How Do People Engage with the Bible

See new trends affecting the most important book you sell.By Lora Schrock

How Do People Engage With the Bible?

“� e greatest joy of my � rst day on the job in March 1969 was when I put a copy of God’s Word into someone’s hands knowing that their lives could be changed forever be-cause of that one book,” says Steve Potratz, president of � e Parable Group and owner of � e Parable Christian Store (Arroyo Grande, CA). “Today, that joy remains and it’s still the central focus of everything we do.”

The Bible and RetailJim Armstrong, marketing director for An-chor Distributors and Whitaker House, thinks readers who want a Bible will make the trip to a Christian retailer, “even custom-

ers who wouldn’t typically shop at a Chris-tian store.”

And there’s no shortage of Bible readers. According to the American Bible Society’s State of the Bible 2015, 88 percent of U.S. households own at least one Bible and more than 60 percent of Americans want to read the Bible more.

To match customers with the right trans-lation, storeowners and frontliners need tools such as the Bible Translations and Ver-sions Chart included in this issue of CBA Retailers+Resources.

“� ere are so many di� erent [Bible] ver-sions available today that there’s bound to be confusion. It seems that the retailer is up-to-date on the options, but the rest of the sales sta� isn’t always as well informed,” says Ort-lund.

“It’s more di� cult today to help someone � nd the right Bible because of all the choices, but that also is a blessing as people buy many Bibles to broaden the scope of their under-standing,” says Potratz.

Tyndale House Publishers Associate Pub-lisher of Bibles Blaine Smith says great cus-tomer service and knowledgeable sta� ers make the di� erence in selling Bibles. “Bibles are a complex and o� entimes confusing cat-egory. � e store associate’s expertise in help-ing a guest � nd just the right Bible is a key competitive advantage for Christian retail-ers.”

While the popularity of reading Scripture on tablets and using Bible apps has grown with the development of new technology—and has a� ected some portable Bible sales—print Bibles aren’t going away.

“We’re thrilled Scripture is available like never before, but by-in-large, people still desire the feel of God’s Word,” says Doug Lockhart, senior VP of Bible marketing and outreach for Harper Collins Christian Publishing. “What we believe to be the case is that when there’s a need for portability,

Christian retailers are hardwired to pair the right Bible with the right customer. After all, God’s Word is the cornerstone of the Christian marketplace—a posi-tion Dane Ortlund, Crossway executive VP of Bible publish-ing/Bible publisher, believes it will always hold.

“While certain trends may come and go as to how people engage the Bible, the Bible itself is a perennial � xture in retail due to its profound and unique spiritual value as the very Word of God,” he says.

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online Bibles are an additive experience.”“Certainly it’s easier to have 100 di� erent

translations on your phone, but for taking notes, Bible study, and just being able to hold it in your hands, print Bibles will always be in demand,” says Armstrong. “And if the pastor is coming over to the house for a visit, which is more impressive to have laying out on the co� ee table, an open Bible or your phone?”

The Bible and CultureOver the last few decades, some new Bible translations and paraphrases have raised

concerns that they’ve strayed too far from the original texts.

In � e Marketing of Evil, author David Kupelian writes: “Rowan Williams, head of the seventy-million-member Anglican Church, enthusiastically endorsed a brand-new version of the Bible that � atly contra-dicts traditional core Christian beliefs on sex and morality. Titled Good as New, the new Bible was rewritten by former Baptist minis-ter John Henson for the ‘One’ organization, to produce what the group calls a ‘new, fresh and adventurous’ version … Although Wil-liams described it as a book of ‘extraordinary power,’ he admitted many would be startled by its content.”

While Bible translation teams can’t avoid “working out of a certain cultural lens,” Ort-lund believes they “must strive prayerfully to keep as close to the meaning of the original text as they possibly can, to minimize cultur-ally in� uenced dri� from the original mean-ing. At the same time, the church is well

served by having Bibles available to them from multiple translation approaches, from those that are maximally transparent though somewhat stilted to those that are free-� owing and heavily interpretive.”

Andrew Hood, managing director of communications for the American Bible Society, says, “It isn’t the job of the transla-tor to interpret the Bible. However, di� erent translators and translation organizations use di� erent approaches to select language that is both faithful to the original text and mean-ingful in its present expression.”

