to add material I hadn’t known of or previously thought about.

Does research come easy for you?

I do all my own research. In doing the research I learn and my final product is much richer. It often takes me in new directions in my thinking.

What cautions would you give first time pastor-authors?

Get rid of the preachy tone. It took me a long time to understand what that meant. Aim for a conversational style, a sharing, an attitude of “We” instead of “You.” In sermons, redundancy enriches listeners; in print, it bores readers.
What encouragements would you give?

Learn the principles of good writing. Take courses, read books, join or form an editing group. Get the guidelines (on the Internet) for any publishers to whom you want to submit and follow them closely.

What would you advise a pastor who remains in his pastorate while pursuing a writing side career?

That sounds wonderful for me. I was a pastor for 14 years and for 13 of those I wrote on the side. I wrote a weekly column for a throwaway weekly paper and tried to write at least two articles a month for magazines. During the 14th year, I had to decide if I was a preacher who wrote or a writer who preached.

Every church has stories of cancer among its members. “Cec” Murphey’s wife Shirley had it too 10 years ago, and he’s written a book for caregivers (pictured on opposite page) after finding out that little  exists for family and friends who wish to be helpful. Murphey’s reflections:

“In the days after the diagnosis and before her surgery, I went to a local bookstore and to the public library. I found dozens of accounts, usually by women, about their battle and survival. I pushed aside the novels that ended in a person’s death. A few books contained medical or technical information.

“I searched online and garnered useful information — but I found nothing that spoke to me on how to cope with the possible loss of the person I loved most in this world. I remember my pain and confusion during those days. That concerns me enough to reach out to others who also feel helpless as they watch a loved one face the serious diagnosis of cancer.

“That’s why I wrote When Someone You Love Has Cancer.” [Harvest House, 2009]

By Ronald E. Keener

Michael Leahy knows of what he speaks. He was addicted to pornography. On the first page of his introduction of his latest book, Porn @ Work: Exposing the Office’s #1 Addiction (Northfield Publishing, 2009), he notes that “70 percent of all online porn access occurs during the nine-five workday.”

Churches and pastors and Christians aren’t immune from porn. Steve Siler, director of Music for the Soul, a Nashville-based ministry, has released “Somebody’s Daughter: A Journey to Freedom from Pornography” in a DVD/CD multimedia compilation featuring a TV documentary detailing the lives of three men and one couple active in Christian ministry who struggled with and overcame addiction to pornography.

Church Executive asked Leahy to respond to some questions about porn and its pervasiveness even in the offices of pastors and church staff:

Can you cite evidence about the prevalence of porn being accessed by pastors?

The most commonly cited evidence came from an informal poll taken on pastors.com that cited somewhere around 40 percent of pastors surveyed responded that they had viewed Internet porn within the past couple of months. Based on my own personal experience talking with pastors and church leaders, it’s becoming a major problem thanks to the availability, affordability and anonymity of Internet porn.

Is prayer or self-control important in avoiding porn?

It’s an important part of an overall strategy for recovery, but I have yet to meet anyone in my past 10 years of recovery from sexual addiction who’s been “delivered” from this addiction simply on the basis of prayer alone. There’s always an aspect of repentance associated with being set free from this addiction or habitual sexual sin. Prayer coming from someone without a truly repentant heart is rarely effective.

How should pastors counsel church members using porn?

“Flee sexual immorality,” plain and simple. Turn and run. For those members who they suspect might be addicted, they should definitely refer them to a certified Christian counselor who has at least a 40 percent caseload of patients with sexual addiction. I’ve heard too many stories of people getting bad counsel from pastors and counselors who aren’t familiar with the unique challenges associated with this disease of the heart.

While there are individual success stories about overcoming porn, what hope can we have for eliminating porn in our culture?

Practically no hope. Pornography and sexual sin has been around since long before the time of Jesus. So while I believe it’s hopeless to imagine a world free of porn, there is hope for those Christ followers who have the courage and determination to resist sexual temptation.

How do you counsel people who say they can walk away from porn?

Usually people who say they can just walk away from porn whenever they want to are deeply involved with the material and have no intention of giving up their habit. In other words, they’ve never really tried to give it up. To them, I just say “good luck” and tell them that more than likely we’ll be talking again some day, perhaps after they’ve lost everything and want to get well.

What are the three major trends you say are converging to create a high-risk work environment?

Our hypersexual media, emerging and enabling technologies, and the pervasive sociosexual pathologies are all coming together to create a kind of “perfect storm” where disorders like sexual addiction are flourishing, both at home and in the workplace. It’s something we need to be talking about as a society; how we’re all becoming enablers of this cancer that’s spreading across our land.

How does a man approach his wife about being addicted to porn — and still keep his marriage intact?

