Faith In Action! Powerful New Bible Reaches Kids with Bible Adventure Stories!

0:00 Hello everyone, I'm Stephen Strang and welcome to the Strang Report podcast. Today we're going to talk about one of the very most important things in our life, or at least it should be, and that's the Word of God. And this is a different type of Bible than you may have seen before. It's called the Action Bible, or actually it's called the Faith in Action Edition. And we're going to talk about it because it is a graphic version of the Bible for young people to interest them in the Word of God.

0:40 And I'm just fascinated with this. In fact, I even ordered one for my own grandson, because you know, the Bible is a pretty long book, over a thousand pages, most editions. It's depending on what translation you use. Sometimes it's archaic words, or it's a lot of things that are hard to understand even for adults. And so for children, where do they start? Well, this is an answer. It's produced by David C. Cook, which is, for many, many years, has been a leading Bible publisher. And my guest today is Rudy Kish, and he's, I'm talking to him from Nashville, Tennessee. He's the head of marketing. And this Bible, this edition of the Bible, just came out in February. So first of all, Rudy, thank you for taking time to work in this podcast. I think this is very, very important.

1:30 Why don't you tell us a little bit about the Faith in Action Bible? There's a lot of things I want to get into. We want to show, find out about the artist and all those kind of things. But why don't you give us an overview so we know where we're going? And let me just encourage my viewers and listeners to share this with other people. If you know someone that's interested in this, be sure to share this. And of course, always leave your comments below. If you have questions, we'll try to answer them later. Or if you've read the Bible, of course, we want to know. So tell us about the Faith in Action edition of the Action Bible. Yeah, thank you, Dr. Strang. And thank you for having me on your program. You know, I want to go way, way back. I want to go way back.

2:14 There is actually a person named Davy C. Cook. He actually existed. And he lived in Chicago. And there was a great fire, the great Chicago fire back in the 1870s. And there were a lot of kids that were homeless, a lot of kids that live in the street, a lot of kids that were not going to church or going to school. And God just put in his heart to gather these kids and share the Bible with them. But he was having difficulty connecting with these kids because many of these kids didn't know how to read. And so God just put in his heart the idea of using images, especially colored images back in the 1870s. That was the big thing. And he used Bible stories and illustrations to reach out to these kids. And out of his outreach into these kids came curriculum for not only kids, but students and adults. And that's how Davy C. Cook was born. It was born out of being able to connect kids through pictures and stories. And here we are almost 150 years later. And we're coming out with the Faith in Action Edition, just following the legacy that we have at Davy C. Cook, which is connecting kids to God's word through illustration and storytelling. And so the Faith in Action Edition is the newest edition where we use storytelling and we use illustration to help kids engage in God's word. And this edition falls into the Action Bible family of products that

3:50 have impacted millions of kids all over the world. We've had translations for languages in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia. And it's incredible. It doesn't matter if you're in Asia, Africa, North America, or South America. Illustrations and stories help children connect to God's word. Well, I think that's so exciting. And I'll just tell you a little bit about my own experience. Of course, I've been publishing since the 1970s and know David C. Cook to be one of the great evangelical publishers. And I knew there was a David C. Cook. He lived and died long before my time.

4:33 But I grew up with David C. Cook curriculum at our church. And back in that day, the Sunday school papers were kind of cartoons. And I think it was discontinued at some point. But my father was the pastor. They would come in quarterly. And, you know, we would get one, probably four pages, maybe eight pages. Well, as a fourth grader, I would go to the church office when they came in and read all 13 weeks at one time. I could just remember doing that as a kid. And I don't remember much more about it, except that I really liked it. And as an adult, as I visited your headquarters in Colorado Springs and known many of your leaders over the years, I've told them my story about how I would go over and read their paper. And I've always had a lot of respect for your curriculum. You've been a leader in curriculum. Of course, a lot of things have changed. So, I know because I'm in publishing myself that it's expensive to do a book like this. It's very time consuming. You know, which of the stories in the Bible do you tell? Because there are parts of the Bible that are poetry like the Psalms or like the book of Numbers where a lot of genealogies.

