Krish Kandiah and the Weightwatchers approach to reading God's word

CT: Biblefresh has triggered a flurry of initiatives and projects by a huge number of organisations. Are you surprised by how well it’s taken off?

Krish: We’re just really encouraged that groups like the Methodist Church and the Brethrens and Pentecostals have grasped this, the Methodist Church in particular from the beginning.

We didn’t want to say to people to just go back and do what you did before, but we want people to engage in the Bible in a fresh way. Biblefresh is inviting churches to do something corporately - to have a weightwatchers approach to the Bible! Everyone’s got a set of scales at home but they sign up to Weightwatchers to measure their weight in public. There’s corporate encouragement to lose weight and there is accountability and you work together to reach your goal. The church could work together through the Bible in a year and help each other and encourage each other and tweak things here and there that could get people engaging with the Bible more.

You will see on all of the Biblefresh material that we haven’t put a picture of a book and that’s because we want to say to people that there are so many great digital ways to engage with God’s word today – whether that’s through WordLive, smartphones, YouVersion or whatever means you can engage with God’s word.

It’s amazing how Biblefresh is spreading virally because there are so many great opportunities for us to use a communication tool well. Paul talked about doing whatever it takes, that he would become a Jew to reach the Jews and a Greek to reach the Greek so that by any means possible he might win some for Christ, and I think that’s got to be our opportunistic attitude to these new technologies.


CT: That concept seems to be sparking interest across the generations.

Krish: Yes, it’s really exciting because for some people they have never read the Bible before. We want grandparents to get excited because they are the most trusted generation in this country and they have huge influence over the younger generations. We’re encouraging them to give a Bible to their grandchildren because it means so much more coming from grandpa or grandma. We really want to see these generations keen to interact with the Bible.


CT: It’s interesting that you mention the word exciting because not many people today would put the word exciting together with the Bible. Do you think that’s even a common perception within the church that we need to be wrestling with?

Krish: Yes. Rob Bell did a commendation for us in which he said our unfamiliarity has bred more unfamiliarity. And that’s true. If we can give people a way back into the Bible they could taste how good it is. I was at a Youthwork conference in Eastbourne recently and I showed the youth leaders there how the writer of the Psalms doesn’t rhyme sounds but ideas. And they thought ‘wow, I’ve never seen that before’ and new bits of the Bible are opened up for them.

It’s like learning to drive. A whole new part of life opens up and there are open roads and places to explore. If we can give people a few skills the Bible will come alive to people in a new way. It can be a really exciting experience but there might be a little bit of work people need to do to get started.


CT: You’ve asked churches to sign up to a covenant.

Krish: Yes, we’re asking churches to make pledges in four different dimensions. The first is Bible reading, so do something corporately to help the church read the Bible together. The second is to invest in training because if the pastor or the house group leader or Sunday school teacher isn’t excited about teaching the Bible then the trickledown effect won’t happen. So our advice to churches is to do something to raise the game and train those who are teaching the Bible. Maybe send the pastor on a weekend course to refresh their preaching or do something for the house group leader in the church.

The third is Bible translation. For 400 years we have had the Bible in our own language and it’s a travesty that there are billions of people who have not even a word of the Bible in their own language. Wouldn’t it be a great birthday gift to give a translation of the Bible to the poorest country in Africa – Burkina Faso. We’re asking churches to think about what they can do creatively to release funds that would make the Bible available in Burkina Faso.

The fourth is to do something to help people experience the Bible. We call this the Lord of the Rings factor. A lot of people went to see the movie and then went to read the book and we want to see if we can do something similar with the Bible. There are theatre companies, operatic companies, a painting competition, video competition, all sorts of things to help churches give people an experience of the Bible that will draw them back to it again.


CT: Why have you decided to make pilgrimages to the Holy Land a part of Biblefresh?

Krish: We thought that would be a great way to give people a Bible experience, reading Jesus’ words to Peter as we sit by the Sea of Galilee. Being there will really help the reality of these stories because the Bible isn’t just some great mythological book but took place in real space/time history. These pilgrimages are going to be very Bible-based trips where we will be reading key parts of the Bible in key biblical sites.


CT: Is part of Biblefresh also about helping people discover how the Bible can become a part of their everyday life?

Krish: Yes, my wife and I have written a book into that called Route 66, which will be available at Spring Harvest, and in that we make the point that the Bible is full of different types of literature. God gave us wisdom books so that we would make really wise decisions, while the Psalms really pour out their emotional lives. There is emotional integrity in there that really equips us to speak to God when we are running out of words or tells us what to do when we feel isolated or despairing. We want to help people have a roadmap of how the Bible opens up the whole of life to his word.


CT: You’ve got so many exciting projects but what is it you really want to see happen within the church during this year?

Krish: We would just love to see the whole church get into the whole Bible for the whole year. I spoke to the New Testament Church of God because of every time I go on the Underground in London and see a person reading the Bible they are usually from the black majority church and I wanted to know how they can help the rest of us! At the other end of the spectrum I spoke to the Proclamation Trust and they’re putting on events to help people engage with the Bible so it really is the whole cross section of the church – charismatic, Pentecostal, reformed Methodist, all of us working together. It’s really exciting that we can be one church gathered around one book for one year.


CT: Hope 08 was planned for a year but gathered such momentum that it just continued. Do you envisage Biblefresh really being for just for one year or are you open to it going further?

Krish: With the Biblefresh coalition of 100 different Christian organisations working together in this joined up way, I’m hoping there will be a legacy. Instead of the church being very empire-built – ‘I will do my little bit in my little corner’ – we want to see the relationships continue. Organisationally Biblefresh will finish at the end of 2011 but there are lots of other things the Evangelical Alliance has got planned to help people interact with the Bible and we hope the legacy of Biblefresh will remain for a long time and that we give the church a real boost in confidence in God’s word.