Lifeway Leadership Podcast Network.

Good day.I’m Pete Hughes.Welcome to The One Thing, a podcast designed to give you one solid, practical tip for gospel.Centred ministry every week.The one thing’s brought to you by.Reach Australia we would.Love to see thousands of healthy, evangelistic and multiplying.Churches all over our country.Deep in the word is one.

Of the great mantras of reach Australia, we.We need to be reading the word to go deep into the word.I reckon.One of the big mistakes is that we have is that God, we, we, we think in our churches God doesn’t start speaking in the.Church till the preacher stands up and preaches.

Now that’s actually a terrible heresy, which we.Won’t go into the details of but God speaks through his word, the Bible, and when he when the Bible is.Read.That is when God speaks.Now today, we’ve got Simon.Camilleri, who’s passionate about.Helping.People read the Bible.

Well, in church.Welcome, Simon.Hi, great to be here.Mate, let let me just ask you, you obviously read the Bible, not just publicly, but.Privately as well.What’s what’s delighted you in?Reading the Bible lately.Recently it’s I wouldn’t say delighted, I’d say more crushed.

It’s been I read the and studied in my Bible study the story of the the woman at the well in John’s Gospel and, and just seeing her just her passion for sharing the gospel, passion for talking about Jesus.

That was just organic and she just ran off and told everyone just made me reflect on why I’m not like that myself, why I’m not just running down the street telling people.And so it’s that’s been weighing on me and just delighting me and inspiring me to to be more bold and to love, you know, her, her evangelism wasn’t born out of any technique or anything like that.

It was born out of her love and her experience and her excitement for meeting the Messiah.And so yeah, that’s been, that’s been delighting me at the moment.I I love that moment when she goes back to the village.She goes.I found a man who’s told me everything I’ve ever done.

And you can imagine the women the other women don’t.Yeah, we know.Yeah.That’s right.And she goes, I don’t care.I met Jesus.This is so cool.I’m just, I just want you to meet Jesus.It’s it’s I love that story.It’s a great, great story.So, yeah.But you’re right.It is a challenge.For the rest of.Us and yeah, thank you for challenging me.

So yeah, anyway, we will.We’re going to talk more about public Bible reading, but for now, you’ve pressed play on another episode of the.One thing what makes.A good Bible reading.Today’s podcast is brought to you by EMU Music’s Hymn Book app.

Leading your congregation to sing well helps build healthy Sunday gatherings.Equip your musicians to lead well with the Hymn book training resource new from EMU Music Head to Hymn Book dot app and now back to the podcast.Now, Simon, why?

Why is?Public Bible reading so.Important to you personally?I think I’ve got a natural I I love theatre and I love the spoken word and so I’ve got those natural sort of bent to enjoying things being read well, especially publicly.

Because you’re background, you’re an active, I am.I studied theatre at university and, and have run a, a theatre company called the Backyard Bard for 20 years or so.And so I’ve done a lot of theatre.

But I, I hope that my passion for public Barber reading is actually born out of the fact that it’s actually important to God and, and it’s one of those areas of the body of Christ that I feel is under undervalued maybe or under resourced.

And I’m passionate about getting, you know, getting the church resourced and excited about it.I think God’s been banging on about public Bible reading throughout the whole Bible.As I researched this topic and and looked at the sort of the story of public Bible reading, you get that right from the beginning, right back in Deuteronomy, Moses reads out the law and I love in Deuteronomy 31 it talks about how Moses commands that.

You shall read the law.This is from verse 11.You shall read this law before them in their hearing.Assemble the people, men, women, children, and foreigners residing in your home so that they can listen and learn to fear the Lord your God and follow carefully all the words of His law.

Their children who do not know this law must hear it and learn to fear the Lord your God.And, and you see in Old Testament history how when the ministry of public Bible reading is neglected, that’s when the people of God go off the track.

There’s a devastating story in Two Kings 22 where King Josiah discovers the Scriptures sort of in a, a dusty, you know, in his attic sort of thing.And he brings it out and it’s read to him and he tears his clothes and realises how much the, the land has fallen into idolatry and how far he’s gone from God’s ways.

And and so he assembles everyone and reads the law to them and reads the covenants to them and and ultimately the the big sort of go to verse is it for for us in the New as New Testament Christians is one Timothy in chapter 4 at the beginning of one chapter, the verse first verse, it says the spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandoned the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.

So the the temptation or the danger of falling away and falling under false teaching is always present for the church and the solution he Paul instructs Timothy in verse 13.

