Summer is always a great time to stack up that reading list with some great books. And we always like to get our youth group engaged more with the Bible. So, we’re running a few youth Summer Bible reading challenges this year to keep our youth in the Word regularly.
And this year, we have four different challenges the youth can take on. We’d encourage them all to take on (and complete) at least one of them, but they can do more (or all) of them if they’re feeling ambitious.
The Bible Reading Challenges
-
Click to view/download.
The Gospels and Acts Challenge – The goal of this challenge is to read all four Gospels and the Book of Acts in their entirety. That’s 117 chapters in total, and can be read in whatever order or pace you’d like. Bonus points if you complete this challenge more than once!
- The Pentateuch Challenge – This one is a complete reading of the books of Moses, the first five books of the Bible. They are Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. That’s 187 chapters in total, and represents the biggest challenge of the Summer!
- The Daily Proverbs Challenge – We recently studied the Wisdom Books of the Bible, and in that study we talked about how the 31 chapters in the Book of Proverbs is suited for daily reading. So the goal of this challenge is to (try to) read the chapter of Proverbs for whatever day of the month it is. With this one, the idea is to work on daily reading, not the volume of covering all of them. If you miss a day, then skip it. Just read the Proverb chapter that matches the day of the month as often as you can. And if you stay on track with this one, you’ll read the Book of Proverbs in it’s entirety a couple times over the Summer.
- The Psalms Challenge – This challenge is just about reading the entire Book of Psalms, all 150 of them.
Directions for Completing the Challenges
The youth working on these challenges should keep their own journal/log of what they are completing. And their logs should be signed off on (initials are fine) by an adult “witness” to validate the entries. The reason for this is two-fold. First, just as an accountability check to ensure youth aren’t just creating big logs of things they didn’t do. And second, as a way to open conversation between youth and parents about what they are reading in the Bible.
This isn’t to put a burden on the parents to do anything with this youth activity. But when they ask you to sign off on their logs, just ask them to share briefly what they read about. Ask what stood out to them. You can have some deep conversations if you’d like. But don’t feel obligated to do that. The conversations can be quick and light. However, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that some of them turn into some meaningful conversations with your youth this Summer.
The Stakes
We’ve started a sort of tradition of having an ice cream party when we resume regular youth group meetings when school starts back up. With nothing else earned, it’s just basic ice cream. But the more the youth collectively accomplishes with their reading, the more toppings and types of ice cream get at the party!
We’ll also be dishing out some individual rewards for those who complete challenges. And the more challenges they complete, the greater the rewards!
Final Thoughts
My goal with this is to keep the youth immersed in the Word, especially during a time when we’re not gathering and discussing it as much. The variety in these challenges should give them some pretty cool exposure. And they can mix and match whatever they’d like. For example, doing something like the Gospels/Acts Challenge and the Psalms Challenge at the same time could turn out to be a beautiful experience.
And if you catch your youth in the act of working on their challenges or reaching big milestones in it, don’t hesitate to share it on Instagram with the hashtag #EYCmountdora so we can see it. And let me know if you have any questions or need support with anything related to this over the Summer. You can reach me at dank@stedwardsepiscopal.com.