In an age dominated by digital distractions, literacy in general, and biblical literacy in particular, has declined. According to a recent national poll, nearly half of all Americans surveyed had NOT read a single book in over a year!? Pastors have a unique opportunity to foster a culture of reading in their congregations, equipping their community with knowledge, wisdom, and spiritual depth. Reading is a spiritual discipline and literacy is a means of discipleship. Historically, churches have played a central role in literacy movements, with Sunday Schools in America originating as a means to teach reading by using the Holy Scriptures. Building on this legacy, and from my own fieldwork as a pastor, here is my humble attempt at a strategic plan to engage all generations in the habit of reading.
Children
In an effort to build a foundation for lifelong learning and reading, here are some emerging practices to help:
Church Library and Reading Nooks: Create an inviting space with age-appropriate books and Bibles, including children’s book award winners like the Caldecott Medal and the Newbery Medal recipients, fiction that interests child readers, classic literature, and seminal Bible storybooks.
Sunday School Reading Time: Integrate read-aloud sessions into your church’s Sunday School hour (and a half) to develop listening and reading comprehension skills. Ask each child to read a page or paragraph out loud depending on the source material and audience.
Reading Challenges and Rewards: Encourage children to read books (not just faith-based) and Scripture with incentives like bookmarks, certificates, or small prizes. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, Pizza Hut still has its BOOK-IT! Program. (The roof of my mouth is still peeling from the lava-like personal pan pizzas from my childhood.)
Partner with Parents: Equip parents with tools and book lists to foster reading at home. You can even employ technology to give parents in your children’s ministry an assist. Here’s my feeble attempt to use YouTube to read A Very Witchy Spelling Bee to my daughter when she was younger. I recommend including the words to help children follow along. If you don’t want to read and upload videos, you can always curate a list of videos online to help parents with bedtime reading.
Youth (middle and high school students)
To encourage teenagers to think critically and engage with meaningful longform texts, you might consider these approaches:
Book Circles and Discussions on Faith: Form groups that actually read and discuss faith-centered books – including books of the Bible – that address relevant cultural and spiritual issues related to adolescence. You don’t have to cancel the video game hangout event you’ve been planning, but you can help your students flex their attention muscle by incorporating book circles into your regular programming.
Youth Group Reading Plan: Incorporate guided readings through books of the Bible, daily devotionals, biographies of Christian figures, and theological works. Consider the message and the medium (text, email, weekly printouts, surprise snail mail). Use your favorite publisher and drip out the content; it’s administratively heavy, but “if you sow sparingly, you’ll reap sparingly” (2 Corinthians 9:6).
Social Media and Digital Reading: Recommend daily devotional apps, audiobooks, and e-books that engage teenagers where they are. As with all adolescent engagement, modeling good behavior, like sharing excerpts from your own readings, and reinforcing their positive behaviors with shares and shout-outs, go a long way. This is a workable idea for the summer when youth have a little more downtime.
Service-Based Literacy Outreach: Encourage your youth group to read to younger children or serve in literacy programs in the community. Building intergenerational connections early help you establish a culture of expectation that youth read and serve in church and outside of the building. Strengthening your ties with the local public library might also help you build out your church library and reading nooks.
“Reading is a spiritual discipline and literacy is a means of discipleship.”
Young Adults and College Students (without children)
As young adults and university students navigate their own faith commitments and grow intellectually, they face an uphill slog to engage deeply with complex texts, both sacred and secular, in a world dominated by device addictions and fragmented reading habits. These strategies can help deepen their love of reading:
Bible and Book Studies: Convening intentional small groups that explore theology, apologetics, and contemporary Christian issues by actually reading together allows for rich discussions. Facilitators should make every effort to strengthen the group’s foundation of faith through appreciative inquiry and self-reflection. Rather than winning arguments, these studies should promote curiosity and dialogue toward understanding.
Reading and Discipleship Pairs: Pair your church’s early adults with older and wiser mentors for shared reading and discussion. Accomplishing this objective might require you to propose different books across an array of interests. Mentors and mentees could be matched according to their chosen book. The pairs could meet at the church or offsite to discuss their learnings and to encourage one another.
