This week on the indoubt podcast to kick off the new year is Tim Mackie – one of the guys behind The Bible Project. This week on the show we ask the question: why study the Bible? Tim has devoted his life to both studying and teaching the Bible, so we knew he’d be a great fit for this conversation. Also, he’s from Portland, Oregon. So he’s got that going for him.

 

Episode Links

Check out The Bible Project.

 

Check out Read Scripture. (The app Tim helped created).

Read It

Below is an edited transcription of the audio conversation.*

 

I have the privilege and honour of speaking with Tim Mackie today, all the way from Portland, Oregon. Thanks for coming on the show!

 

 

Absolutely, it’s great to be here.

 

 

Tim is a pastor at a Church in Portland, as well as one of the two guys behind The Bible Project, I mean, we only think it’s two guys, maybe there’s more! I’m sure there are. Why don’t you share a little bit about who you are as a person.

 

 

Yeah, sure. So yes, I’m Tim Mackie. I hail from Portland, Oregon, where I have a few too many jobs, but they’re all related to teaching the Scriptures, so that’s a dream come true. I serve on the pastoral team on a part-time basis, but mainly just teaching in a Church here in Portland called Door of Hope. I’m also a part-time professor of Old Testament at Western Seminary here in Portland. And the main thing I’m doing right now is part of a creative design studio called The Bible Project. I’m kind of the Bible nerd, so really what I do is I read a lot, and then I go into rooms with really creative people and we create short animated films that explore all the books of the Bible and main theological themes in the Bible.

 

 

That’s great. When I think of the term “Bible Study,” I mean, it’s thrown around a lot. Churches say “Hey, we’ve got these Bible Study groups” and so on. But I feel like a lot of people aren’t quite sure exactly what everything “Bible Study” means. So when you say to someone, “Hey, you should study the Bible!” what are you actually telling them to do? What does it mean to study the Bible?

 

 

Yeah. You know, it’s interesting, in one sense I don’t really ever tell someone to study the Bible. I’d more tell them to follow Jesus and that part of being a disciple of Jesus means immersing yourself in the story that Jesus saw Himself as a part of and as the culmination of. One of the main ways that I have access to Jesus, to become His disciple, is reading the accounts of His life and teachings in the New Testament. There’s a very close relationship between Jesus and the Bible. Now, I don’t have a personal relationship with the Bible. For me it’s about knowing and following Jesus who loved me and gave Himself for me, and one of the primary ways that I do that is to read through the Scriptures.

 

So obviously they’re texts, so you read them. But we all know that you read and engage the headlines of a newspaper, a non-fiction book, and a novel, say, by John Steinbeck, in really different ways. We read different texts in different ways. So the Scriptures are a kind of text that’s very similar to just really high literary art – it’s theological art, but it’s art nonetheless. Just like how Moby Dick or East of Eden requires slow, pondering, and rereading – the Bible’s more a book like that, but on steroids. You can just read it on a surface level, read a story about David or Abraham, and read one of Paul’s letters. But the way that the whole Bible is designed is to inv...