Ministry is never easy, and there have certainly been some hard things in the church and in many of our personal lives over the last few months. But, because God is always breathing life and redemption into graves, I’ve enjoyed some sweet moments lately as a pastor over youth, and for this newsletter I want to share a high point with you.
God’s Word is true food indeed. Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. When I came into the pastorate here four years ago (July 1st!), one of the first things I wanted to support in our youth was deepening not only in reading and studying, but internalizing and memorizing Scripture. I issued a challenge early on: “if you memorize a whole chapter at least 22 verses long, I will help you pick out and buy you an awesome new Bible.” (Why 22 verses? That’s a common length in the Psalms – one verse for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Each verse starts with the next letter of the “aleph-bet”. Psalm 119 is the longest example, with 8 verses per letter.)
I’ve had a few kids express interest, pick a chapter, and tell me they’re going to do it. But a few weeks ago, for the first time, we had a young person stand up on a Sunday night and recite an entire chapter (Ephesians 2) perfectly from memory. She’s labored long over it, and as a result the chapter has gone deep into her heart. It struck me as I stood grinning reading along that she was more than reciting – the Word was coming alive! I’ve hardly heard the Bible like that. The last time was a senior saint three churches ago, reciting the entire book of Ephesians from memory.
I gave her a brief interview hoping to encourage other students and draw out some helpful tips. She didn’t have tips though. She just grinded her way through it. I realized I’d missed an opportunity in not preparing the kids to do that kind of longer memorization.
So the last two D Groups have been dedicated to scripture memory techniques and time set aside to go do some memorizing. Last time kids were getting seven, twelve verses down in 30 minutes. They're encouraged that they are capable of more than they thought they were, and I hope it’s not long before another student is ready to earn a nice new Bible.
What’s D Group, you ask? Maybe you haven’t heard about this thing we do. It’s like a special small group for the youth that really want to grow in their faith. We have dinner together which is always a good time, but we don’t have a special fun activity or game, “just” fellowship. If you get Christians together, we’re usually going to have a pretty good time! D Group runs basically all year long, maybe a few weeks off here and there when we’re changing curriculum or during holidays. We’ve gone through lessons in how to study and ask questions of the Bible, walked through Romans 1-8; we’ve done Person of Jesus studies through Compassion and Honesty; and we’ve been stepping through our church doctrinal statement looking at what we believe as a church; why; what some other Christians believe; what is heresy, and asking questions. We used to meet in the Cooper home; but, it got too big – usually half to 3/4s of our students attend D Group - so we host it at the church now.
Are you interested in some ideas for your own scripture memory?
For a single verse, you can try reading the verse ten or so times, then write just the first letter of each word of the verse and see how well you can do repeating the verse just from that help. It’s great if you can erase a few letters at a time and see how you do filling in the blanks; continue erasing until you’re doing the whole thing from memory. I liked doing that on a white board with kids’ Sunday School classes. You can do the same with a dry erase marker on your bathroom mirror! Tiffany wears “verselets” – beaded bracelets with the first letters of verses. You can find these for sale, or talk to a crafty friend from the church and have some commissioned.
For a longer passage, I learned a good new tip from a wise old pastor. He would read whole chapters out loud 50 times before he would start preaching through them. As a result, he ended up memorizing much of what he had preached through and it added up to huge portions of the New Testament and great patches of the Old Testament as well. Repeat it from memory 25 times, they say, and it will be locked in. I’m starting this with the Upper Room Discourse in John (around chapters 14-16). We’ll see how it goes!
In looking up newer methods for my youth, I learned that of course that “there’s an app for that” – check out Versify! It has all sorts of options, including games. They don’t have the CSB translation that we use as a church, but they do have the ESV, which is another great translation that Pastor John and I, and many others in the church have used for years.
Psalm 119:11 says, “I have hidden Your word in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” Hide some scripture in your heart today!
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