He says, until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of scripture, to preaching and to teaching.And I think most churches are devoted to preaching and to teaching and they value it.

And they many, you know, most churches do have the public reading of Scripture in some form, but I don’t know if they would say that they are devoted to it in and value it as as much of A ministry as much as preaching and teaching.

And so, yeah.So my my passion is to elevate it in the in the church.So what?What do you think?Churches are doing wrong.Is it just that they’re?Now I’m I’m asking.You for your opinion at this.Point in time, so.Just to be clear on that, but what do you?

Reckon is it?Is it they’re just not doing it enough?There’s.Just not a priority.It’s just sort of a thing that’s tacked on.What?What?What are they?Doing wrong I As I go around and I talk to different churches, I hear lots of different things.So I, I ran a four hour workshop for a church on public Bible reading not too long ago and they were passionate about learning and everything like that.

And it was fantastic.And I said, oh, are people on your Bible reading roster here at the workshop?And they go, oh, we don’t have a Barber reading roster.We don’t do public Barber reading during the church service.I was like staggered and you know, they sort of maybe do the Bible, a bit of a Bible reading during the sermon or here and there.

And and then you’ve got other churches where it’s very much it’s staple.It’s part of the tradition of what we do in a church service.But then it just becomes part of the tradition and it just becomes this thing that we tick the box and we and we do and it sort of just flows over people and it gets forgotten.

And I also have experience in my own sort of circles in evangelical circles, the, that we so value preaching and teaching that we, we sometimes go, well, we want to make sure the preaching and teaching is biblical.

So we’ll have the Bible reading before the sermon, but the sermon is the ministry of the Word and the Bible reading is the tick box before the preaching.I remember back in Uni days when I used to go to like camps and Christian camps and things like that.

You know, the Bible reading might be a slip of paper that’s given to some someone, you know, half an hour before the talk.Oh, hey, you know, John, could you, could you do the reading for us?Great.It’s like an entry level way of getting people involved, sort of sort of ministry.

And then it creates a snowball effect.So the more you have people just doing it, going through the motions, doing a Barber reading without much preparation, the less people expect of the Barber reading and the more the preacher compensates by, you know, making sure they reread the passage of us here, a sermon where they read through the passage again during the sermon.

And there’s not an expectation that people are ready to, they’ve understood the passage, they’ve been moved by it and they want to respond to it.And so I think it’s been a bit of a snowball effect where over time the Bible readings been minimised and minimised and minimised to not even being seen as a ministry.

It’s just a roster, something that needs to probably happen before the sermon.But on one level it can be irrelevant.It could not matter if it didn’t exist as in the preacher, you know, it maybe it was read in a way that people didn’t really hear it or they heard the words, but it just sort of washed over them.

And the preacher is really thinking they’re starting from scratch when they’re engaging people with the passage.Whereas I, I love the idea that the preacher is there to come alongside after the Bible reading, after the moment that God has spoken to his people through his word.

And then the preacher can come and pick it up from there and help explain and apply what people have just heard.Yeah.And I I realised as a preacher 1.Of the things I I think I am trying to.Always.Do is to go.Actually, I’m not the hero here.

The the, the the.Bible is the hero.The the word the the Bible reading is the hero.I’m just.Pointing to that go, hey, did you see that?Did you notice that did are you living that?So yeah, I I might come back.To a bit more about the relationship between the preacher and and the Bible reading a little bit later on, but.

What sort of?Training.So you mentioned a little bit about training.What sort of?Training Do you think churches should be giving to Bible readers?Well, it’s very easy here to just inject all my resources.Just go to this website.No, I, I think.

We’ll, we’ll put.That in the show notes to make sure that people.Can get to there.Yeah, yeah, really.I, I, I mainly, I want people to think of, you know, not being surprised by the idea of training.So you know, you wouldn’t you expect your musicians to have some level of training before they play?

You don’t just give a guitar to someone in the front row and go, could you play this song for us?You know, you expect them to be practising beforehand.There’s no, no surprise if you walk in an hour before a service and the band’s up there practising.But how many, how many times have you ever seen the, the Bible reader turn up early and want to practise their Bible reading before the sermon, before the service?

Like it’s, it’s almost unheard of.So one of the things I want to do is just just encourage people to think about training, to think about what makes a good Bible reading and how do we encourage people to to grow in their ability to do good Barber reading.

And that that involves work before, but it also involves work after giving people feedback and encouragement.And for the Barber readers to be open to that.I definitely think like any ministry in the church, Bible readers should have some training in what how to read well, how to think about the passage, how to communicate the passage, and what things to be aware of and to to look out for in in Barber reading.