5:57 I know you've got a lot of good editors and all and you probably have advisory teams, but how did you approach this? And also what age group did you target? Because reading levels vary quite a bit from grade to grade. Yeah. So, this Bible is ideal for kids who are towards third grade and above reading level. And we've got kids who are engaging who are high school, but it's ideal in third, fourth, fifth grade than into middle school. Kids in high school are picking it up. They're loving it. We have adults that are picking up and they're getting to know Jesus through the Action Bible, which fascinates us. We're very happy about that. So, how do we go about choosing these stories? Well, it follows the chronological order of the Bible. And there's 230 stories. And the stories have to do with the redemption story. We want kids to understand all the way from Genesis to Revelation, you know, how Jesus and how His plan of salvation goes across all the stories. And so, this is coming out of our Debussy Cook curriculum. So, we know there are seven things that really help engage children. And so, what we've done with the faith in Action is we've created themes within these 230 stories. We have themes that kids can relate to like courage, David and Goliath, like faith, hope, love, service, trust, wisdom. So, these themes are across. So,

7:29 kids could, you know, if you have a kid who's maybe going through a situation where they are discouraged because they're being bullied, or they just are trying out for the baseball team, or the basketball team, and they're thinking like, you know, I'm not good enough. You know, we want them to read these courage stories to know that God is there to give us courage. There are other kids that have lost hope because they, something happened in their lives, and they just like don't have any hope anymore. And we provide these stories of hope within the faith in Action Bible. And the engaging part is exactly what you said is you, the kids read it, and it's something they're used to reading. If they go and read the Bible, and my son, I've worked in publishing also for a long time. I've given him blue Bibles, purple Bibles, yellow Bibles, orange Bibles, you know, large text Bibles, I give him all the Bibles. I have a collection of Bibles just for him.

8:28 But something happened when I gave him an Action Bible. He actually started reading it on his own because it was at his grade level. It was his language. And he could understand the text with the images and the images and the text combined to be able to understand what the Bible is all about. And so this is a type of kid, my son, who would not read the Bible. And I would say, you got to read your Bible. You'll read your five minutes and I'm done. Just put it down. And I remember going to his room one night and the light was still on. I was ready to be the bad dad and how did you turn your light off? Go to sleep. And he was reading his Bible. And it was this Bible.

9:16 And he read it through. And then he's a middle schooler. Then I got a call from camp saying, hey, you've got to come down here because your son wants to get baptized. This was a guy who would not read his Bible. Now he's getting baptized. And then a few months after getting baptized, he's like, I want to lead my middle school group. I want to lead a lesson in his group. So the transformation of power of storytelling and the way Jesus was a great storyteller. And we've tried to combine the storytelling with the images into something that kids could say, yes, I get it. I understand it. It's my life. And it's just been powerful. We get these sort of testimonies all the time about kids not putting the Bible down, coming from school and running not to the TV or to the phone, but running to their Bibles. And that's what Bible engagement is all about. It's not about us as parents forcing the kids, but it's the kids just being fascinated and saying, wow, there is an almighty, powerful God that uses people just like me. And they get engaged in that. And then their faith grows. And then they want to walk and live for Jesus. And this is why we did this Bible. I think that's so exciting to hear you describe that with such

10:50 enthusiasm. And I'll just say that I've enjoyed reading this. Of course, my perspective would be a little different. I've read through the Bible, the text Bible many times. And I find it interesting to analyze the stories and to see how they just pulled out this quote with this picture and, you know, the little bubble that has the dialogue. You know, these people were very, very, I'm going to use the word clever. There's probably a better word, ingenious, in how they could reduce these stories to a few pictures and a few statements, dialogue mainly between the different characters and communicate the truth of the word of God. And I really think that people need to get this for their children, their grandchildren. We've got to make the word of God available, especially to the next generation. We hear all kinds of terrible statistics.

