Happy New Year — Read With Us
I hope you all had a great Christmas. I look forward to getting back together on our normal 6-730 pm Sunday evening gatherings starting January 12th.
But as we are entering the New Year, please encourage your students (and take encouragement yourself) to continue their Bible reading plans or to start a new one. The reading plans on the bookmarks that we offered gave your students at the beginning of the year are ending on December 31st. We have an updated plan for the first quarter that starts January 1st, and we hope as many students and families as possible will join. If you don’t already have a plan that you are committed to, please join this one.
For those reading along with the suggested Student Ministries reading plan, a new bookmark can be downloaded here. We will also have laminated copies of these bookmarks at the welcome table at church tomorrow. Pick them up there
The purpose of a reading plan is to systematically expose your heart and mind to God’s Word. This reading plan is simply one of the columns from the four-reading-day M’Cheynes reading plan. The suggested one for the students will take them through the New Testament and the Psalms once in a year.
I strongly suggest and encourage you parents to consider being on the same reading plan as your child. This will allow each of you to individually read God’s Word and allow for a simple point of conversation and discipleship as a family. The way my family does this is that each person in the family reads the day’s reading in the morning. Then, each evening, we read it again as a family and discuss our answers from our reading guides. This helps maintain consistency as a family, and it provides an easy platform for ensuring regular discussion and discipleship around God’s Word as a family. For those who want to read the whole Bible, just add extra columns from M’Cheyne’s plan.
As a reminder, earlier this year, we taught the students to complete a reading review each day (You can find previous SM lessons on the GBC website). These are what we hand out each week at Student Ministries to be kept in the students‘ binders. You can download the reading review hereand print them on your own. Or let me know if you need me to bring more to church for you. The questions we encourage students to answer each day are:
- What did the text say?
- What did it teach me about God?
- How should it affect me?
- What did you pray about?
Thank you for your faithful investment in your students’ spiritual growth. Let me know if you have any questions or if there’s any way I can support your family in this endeavor.
Finally, don’t forget to register for Winter Camp (https://gbcaz.churchcenter.
Your Servant for His Glory,
Jacob Hantla, Pastor-Elder