Yeah.So when you’re giving people feedback, what are you, what are you looking for in terms of what’s a, a good?Bible reading What’s a bad Bible reading?What are some of the?Objective things that you’re looking for.Yeah, the, the things I, I, I think about is the primary thing and it’s the one, this is the one that everyone under, you know, can acknowledge is clarity is can you actually hear the words that people are saying?

And so if you can’t hear what people are saying, then they might as well not be saying it, you know, so, so are people speaking clearly, slow enough so that people can, you know, follow it and articulating the words correctly, those sort of things.

But for me, that’s just the beginning.Most people speak, you know, when they get up there, if they care about it, they’ll speak clearly enough.The thing that I look for is, is thinking more about are they caring about what they’re saying?Are they communicating the meaning of what they’re saying?

Are they thinking about the meaning of what they’re saying?And are they saying it in a way to communicate that?And also are they actually believing what they’re saying?We’re very good at knowing like I’ve got two kids.It’s very obvious when my 8 year old daughter apologises genuinely or, or apologises just by saying the words.

We all know how people sound when they’re they believe what they’re saying just instinctually, instinctually.And and so that’s something I listen for is I go, wow, you’re up there and you’re declaring this warning from God, from the prophet Joel.

And are you, you know, and you’re saying it nice and clear, but it’s like you’re reading the, you know, the ingredients of a cereal packet like it’s, you know, no one’s shaking in their boots at this warning from God.

And so for me, it’s, it’s not about dramatising or acting it out or performing.It’s actually about caring about what you’re saying and saying it with the the the conviction that the passage has.Because how you say something is part of the communication of what you’re saying.

So even more, Even more.Than what you’re saying, really, you can say something totally different to the tone, and it’s the tone that will be heard, not just the content of the words.Yeah.So just quickly, so it’s it’s.

Clarity.It’s.Communicating.It’s caring.It’s.Actually believing what the text is saying.So you know, obviously.You’ve got to go back and prepare for that and go.Do I, you know, is this what it’s saying?Is is this?Do I believe what it’s saying?I I was really challenged recently where I.

Heard somebody talking about how they were doing.They’d heard a Bible reading.And but before the.Bible read, it started.They they’ve sort of said, oh, this is going to be a.Great one and.All of a sudden you’re, you’re kind of go, oh, I want to hear this.So to hear, oh, this could be a, this could be a challenging one.

This could be a hard one.Just to set that tone at the start.Could be a great way to start, yeah.Absolutely.I think we underestimate how much a how a good reading can really bless the congregation and the preacher.Like how much, Oh yeah, the preacher’s job is, is so blessed.

But what they want obviously is people to engage with God’s Word, to hear it, to take it to heart, to be cut to the heart by it and to go.And they want people, you know, if people can be left with the questions going, I want to understand what that means and how to apply it.

Imagine getting up to do a sermon when your congregation is asking that of you.I want to know what that means and how to apply it.Please tell me.Like, you’re not winning them over.You’re not trying to get them into the text.

Like that’s been done by the Bible reading.And yeah, that’s that’s just such a a powerful, powerful thing when that happens.Now, that’s OK for passages that might have a lot of emotive kind of tone to it.Have you got any?

Tips for those passages that are you know, it’s hard to sound passionate.I’m I’m thinking about those like genealogies that just sound like for.Those who remember what a phone book is, you’re basically just reading.A bunch of.Names from a Hebrew.Phone book and it’s it’s hard to kind of.Get really passionate.About it, Do you have any advice for those sorts of passages?

Well, well, the first thing is, is that you’re not injecting passion into the passage, right?So even the other ones you’re not getting passionate about it really is you’re seeing what is the passion of the passage and being moved by that.

So if it’s a big epic story, you as the reader being moved by it and then saying it in a in a way that’s faithful to that.And if it’s a small intimate story, you being moved by that, it’s not big and passionate.

It’s it’s beautiful and small or if it’s a word of comforted or if it’s a, a moment of teaching or if it’s a rebuke or if it’s all those sort of things and things like genealogies.They have their own purpose and their own tone.

And you read appropriate to the tone.You, you know, you don’t inject passion into something that is not designed to be read with overt, you know, big movements and and energy and all that sort of thing.You know, the, the Barber reading needs needs colour.

Some parts are some parts are flatter and some parts are more exciting.And that’s just the way it is.But but also want to challenge the idea that there’s any part of the Bible that’s boring.Like even a genealogy is there for a purpose.We especially if you think of the genealogies at the beginning of Matthew and Luke, both of them have rhythms they introduce include surprising characters in the list.