Faith and Literature Courses: Offer short, church-based courses that explore classic Christian literature and contemporary works from a faith perspective. My church just held a one-day Women of the Bible conference led by a local scholar and pastor, which was well-attended and well-received.
Celebrate Reading Accomplishments: When the youth adults in your church share their Goodreads or Kindle reading streaks, ask them for ranks and recommendations. You can also commend their reading efforts by giving them your favorite book from the year before. My mentor in seminary gave every mentee a brand-new copy of M. Scott Peck’s classic book, The Road Less Traveled along with a gold dollar coin.
Parents (with children at home)
Parents play a vital role in shaping a reading culture at home. Here are some ways to lend a helping hand and buttress their efforts:
Parent-Child Reading Plans: Encourage family Bible reading with structured plans that make Scripture accessible. A great gift from the church during Family Dedications (sometimes misnamed Child Dedications) is a child’s first Bible with a short reading plan that performs double duty by laying the groundwork of discipleship in children and reinforces discipleship in parents. Think about ways you can include your church as a family marks their child’s early development milestones.
Book Studies on Parenting and Faith: Host small groups that read books on parenting practices, marriage enrichment, healthy communication, and/or faith formation. Don’t underestimate the power that church small groups have to help parents feel less isolated and provide them with much-needed adult conversations.
Storytelling Nights: Organize family-oriented events where parents and children share and discuss stories together. You might involve the youth and young adults of your church to be guest readers. Dress up as your favorite character, make it a fun event (like an excuse for the children to re-wear their Halloween costumes), and rejoice in reading!
Put the Books Down: Encourage parents to model healthy reading habits by taking a break from reading to relax when you need to rest. When my bedtime routine included reading board books to my daughter, I would tell her to pick a book for us to read. Every night she would go back and forth to her room bringing another handful of books to stack on my bed. It was so funny, but some nights I would read to her and she would have to wake me up. It’s okay to put the book down and call it a night. If you’re struggling with parental guilt, just know that getting enough rest helps with reading comprehension.
“If you can read, you can do anything.”
Empty-Nesters and Senior Adults
For those adults in their later years, fostering reading habits can enhance their faith and reinforce community bonds. One of my secrets of pastoral wisdom is recognizing the mirrored similarities between youth and senior adults; both groups love being together, they don’t pass up a free meal, they thrive on meaningful conversation, and they always appreciate being included. You can translate the aforementioned Youth section for Empty-Nesters and Senior Adults and you can also consider these initiatives:
Classic Christian Literature Groups: Introduce book studies featuring C.S. Lewis, Jürgen Moltmann, Wilda C. Gafney, Walter Brueggemann, Diana Butler Bass, and other theological giants. I’m partial to the resources at Renovaré, especially the Devotional and Spiritual Classics edited by Richard J. Foster, which provide a generous sampling of theological themes and authors.
Multi-Generational Reading Partnerships: Connect empty-nesters with youth for shared reading experiences that foster mutual mentorship and discipleship. Empowering the youth to become “reverse mentors” is another way to promote intergenerational connections that are helpful for both parties.
Read-Aloud Bible Studies: Organize gatherings where members take turns reading Scripture, ensuring engagement for those who struggle with vision or comprehension. Last year, leading up to Election Day, my church’s Christian education offerings included a book circle group that read Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer aloud together after worship. We ate a snack lunch together, each participant read a page, and we asked questions at the end of each chapter.
Audiobook Ministry: Put your church’s old technology back in service by providing digital or CD-based audiobooks of the Bible and Christian literature for those with sight or hearing impairments. Expanding the church library to include audio reading resources is an act of hospitality.
Homebound Members
To ensure that homebound members can fight off desperate loneliness and remain engaged with reading, faith, and their beloved church community, consider these options:
Church Book Delivery Program: Establish a volunteer-led initiative to bring books (and audiobooks), devotionals, and Bibles to homebound members. During your regular visitation rounds, before you sing a hymn, offer Communion, and pray a blessing over them, take time to read a book to them - it could be a great way to prepare for that book study you’re teaching later and it pulls them more closely to the congregation that gathers in-person on Sundays.
Phone and Video-Based Reading Groups: Create virtual book clubs where homebound individuals can participate via Zoom or phone calls. As we learned a few years ago, if a group is already meeting and you have a WiFi connection or good cell phone service, including a homebound member goes a long way to fortifying a culture of reading and inclusion.