� e result is di� erent Bible versions hav-ing supporters and detractors who are o� en passionate in their opinions.

“Many churches in the Bible Belt have never ventured o� of the King James Only plantation, while areas with a more lib-eral culture will typically use paraphrases or looser translations,” says Armstrong.

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Debate has always surrounded Bible translations. The original Old Testament was written mainly in Hebrew, with some Aramaic, while the original New Testa-ment was written in Greek.

Beginning as early as 250-200 B.C., the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek by Jewish scholars in Egypt. Known as the Septuagint, this translation also con-tained books called the Apocrypha. Early Christians di� ered over whether these books should be considered Scripture or not. Martin Luther spoke against the Apocrypha; the Roman Catholic Church convened the Council of Trent in the mid-1500s at which they declared the Apocry-pha to be canonical.

From circa 40 AD to about 90 AD, the Gospels were written. In 397 AD, in an ef-fort to protect Scripture from heresies and o� shoot religious movements, the cur-rent 27 books of the New Testament were formally canonized in the Third Synod of Carthage. By 500 A.D., they had been translated into multiple languages, includ-ing an Egyptian version, a Coptic version, an Ethiopic translation, and an Armenian version. John Wycli� e produced the � rst hand-written, English-language Bible manuscripts in the 1380s.

A Brief History

Even with multiple translations available online, people still prefer holding a Bible in their hands.


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“Versions that have modern language and are easy to understand are doing very well. Many newer translations are very true to the original texts while being transcribed in a way that we communicate without archaic termi-nology that we don’t use or under-stand today.”

Communicating in a way that ap-peals to contemporary readers is im-portant, but that doesn’t mean retail-ers should expect to see “friend” re-placed with “BFF.”

“Certain idioms and slang in cur-rent English may not � t the serious matters that the Bible talks about … Moreover, translators should avoid using idioms that might quickly dis-

appear from the language: by the time a translation is published, the trans-lator’s ‘hip’ idiom might sound quite outdated,” says Douglas Moo, chair of the committee on Bible translation for the NIV.

Associate Bible Publisher for Zondervan Bibles Melinda Bou-ma says academic discoveries as well as changes in the language in� uence translations. “We continue to invest in the resources and academics that sup-port the [NIV].”

Because Bible translation projects need people with skills in a number of disciplines, Hood feels a team ap-proach is essential. “Expertise in the-ology, language, local culture, project

The church is well-served by having Bibles available to them from multiple transla-tion approaches.The church is well-served by having Bibles available to them from multiple transla-

The CBA Best-Seller and category top-seller lists, includ-ing best-selling Bibles, are available at cbanews.org/category/bestsellers and in CBA Retailers+Resources. • NIV “The NIV is the version that pio-

neered and set the standard in the 20th

century for a translation philosophy that can be described like this: creat-ing a translation that simultaneously enables readers or listeners to hear the Bible as it was originally written and understand the Bible as it was originally intended.”—Hans Combrink, VP of global translations, Biblica

• NLT “The Bible translation committee of the NLT has been committed from the beginning to provide a reliable translation from the best available original texts into the natural English we speak in America today. The goal was to create a translation that spoke in the heart language of the reader. Since its publica-tion, these translation principles have extended to Spanish, German, Afrikaans, Chinese, and the soon-to-be-released Portuguese editions.”—Blaine Smith, associate publisher, Bibles, Tyndale House

• ESV “The ESV was created out of the conviction that there was a need in the evangelical church to have an essen-tially literal, word-for-word translation of the Bible in the classic stream of the King James Bible. The RSV had been � tting this need in the latter half of the 20th century, but there was a certain theological bias re� ected in the translation of some key verses. The ESV was executed for the sake of providing a Bible maximally transparent to the original languages yet also digni� ed in style, suitable for personal and public reading, useful for close study, and ideal for memo-rization. I should add that overarching the decision to produce the ESV was Crossway’s conviction that this was an unignorable calling from God to serve the church in this way.”—Dane Ortlund, executive VP of Bible Publishing/Bible Publisher, Crossway

• HCSB “The goals of this translation are to provide English-speaking people across the world with an accurate, read-able Bible in contemporary English; to equip serious Bible students with an accurate translation for personal study, private devotions, and memorization; to give those who love God’s Word a text that has numerous reader helps, is visually attractive on the page, and is appealing when heard; to a� rm the au-thority of Scripture as God’s Word and to champion its absolute truth against social or cultural agendas that would compromise its accuracy.”—Introduction to the Holman Christian Standard Bible

Top Translations



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management, and technology is required to produce a Bible translation.”

