A Five Year Old Shall Lead Them

My five year old daughter has started reading the bible at night before she goes to bed. It's a Beginners Bible, one of several kid's bibles lying around the house(one of the perks of the job is that people give you lots of bibles). She started reading it on her own. We read stories every now and then, and we let her know where the bible was, but we didn't prompt, didn't cajole, and I didn't give a great sermon about the Six Marks of Discipleship and the importance of personal bible reading. Well...actually, I did. But my daughter wasn't there that day. She started doing this entirely on her own.

Meanwhile, our denomination, the ELCA, has just launched an initiative called Book of Faith. The stated goal of this is to "increase biblical literacy and fluency for the sake of the world." Cool. I dig that. I think it's great that people read the bible. In fact, I'm thrilled that my daughter is reading the bible. That she's doing it on her own makes it even better. But it does make me wonder why we need a program in the first place. She's not going to need a program. She just picks the bible up and reads it. Why don't more people do that? What can we do to help our children learn on their own?

So parents, I have a few suggestions. Try this:
1. Buy a Beginner's Bible (you can get it here)
2. Read your kids a bible story now and then.
3. Answer their questions.
4. Let their natural curiosity do the rest.

Kids ask questions about God. It's what they do. Let's give them the tool they need to find the answer for themselves. If we do, they will. And maybe if the generations before us had done that, we wouldn't need a fancy program to try and get people to read the bible. We would just pick it up and read it. Which, after all, is why God gave us the thing.