Note-Sharing and Book Summaries: Encourage members to share their Sunday School lesson, Bible study, or book circle notes. You can make a copy of the notes and get the small group to write an encouraging letter. If the group is feeling particularly motivated, writing a book summary or a theological reflection for their homebound friends is a hopeful and tangible reminder that God is with them.
Intergenerational Reading Time: Plan a fun summer event for children who are learning to read by loading up the church vans (or caravan) and taking the children’s ministry to visit homebound members for an intergenerational reading time! Each child can read a page, paragraph, or an entire book out loud; if time permits, the homebound member can reciprocate the blessing. Be sure to document the joy and print the photos for each family.
“Literacy is foundational to spiritual growth, discipleship, and community involvement.”
Pastoral Staff and Church Leaders
To cultivate a literate and informed congregation, the church’s pastoral staff and lay leaders must embrace the motto, “leaders are readers” and lead by example. Here are ways to foster a reading culture among your church staff and leadership:
Staff and Leadership Book Studies: Set aside 30 minutes each week after the staff meeting to read a book on theology, leadership, or spiritual formation together. This small effort is well worth the investment and it will keep your meetings from dragging on endlessly or becoming an email or Slack thread. Encouraging your ministry colleagues to read and discuss a book will be awkward at first, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll have no shortage of books in the queue. You can also try this with your congregation’s elected leaders (Deacons, Church Council, Elders, Session, etc.) as a way of discipling the decision-making body toward an ever-increasing spiritual maturity.
Sermon and Teaching Integration: Reference books and authors in your sermons (children’s sermons included), Bible studies, and small group discussions to highlight the importance of reading and amplifying different voices. One of my sermon subtleties is only quoting Black theologians in February and female scholars in March. You can employ a similar practice for Heritage Months in your church, too.
Continuing Education: Support your staff in attending workshops, conferences, and continuing education courses to deepen their knowledge. Some denominations require a certain number of Continuing Education Units (CEUs) to maintain their ordination and authorized standing. Whether it’s boundary trainings, clinical pastoral education (CPE) units, going to your judicatory’s annual gathering, or auditing a college course, you and your staff keep your minds sharp with lifelong reading and learning.
Church-Wide Recommended Reading Lists: Curate and distribute book lists for the congregation that reflect sound theology and spiritual growth practices. You can distribute your recommendations in a weekly social media post, a monthly church newsletter, a quarterly seasonal flyer, or an annual ranking review. Be sure to donate or purchase a copy of your recommended books for the church library.
“Leaders are readers.”
Why would a church take such a sweeping approach to increasing literacy throughout the congregation? Literacy is foundational to spiritual growth, discipleship, and community involvement. Growing up, my Dad used to tell me, “If you can read, you can do anything.” He would usually state this mantra to my brother and me with labored breath, a car manual repair book in his grease-stained hands and coveralls zipped up on his way outside to get the car back in good working order. He wasn’t a car mechanic, but he could read, which meant he could fix the car.
Literacy gives us confidence, strengthens families, builds intergenerational connections, prevents us from repeating (or at least, misinterpreting) history, and prepares congregants to serve as thoughtful and informed leaders inside and outside the church. The ability to read deeply and critically helps us understand the Bible and make sense of our lives in a fast-paced world quickly adopting artificial intelligence. Amid the growing concerns about declining literacy in America, churches have an opportunity to reclaim our historical role in promoting literacy, not just for academic or intellectual benefit, but as an act of discipleship and faith formation.
I hope this strategic plan will help pastors and church leaders think about their church’s discipleship arc from birth to burial. What will you give back to God for the lives entrusted to your care? You and your congregation can play a significant and substantive role in reviving literacy in your community as a partner with many stakeholders. Ask your Sunday School superintendent, Christian Education chairperson, or Minister of Education and Discipleship, how can we support parents, schools, students, friendships, and retirement communities toward spiritual growth, intellectual aptitude, and community development? We are called to equip the saints for the work of ministry. I’m no prophet like Daniel or such a consequential leader like Esther, but without literate communities, who will be able to read the writing on the wall for such a time as this?
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