Very carefully. This is a perfect example of where the benefits of an experienced, professional Christian counselor are invaluable. There’s definitely a right way and a wrong way to break the news to your spouse. Just unloading all your “stuff” at once so you feel better is a good example of what not to do.

Briefly, how does one recognize a sex addict at work?

It’s not easy, but there are definitely tell-tale signs that a person looking for such a thing will notice. I coach leaders and HR professionals as well as pastors to pay particular attention to an individual’s inappropriate sharing of their sexual beliefs. That’s a lot harder to pick up on in a church setting as compared to a secular business, where such sexual small talk may be more acceptable. But in both environs, there’s always a combination of symptoms that will show up as declining work performance, habitual lateness, missed meetings, large blocks of unaccounted for time, increased irritability, and the like.

What should a church do to counsel or help men overcome the porn problem?

To begin with they need to realize that it’s not just a problem that guys have. Women make up more than 40 percent of all new admissions to in-residence sexual addiction recovery programs. Of the 40 million daily visitors to pornographic Web sites, a third are women.

To offer real help, churches need to work at becoming a “safe place” for men and women to come forward and seek out help and resources. This doesn’t necessarily mean that every church should have a recovery group program or even have a counselor on staff. But they should know what churches in the area do have those resources, and they should be willing to refer their people and church attenders to those programs and individuals.

As for sermons that reach the whole church, we’ve had a lot of success by using an interview format where the pastor and I sit down together on stage before the congregation and he prompts me through the sharing of my story and the hope and help I found in Christ. We’ve used a similar style of casual but rehearsed conversation in our BraveHearts Men’s Conferences as a way to share the power of story.

Last January 10 churches in the Atlanta area promoted this one night conference as a father-son event, and we were all amazed as we noticed that among the 1,200 who attended, the group was pretty evenly split between men and boys. Several of the pastors later confided in me that while they were excited so many teens showed up, their strategy was to use this approach to reach the men who they knew needed to hear my message the most — and it worked marvelously.

How does porn change or confirm a man’s view of women?

It typically influences a man’s view of women (and a woman’s view of men) starting at a very early age — typically 12 or 13 for boys and 16 and over for girls — as they’re exposed to porn for the first time. When kids are exposed to porn they’re also exposed to a belief system that is highly sexualized and objectifying of both women and men. It’s definitely not the picture of relationships and healthy sexuality that one sees in God’s Word.

Do churches have any legal liability that comes from porn on their computers?

Absolutely, and that’s something the pastors I talk with seem to be unaware or unconcerned about: The risk of costly litigation due to claims of sexual harassment and/or harboring a hostile workplace environment. I think we’ve all seen how costly sexual sin can be when it hits the courtroom as we’ve watched the Catholic church grapple with a long history of pedophile priests. Even though they were and are an extremely small minority, its cost the church far more than the hundreds of millions of dollars we read about in the headlines. Its eroding the confidence and support of the faithful.

What do you mean in your last chapter: “Tackling the problem of sexual misbehavior at work is really about restoring respect for the individual.”

Those who willfully consume porn and commit sexual sins lack respect for themselves and others. They denigrate God and our very humanity through their disrespect and selfish consumption of that which doesn’t belong to them — the sexual essence of another. These are lessons we can start teaching our kids at a very young age.

What are we missing in this whole topic that you’d want to share?

Pornography and the issue of sexual sin is just a small part of a much larger issue, that of an enemy hell bent on doing whatever it takes to try to defraud God of the glory he deserves. While this area of sexual sin is unquestionably the biggest factor keeping men on the sidelines and out of the game God intended them to shine in, overcoming such lifelong sin habits can also equip our spiritual leaders with one of the most powerful personal testimonies a man can have. The sooner the church recognizes that fact and becomes a “safe place” for those who see their sin condition and want to get well, the sooner we’ll be able to turn the tide on this epidemic of sexual sin in the church.

PUSHING PORN AWAY
www.BraveHearts.net
www.SomebodysDaughter.org
www.MusicfortheSoul.org
www.NationalCoalition.org

Tyndale House Publishing has up to 30 percent of its business in the production and distribution of Bibles, in addition to its fiction and nonfiction books. The NLT Study Bible is now available after some nine years in its writing and researching. President Mark Taylor was asked by Church Executive about the newest study bible and about the many Bible translations on the market.

Why are there so many bible translations? What is the strategy of a publisher like Tyndale to do so many translations and formats?

There are a number of factors that drive the creation of English Bible translations. The most basic motive for developing a new translation is the concern that a large audience is not adequately served by existing translations. There are numerous translations available, but as time passes, older texts become more difficult to understand. In some cases, translations that use difficult technical language fail to communicate meaning to normal readers. As a result, revisions and new translations are made to ensure that people will be able to read God’s word for themselves.

Any other considerations for a Bible translation?

