How to turn the Bible into junk food
[00:20] Can You Turn the Bible Into Junk Food?
Junk food is unhealthy. But often, it starts with perfectly good ingredients.
And perhaps we can do something similar with the Bible and our faith.
The problem isn't Scripture. The question is what happens when the strategies we use to help people engage with Scripture and faith actually turn something good into something unhealthy.
That raises a bigger question about strategy itself—and its potential dark side. S1 Ep 35 - How to turn the Bibl…
[01:00] We All Have Strategies
Most churches are using strategies, whether they call them that or not.
We have strategies for Sunday services, Connect Groups, discipleship, leadership and all sorts of other areas of church life.
Sometimes we've intentionally developed them.
But often, we've simply inherited them.
We continue doing things a particular way without stopping to ask whether that strategy is still effective or appropriate for the cultural context we're now in.
COVID demonstrated just how quickly some of those strategies could change when they had to.
So perhaps we need to become more willing to regularly examine how we're doing things—and whether those approaches are still serving their purpose. S1 Ep 35 - How to turn the Bibl…
[02:30] The Dark Side of Strategy
Strategy can have a dark side.
A strategist can become so committed to achieving an outcome that the outcome becomes more important than how we get there.
We can become rigid.
We can assume there's only one way to accomplish the goal. And eventually, we can find ourselves pushing or corralling people into the strategy rather than allowing the strategy to serve them.
But Scripture suggests that God cares deeply about how we get there.
Love. Patience. Kindness. The formation of our hearts.
The end isn't everything.
A church strategy shouldn't accomplish its goal at the expense of the people it's supposed to serve. S1 Ep 35 - How to turn the Bibl…
[04:30] Good Ingredients Can Become Junk Food
Think about a potato.
There's nothing inherently wrong with a potato. But deep-fry it in old oil, cover it in salt and turn it into a packet of chips, and suddenly we've taken something potentially nutritious and turned it into junk food.
The poor potato didn't do anything wrong.
The problem was what we did with it.
The same can happen with Scripture.
The Pharisees had something good: God's Word. But Jesus challenged the way they used it when it resulted in burdens being placed on people rather than helping them experience the heart of God.
Good ingredients can still be used in unhealthy ways. S1 Ep 35 - How to turn the Bibl…
[06:00] Are We Overfeeding People Information?
One way we can turn the Bible into junk food is by giving people enormous amounts of biblical information without helping them actually live it out.
People can know a lot about Scripture.
They can listen to sermons, attend Bible studies, understand theology and accumulate enormous amounts of knowledge.
But knowledge isn't the same as maturity.
We can become, as Melinda puts it, “obese on information” without ever exercising what we've learned.
If we're continually feeding people information without helping them practise it, perhaps we need to rethink the way we're discipling people. S1 Ep 35 - How to turn the Bibl…
[07:00] Our Strategies Can Leave People Malnourished Too
The opposite can also happen.
While some people may be receiving enormous amounts of information, others may be becoming spiritually or relationally malnourished because the way we've structured church makes it difficult for them to access the community, love and care they need.
Sometimes these aren't strategies we've deliberately chosen.
They're simply ways of doing church that we've inherited and never stopped to review.
Our processes should never become dehumanising.
The goal is to help people mature—to lead themselves well, live fruitful lives in community and grow in their own relationship with God. S1 Ep 35 - How to turn the Bibl…
[08:20] Help People Practise What They've Heard
So what could we do differently?
One simple approach is to create opportunities for people to apply something immediately.
Melinda has been experimenting with this while leading services—finishing with something practical that people can do in response to what they've heard.
That could even involve doing something together.
Rather than simply hearing a message and thinking, “That was a good talk,” people have an opportunity to begin putting it into practice.
Because if Scripture remains information in our heads, we haven't necessarily been transformed by it.
Application helps move truth from something we've heard to something we're beginning to live. S1 Ep 35 - How to turn the Bibl…
[10:00] Was It a Good Message—or Did Something Actually Stick?
There's another challenge in the way we approach preaching.
Sometimes we can approach a message almost as consumers.
Was the speaker engaging? Were they eloquent? Did we enjoy listening to them?
And afterwards someone asks, “What did you get out of the message?”
The response might be:
“It was a really good message.”
But that's not actually the question.
What stuck?
What challenged you? What changed something? What are you going to do differently?
A message doesn't necessarily need to be eloquent to accomplish that.
The question isn't simply whether we enjoyed hearing it. It's whether something actually got in. S1 Ep 35 - How to turn the Bibl…
[11:30] Don't Keep People in Their Heads
Some churches use Connect Groups to reflect on the Sunday sermon.
That can be helpful—but even then, it's possible to keep people entirely in the realm of information and opinion.
What did you think about this?
Do you agree with that?
What does this passage mean?
Those can be worthwhile questions, but we also need to move deeper.
How does this change the way I'm living?
How does it affect what I'm doing, hearing or becoming?
Churches can be very comfortable in the headspace. We can discuss ideas and share opinions without necessarily allowing those ideas to reach our hearts and lives.
Discipleship needs to go further. S1 Ep 35 - How to turn the Bibl…
[13:00] Who Do Our Strategies Leave Out?
There's another way our strategies can become unhealthy: they can unintentionally exclude people.
For example, why might single-parent families be underrepresented in some churches compared with the wider community?
Perhaps we need to ask whether something about the way we've structured church life makes participation harder for them.
We can't simply assume we know the answer. We need to listen to the people affected.
But we should at least be willing to ask the question.
Sometimes church life has been designed around a particular picture of family—husband, wife and children—and people outside that picture can quickly feel like outliers.
That exclusion may never have been intentional.
But that doesn't mean it isn't real. S1 Ep 35 - How to turn the Bibl…
[15:00] Who Was Church Designed For?
Sometimes our structures reflect assumptions about people's lives that simply aren't true anymore.
Take Sunday morning church.
We can treat attending church at a particular time on Sunday as though that format itself is sacred, when the timing and structure of Christian gatherings have changed throughout history.
Modern life is diverse.
People work shifts. Families look different. Work patterns have changed. People's circumstances don't necessarily fit the rhythms around which many of our church structures were originally built.
So perhaps we need to ask:
Who have we designed this for?
And who might find it unnecessarily difficult to participate because they don't fit the assumptions built into our systems? S1 Ep 35 - How to turn the Bibl…
[17:00] Are We Making People Feel Like Outsiders?
This isn't only about schedules.
It's also about culture.
If single parents feel less accepted in church until they have a partner, that feeling hasn't necessarily appeared from nowhere.
The same can be true for single adults, particularly as they move beyond the traditional “young adult” age bracket.
Church structures can unintentionally communicate a prescribed life pathway:
Young adult. Marriage. Children. Family.
But what happens to the person whose life doesn't follow that path?
Where do they belong?
Church communities need to intentionally create spaces where people in different circumstances can experience genuine friendship, community and belonging—not feel as though they need to change their relationship status before they fit. S1 Ep 35 - How to turn the Bibl…
[20:00] Is Your Strategy Giving Life?
So perhaps there's plenty of food for thought.
What strategies have we inherited?
What assumptions are built into them?
Are they still helping people mature, belong and live out their faith?
Or have some of our strategies taken something inherently good and, unintentionally, turned it into something unhealthy?
The challenge isn't to abandon strategy.
It's to keep reviewing it.
Because ultimately, we need to ask whether the way we're doing church is giving life to people—or turning good ingredients into junk food.