Start! The Bible For New Believers; Review

-
Start! The Bible For New Believers, General Editor: Greg Laurie; Thomas Nelson (2010)

Greg Laurie, the General Editor of the Start! Bible, is the senior pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, CA, "one of the largest churches in America."  Laurie's touch is seen throughout the Introduction of this Bible, which is marketed to be given to new or non-Christians.   Start! is filled with both "Know" and "Grow" notes throughout the text.  The "Know" notes highlight passages of Scripture throughout the Bible that are central to Christian teaching and doctrine.  The "Grow" notes illuminate certain verses or passages with lessons geared toward beginning believers.  Each book of the Bible is provided with a basic, informative introduction that is designed to give the reader a deeper understanding of the context and the purpose of the book, without a great deal of overly educated language.  The one criticism I have of this version of the Bible is that Laurie and his team of editors chose to use the New King James Version of the Bible.  Not only is the language of the NKJV archaic and formal, it is not the choice I would have made for a Bible that is intended for people who aren't that familiar with it in the first place.  Eugene Peterson's The Message would have been a better partnership for a version of the Bible that is more easily understood.  Having said that, I applaud the efforts made here by Thomas Nelson and Laurie. 

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 9, 2011 at 12:58 PM

    Hi Leon, my name's Laura and I work with Logos Bible Software. I’m contacting you to let you know that this book is now live on our site and available for pre-pub prices. Would you be willing to promote its sale by informing your followers of its availability? We offer it digitally and with all the perks of our advanced software, like extensive cross-referencing tools, powerful searches, and word studies, to name a few.
    For your reference, here it is on our site: http://www.logos.com/product/15965/start-the-bible-for-new-believers
    Thank you for working with us!
    Many blessings.

    Laura C.
    Logos Bible Software
    Advanced Technology for Eternal Truth

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for leaving a comment! If you comment Anonymously, your comment will summarily be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

Wuv... True Wuv...

-
Image
Go ahead. Ask me what my favorite "chick flick" is. The Princess Bride , that's what.  The pic at the top of this entry gave it away, I know. There are three reasons why it is my favorite "chick flick." 1. It's not a chick flick.  2. The only kissing is at the end of the movie... where it's supposed to be. 3. It has Andre the Giant in it. Any of these reasons could stand alone in their own right as pretty dang valid reasons why The Princess Bride is atop my list of romantic films.  But when the aforementioned reasons are lumped together, I don't see how anyone could argue against it. There is a scene in The Princess Bride that makes me giggle a whole lot...the wedding scene where Peter Cook, playing a priest with a speech impediment presides over Princess Buttercup's almost wedding to the evil Chris Sarandon (and I hear he's still pretty evil).   Here it is. Wuv...  true wuv...  gotta love that. I've been reading and re-re...
Read more

Rapha & Yada - "Be Still & Know": Reimagined

-
Image
One of the most well-used verses in the Bible comes to us from Psalm 46:10, which reads like this:  He says, “Be still, and know that I am God;     I will be exalted among the nations,     I will be exalted in the earth.” That one line---"Be still, and know that I am God"---finds its way into greeting cards, wall art, church signs and the like.  And it sounds so nice, doesn't it?  But what does it actually mean ? What does it mean to be still  and know  that God is God?  Well, to dig deeper into that phrase to see what it's really saying, I'm going to have to bust out some Hebrew--so, don't hold it against me. The Hebrew word that's used here for the phrase "be still" is the word  rapha. And get this... It means "to hang limp, sink down, be feeble."  That's a heckuva lot different than what we usually take the phrase "be still" to mean, right? I don't know about you, but whenever I have heard that verse ...
Read more

The Lord Needs It: Lessons From A Donkey

-
Image
This Sunday is Palm Sunday---the beginning of Holy Week. It's also one of those Sundays when you can't ignore the church calendar and just preach whatever you want.  I am sure that some people do just that, but they probably aren't Presbyterian, and I am sure that the liturgical rhythm of the Church is not first and foremost in their mind. And they probably have had no trouble at all working on their sermon this week. I'm not one to blindly follow tradition, but there are some things that you just don't do---and you can't just ignore  the story of Jesus' Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.   But this leads to a bit of a quandary...  In the short time I have been doing this whole preaching thing I have gone through the Palm Sunday story a few times.  After a while you sort of wonder if your congregation has heard your Palm Sunday riff a few too many times. That sermon needs to get preached, though.  While we celebrate the che...
Read more