Other factors may involve the desire to preserve aspects of language or structure from the original Greek and Hebrew texts that other translations don’t preserve. Sometimes a denomination or scholars with a particular theological perspective might drive the creation of translation that they consider trustworthy.

But wouldn’t a single translation better advance the faith?

Some people wish we could have just one English translation so all Christians would have a common text to talk about. But since we have so many translations in English, there’s not much point wishing for this. It would be wiser to be thankful for the many excellent English Bible translations available to us, all with different strengths. By comparing multiple translations on any passage, we can get a window into many different facets of form and meaning that exist in the originals. No single translation can reflect all such facets in their entirety.

How is the NLT Study Bible an improvement? What niche does it fill?

The NLT Study Bible sets a new standard for clarity of explanation, faithfulness to the original text of Scripture, theological even-handedness, and focus on the message of the Bible text in its original historical context. Most study Bibles fall short in one or more of these dimensions. The NLT Study Bible is designed to meet the Bible study needs of the majority of contemporary readers and provide a complete biblical education in one volume. The feedback we have received to date is that we have exceeded the public’s expectations in fulfilling these goals.

Do I understand correctly that there had been an NLT translation for years, and the new part has been adding the study notes to that translation?

An edition of the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, has been available since 1996. Since many readers have struggled to understand the Bible, the goal was to produce a Bible text in natural English that conveyed the content of the original language texts with accuracy and clarity. The first edition was published in 1996 and many formats of this text were typeset.

The NLT quickly became a popular translation, and the translation committee decided that an additional investment in scholarly review could improve it, so a further process of refinement was undertaken. The resulting second edition was completed in 2004 and was again typeset in many different formats. Beginning in 2000, Tyndale House began the process of creating the content for the NLT Study Bible. The goal was to create features that would communicate the historical, geographical, and literary background for the Scriptures. These study features have been placed alongside the NLT text in the NLT Study Bible in order to deepen the understanding of any Bible reader. The NLT Study Bible is now the flagship for a whole armada of NLT Bibles.

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What gives longevity to a bible translation? Does a translation in anyway follow the cultural and social context of a nation?

The more contemporary and colloquial the language of a Bible translation, the more quickly it will become dated. Dynamic paraphrases (e.g., The Living Bible, The Message) will be the first to face this reality. The NLT, though contemporary, uses standard (instead of colloquial) English, which should give it a much longer life. The culture for which a translation is written should never change the message of a translation, though it is likely to affect the language that is used to convey that message.

The message of the original texts should not change. But the language used to convey that message must change to some degree from generation to generation in order to convey that message accurately. One example of this relates to gender-related language. In times past, masculine pronouns were used in common English to refer to humanity generally, including both males and females. Thus, masculine pronouns and nouns could be used inclusively with the expectation that readers would understand that both men and women were included. However, contemporary school texts and news writing tend to be more particular about gender terms, using masculine for masculine, feminine for feminine and general terms when both are to be included.

This changes the expectations of readers when they come to the Bible text. When contemporary readers hear the apostle Paul address the believers as “brothers,” the readers might assume he is addressing a group of men only. In many cases, however, Paul was clearly addressing both men and women, so in such cases the NLT renders this underlying Greek as “brothers and sisters” to ensure that the proper meaning is conveyed in English. Thus, the message of a contemporary translation doesn’t change. However, at times the way we convey the message needs to be altered due to the changing limitations of our readers’ use of language.

What is the company doing to appeal to young people in the design and distribution of Bibles?

Tyndale has always been a pioneer when it comes to making the Bible accessible to a younger audience. The Way, first published in 1972, was the first Bible that had photographs of people and was specifically targeted at a younger audience. That heartbeat has continued in the Bibles we produce today and the partners we find to help ensure that we are putting out the highest possible quality. In the past year Tyndale launched a new teen Bible, LIVE, in cooperation with Group Publishing. It is specifically designed to get teens to engage with the Scriptures, to participate, not just look for facts. We also create new covers which will appeal to teens, and we work to understand where teen culture is and where it’s going.

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ClearlyU Bible lets kids choose  their own Bible design

Zonderkidz, the children’s division of Zondervan, has announced the brand new ClearlyU Bible for kids. This new compact Bible with a fun and durable see-through cover material encourages kids ages 9-12 to express their faith and personality with their choice of cover inserts. Each compact Bible includes four inserts.

The ClearlyU Bible features the full text of the bestselling NIV translation and comes in clear, green and pink sparkle covers. Kids can also visit ClearlyUBible.com to print out additional inserts or to download a template and create their own unique design.

“Today’s product trends are all about personalization, so we’re taking that same idea to get kids excited about God’s word with the NIV ClearlyU Bibles,” says Alicia Mey, vice president of marketing for Zonderkidz. “Kids will be able to add photos, stickers, and their own designs in their favorite colors to the see-through covers.”