Bible translations can be mapped on a “continuum ranging from a focus on the source language and culture of the ancient world to a focus on the target language and culture of the modern reader, with many variations in between,” says Hans Combrink, VP of global translations at Biblica. “� e cul-tural and temporal gap between the world of the biblical text and the world of the reader necessitates a thorough understanding of the original cultural context of the biblical world as well as the cultural context of the modern reader.”

The Bible and New VersionsPublishers consider many factors when de-ciding to produce a new Bible version, in-cluding what has been selling, “input from consumers, the publishers, sales or customer service sta� , and research of trends in the market,” says Armstrong.

Serving the church “trumps and controls other motives” when creating a Bible, says Ortlund.

“When Bible publication done in service to the church begins to morph into prolif-eration of niche Bibles, questions should be asked about what’s driving such prolifera-tion,” he says. “At the same time, it’s wonder-ful to be able to provide meaningful helps for speci� c target audiences to understand the Bible better and engage the heart more

deeply.”“We’re constantly looking for ways to

make Scripture accessible in a fresh way,” says Tyndale’s Smith. “Sometimes this means adding extra-biblical content in the form of devotions or study notes and helps. In every case we’re looking to point the reader back to Scripture.

“Our development process begins with an overview of the Bible category and searching for unmet needs. Life events, level of spiri-tual maturity, and demographic/psycho-graphic trends all play a part in evaluating whether a concept will be accepted by retail-ers,” he says.

Bouma notes that Zondervan’s NIV Beau-tiful Word Bible and the NIV Cultural Back-grounds Study Bible, releasing in August, are examples of how new Bibles can be “very di� erent in nature [while] both illuminate God’s Word.”

“People who grew up with one version, such as the KJV, love it and that’s great,” says Lockhart. “Other people may want a more modern feel. People have di� erent needs in di� erent seasons of life.”

Glenn Paauw, VP of Bible engagement at Biblica, believes the current trend of narra-tive Bibles is important in seeing the “big story” of the Bible.

“Because people think of their lives in terms of stories, it’s a tremendous gi� … that God has presented His revelation as the true story of the world,” he says. “It gives us a

place to � nd the real meaning of our lives—we’re meant to � t into God’s greater drama. We’ve had plenty of piecemeal reading of little bits of the Bible. It’s essential that we come to know, to understand, and then to enter into this saving narrative.”

Ortlund notes the emergence of journal-ing Bibles last year and the growing popular-ity of reader’s editions that strip out chapter and verse numbers and headings.

“Another trend that we’ve observed inter-nationally … is a hunger for sound teaching materials such as study Bibles, and even an increasing desire for word-for-word transla-tion that is transparent to the original text and also conducive to translation into their own regional languages,” he says.

“Wherever Christians are growing in their faith,” he adds, “they want the Bible itself, in a trusted translation, giving them the very words of God.” R+R

With more than 20 years in magazine and book publishing, Lora Schrock is the owner of Edito-rial Answers, LLC, www.editorialanswers.com.

Niche Bibles can help speci� c audiences understand the Bible better and engage the heart more deeply.Niche Bibles can help speci� c audiences understand the Bible better and engage the heart more

About the Bible ChartWith so many Bible translations available, remembering the di� erentiating features of each can be challenging. The CBA Retailers+Resources chart provides a quick overview and visual of the primary trans-lations used in the CBA market.

Formal equivalence and dynamic (or functional) equivalence are the two pri-mary classi� cations on opposite ends of the translation continuum, with Bibles falling all along the line and many having elements of both. Formal equivalence—also called word-for-word or form-based translation—stresses an accurate transla-tion of the words and structures of the original languages. Dynamic equiva-lence—also called thought-for-thought or meaning-based translation—emphasizes the meaning and concepts of the original languages. A paraphrase can be either a rewording of an existing translation in the same language (e.g., The Living Bible) or a free translation (e.g., The Message). For more information, see each transla-tion’s preface. Reading level indicates the text’s approximate grade level (year and month). Year released refers to the com-plete Bible, unless indicated otherwise.


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How Do People Engage with the Bible