They’re there to drive you to a response to Jesus.So they’ve actually got a purpose, and loving that purpose, even if that purpose doesn’t lend itself to being very emotive, still will will change the way you read it if you read it like it is just a phone book.

Then then that will come across.But if you go, no, God’s actually put this in here for a for a purpose, and I’m going to honour that purpose and read it faithfully to that purpose, then then that will make a difference to your reading.Now, thank you.

That’s, that’s been that’s really helpful because.Yeah, I, I think, you know, genealogy is there an important part of the Bible?God’s put it in there.That’s his.Word.He’s obviously, you know, said this is important.Make sure it’s important, important for Bible readers to get that right now.We talked a little bit about the relationship.Between the Bible reader.

And the preacher because?They’re working from the same passage.Have you got any tips on how they can work together well?Yeah, I, I think the big, the big the first thing is philosophy is the philosophy of it is to actually see themselves as a partnership.

You, you see that in Scripture, in Nehemiah 8 verse eight, it says that they, they read from the book of the law, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was read.So there was this partnership between the clear reading of God of of God’s word and then the explanation of giving the meaning so that people understood what was read.

You see that in, in where Jesus is in the Tabernacle in the synagogue in Luke 4, and he reads from the scroll of Isaiah and then he communicates the meaning.There’s, there’s this partnership between the two and it’s, it’s not one is just done for the other.

They complement to each other.And to some degree, if you only had a Bible reading, people might not understand how it fits in the wider context and how they should apply it.And if you only have a sermon, then, you know, then the God’s Word where he actually the thing we’re supposed to be responding to isn’t spoken.

And so I think preachers and readers need to see themselves as partners.That’s probably hard.Well, I don’t know if is it harder for the reader to accept that or the preacher.For the preacher, it might be hard because maybe they’ve gotten into the habit of thinking of the reader as just the tick box before their sermon.

Yeah, well.I and I think as a preacher, that’s right.You you actually, if you’re a preacher.And you’re thinking that?You gotta repent.Like that’s actually wrong.OK, so I’ll I’ll.I’m gonna take the the fall for that one, but.But for real is.It’s wrong because you’re you.Yes, it’s God’s word.

So you’ve got a, you’re just an ambassador for God.You don’t get to determine how that all works.And so you got to be working in partnership.Sorry I’m.Just getting a bit passionate about that.It’s very true and and and I want to challenge preachers on that.And for Bible readers, I often find they feel, they feel that’s, that’s they’re not worthy, they’re not a, an ordained preacher or something like that.

And so to think of themselves as having a ministry as important as the sermon is sometimes a bit scary.You know, on practical terms, the way that partnership works, one of the practical things is for the preacher to get the reader the, the passage that they’re going to read early.

They’ve maybe been working on the, the passage for, you know, for weeks potentially.And then if they give the the person that who’s reading it a day to get their head around it, it’s really unfair and they can’t expect much of their readers.

So getting them the reading early is, yeah, is really important and keeping the lines of communication open between the the preacher and the reader.The reader, if they want to understand a part, if they don’t know how to say a certain word or if they find something communicating difficult to communicate and they want to talk to the preacher about it, they shouldn’t make that shouldn’t be a hard thing for them to do.

They should have access to the preacher and not just that, they should be able to find the preacher.I’d encourage preachers.Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they contacted the reader and said, hey, how you going?This is the main point that I’m going to get across.

You know, I, I’ve even had the other day, the opportunity to do the reading.I asked to do the reading.It was a fairly large one to meet up with the preacher beforehand and do the reading for him as a way of me practising for him, hearing for him, getting a sense of where the congregation will be left at the end of that reading.

And so it really benefited both of us to do that.And so, yeah, so keeping those, those lines of communication open and encouraging each other and yeah, through that.So yeah, that’s right.So, and that’s not just communication from the preacher.

To the Bible reading if the Bible reader is.Going, hey, I actually, I want to know what you’re emphasising.I want to know.What your big idea is that that’s it’s it’s actually quite appropriate for the Bible reader to contact the preacher, isn’t it?Absolutely.That’s what you’ve done.And and and understandably, the preacher’s done more work on the passage.

Like you don’t need to explain the passage as the reader, so you don’t need to know the Hebrew or the Greek, you know, those sort of things.So, so the preacher is a wonderful resource to to go.I’m trying to, I want to read this well and you know, please can you help me?

