Last year we bought a children’s Bible that had the full text of the Bible plus about thirty or forty condensed stories for use by younger children and their families. These condensed stories included full color illustrations and were about a page long (the font was large). A unique feature of this Bible was that the condensed stories could be further condensed for the youngest of children by reading only the bold text. At the time, we thought, “Hey, that’s a neat idea.”

But a neat idea does not necessarily translate into good practice. Days are sometimes long and stressful. The children are fidgety and you’re tired and ready for the peace and quiet that comes after the children’s bedtime. What happens? You read the short version of the story quickly, rush through a routine prayer and herd everyone off to their room.

On one hand, at least you’re doing family worship together. But to what end? How effective is it? One of the things we’ve been trying recently in my family is reading the actual Bible, not the condensed stories. Modern translations are often broken into sections and paragraphs short enough that they can be used in family worship times. It does take some leading questioning from the parents sometimes to help the children connect everything, but you would be surprised how readable and understandable the Bible’s text is to children. I recommend the English Standard Version or the Holman Christian Standard Bible¹ because they are both easy to read, accurate translations.²

Obviously you’re not going to read the first chapter of Matthew (a long list of “begats”) in family worship time. And you’re probably not going to read the Song of Solomon (at least not until they’re a bit older). But the narrative sections of the Old Testament and the parables in the Gospels are excellent sources for family worship and they’re short enough to keep even the shortest attention spans engaged.

If you have young children, give it a try. You may be surprised how much they’ll pick up on with just a little bit of guidance from you.

Impacting the Kingdom through Worship,

1. Which has the unfortunate but not altogether-inaccurate moniker of the “Southern Baptist Bible.” Further fueling unfortunate perceptions of this translation are acronyms such as “Hard Core Southern Baptist.” [back]
2. I did try The Message for a few nights, but for some reason it just didn’t click with our children, which is fine with me. I would rather read direct translations anyway. I just thought that a paraphrase whose purpose is to use modern language conventions would connect a little more readily would work and then I could connect the dots and fill in the gaps when necessary. I do use The Message in my own study, by the way, because, while there are places Peterson (the “author” of The Message) misses the boat in terms of the original, there are times when he really nails the intent of the original and it is helpful to see the imagery in new terms. [back]