And which preacher wouldn’t want their bond reader to do that to say, I want to read this well, can you, you know, can you help me?Give me a tip or give me some, you know, understanding of this or feedback or those sort of things.

Yeah, they they both should feel free to communicate with each other in the lead up to the sermon.One one other question just before we we.We wrap this up.Is I?I remember someone coming to me and saying, hang on, why?Do we always have the Bible reading?

Before the sermon.And I said, well, because that’s where the sermon.Is coming from it.Shows the source.And his his response was?Yeah, but I don’t really understand the passage till you explain it to me.And so just.Where a Bible reading?Fits along the way, so sometimes I I’ve kind of gone.

Here is a complicated.Passage.Bible readers read it.I’ve preached it.And then?I’ve got the Bible reader back up.Again, to go, OK, we’re.Going to hear the Bible reading again.Part of that was just so that God gets the last word.Part of it is so people can hear it again.Now they’ve.Got some some understanding.Does the Bible where the Bible reading fits?

Does that actually matter?Definitely, yeah.I, I, I love like the the ultimate goal is that God’s word is heard and understood and responded to.Right, Heard is the Bible reader, you know, understood is maybe the Bible read and the preacher and responded to is the congregation’s job, right.

And so how you do that it it doesn’t have to fit a particular format.Sometimes it is really good.So for example, one of the things I love is what I call epic Bible readings.When you do it, starting a series of, of sermons on a particular book, the first one is you actually read through the whole thing.

And so we did that at our church recently, you know, on with the prophet Joel.So I asked, could I in the first reading, read the prophet, read the whole yeah, book of prophecy.It’s not super, super long, but it’s chunky.And before it began, I went, I, I really want people to know a bit of the context of, of what’s happening so that they feel themselves in the shoes of those original hearers who, who the prophet Joel spoke to.

And so having a little, having an introduction for what people not a full explanation, but just an introduction so people know what they’re hearing can be really, really useful.And then the sermon afterwards is more about, as I say, explanation and application.

But I love the idea.Sometimes the explanation and application is there in the passage.And so to have the Barber reading done again, why not like have a have that left ringing in people’s ears.You definitely want and even in a sermon, you don’t want the preacher what people are leaving with.

You want like preachers, I want you your heart’s desire for people to be wanting to go, wow, God’s word spoke to me, not this preacher spoke to me, you know?So however you do it, make sure that the focus is on not the reader, not the preacher, but God’s.

Word God’s, yeah.So I mean, we, we’ve talked a lot.About different things with.Bible reading today What?What’s the one thing?That you really want.People to take away about.Reading the Bible well in church.It sounds a little bit cheesy, but really it’s, it’s love.

There’s lots of practical things I could give, but you know, without love we’re a clanging gong.I, I want people to love God’s word.I want people to love this ministry.I want, you know, when you’re getting up to read, I want you to love the passage.

No one other than maybe the preacher is allowed to be more enthusiastic about that passage that day than you.Like.I want people to love this ministry and, and ultimately I want people to love the God and his purposes in communicating through his Word and love the people who are to hear it.

At the Reach Australia conference, I had the privilege of reading Psalm 73, a devastating Psalm.And the thing I was actually praying and thinking as I was sitting in preparation to get up to read it was thinking, there’s one person in here and there probably is many more, but they’re just thinking, there’s one person in here who is having the same struggles as expressed in Psalm 73.

And they really need to hear this.They need to hear this as a word of, of so that they, they know that they’re understood and that God can speak into their experience.So it was it.And when I got up, it was heartbreaking for me.

Like I was, I was really devastated by the reading itself and, and it made made an impact.And it’s partly about actually doing this ministry with love for God and for people and His Word.

Oh, that’s so good.Yeah.Imagine a country.Where people as they get up to, they go to, they go to church.They’re just hearing someone.Love God’s Word.I think that would just transform out.It’d be one of the great things that’ll transform our country.So yeah.In the toolbox today we’re going to have we’ll have some links to some of Simon’s.

Training materials.We’re also going to include as Simon mentioned, he actually.Did some of the Bible readings.At the national conference, we’re going to include the talks where Simon’s.Actually done those Bible readings where we’ve included his his.Reading, we don’t normally do that, but we’ve done that for for the talks.

That he did the Bible readings for.Simon, mate, thank you so much for for joining us.Thank you for your great passion for God’s Word and wanting to see it.Read so.Well, and heard so.Well, in our churches.Thank you.Thank you.It was a privilege to be here.

If you’ve got a topic you want us to cover, make sure you email.US resources at Reach.Australia.com dot AU I’m Pete Hughes, chatsu.