11:52 You know, generally it's late teenagers or early 20s, you know, people rejecting Christianity and not going to church in the same kind of numbers as the older generation did. And why is that? Because they're not spiritually alive. They haven't been, they haven't experienced Jesus as their Savior. They haven't been taught the importance of the word. So I just congratulate you and the other people that you work with there at David C. Cook for putting this together. So tell me a little bit about the artist. His name is Sergio. I'm not sure I can say his last name. Carrillo. Carrillo is from Brazil. And there's even a picture here in the back on kind of showing, I mean, it's very brief, but showing the sketch, the pen and ink, and then, you know, the final drawing. It was just interesting for me to see it. There are QR codes, as you mentioned, that are interactive. Why don't you just kind of walk that through? Because my goal is to get as many people to order this Bible or go to their bookstore and buy it. But to get this Bible, I so persuade my viewers on why this Bible is something they should get and kind of by telling us the story of how it was created. You know, it was probably a couple of years long process, knowing the publishing process. Just tell me about it.

13:22 Yeah. So Sergio was an artist for DC Comics. And he's a believer. And he just started, you know, God just putting his heart for him to use his talent to reach people. And I really believe God can use a dentist, a lawyer, a doctor, and an illustrator at DC Comics to reach people. And so he and David C. Cook got together. And we just started thinking about how can we bring these illustrations in a way that we could tell God's story. And so the stories were picked out. He created illustrations for each story. We condensed, of course, the stories into language that the kids could understand. And I mean, it's just a God thing. It's just people, kids love it.

14:11 And kids tell their parents they love it and grandparents and they tell other kids they love it. And it's just been word of mouth. You know, this past Christmas season, it was number one Bible in all of America for a good two months. And people have just been buying it and telling other people about it. And so the QR codes is because Gen Alpha kids live in this world. I mean, that's their world. They live on the phone. And it doesn't matter how many times we try to pretend that's not reality. They live in the phone, especially when you get to middle schoolers. And so the issue is not the phone. The issue is the content that kids are viewing on the phone. But it is their world. That's where they live in. I mean, they know how to use and type and they have their own language and the way they communicate with each other on the phone.

15:03 So we want to reach kids where they are and in their world. And so that's where the QR codes come from. The QR codes allow kids that have read a story to go and have a devotional time or prayer time. So there's 230 of these stories throughout this faith and action Bible. Each story has a QR code that gives you a devotional and a prayer. Now there's also games. There's trivia as well. But the point is we want kids to engage beyond just reading the story. We want them to grow spiritually. And the spiritual growth happens when you have these moments with the Holy Spirit. When you're one on one and you're understanding that that story I just read is also my story for me to live out my faith. And so that's where the QR codes come from. Because we know kids are using their phone. And so we want to be able to reach them not only through the stories, but also what they use most, which is their phones. Well, good for you. And tell us a little bit more about the artist. And then I want to hear more about you and your family because you're a dad.

16:16 You spoke of one of your children, but you have several children. So tell us about it. Yeah, I have three children. I have in three different grade levels. I have an elementary school, first grader. I've got an eighth grader going into high school. And I've got a high school senior going into college. Now, it's worrisome when they make these transitions from elementary into middle school and then middle school into high school and now high school into college. And you're as a parent, you're worrying like, are they going to lose their faith? Because you hear a lot of things when kids go off to college, they're going to lose their faith. Well, the key years are those middle school and elementary school years. Those are the key years to be able to reach kids, to have them understand what it really means to live for Jesus, what it means to have a purpose in life for Jesus. And so, you know, it's been a challenge to find the right resources.

17:16 We've tried different resources. We tried different products, different books, but always being intentional. And we think that there are many great resources out there. We just think this is another resource and another tool that parents can use to be able to help children connect faith. And here's the big thing that I think I've seen that have helped me and my family is we need for the children to own their own faith. It can't be their parents' faith. It can't be their grandparents' faith. It has to be their faith. And how does that happen? Well, we see them praying without us asking them to do. We see them speaking words of faith without asking them to do it. We feel that, you know, we see them reading the Bible and enjoying the stories and making it their own. And so, that is so key for us to be able to find these resources in these development years of elementary school and middle school. And the kids that are doing that and are engaging, these are the kids that are most likely to keep their faith when they go on to college or become adults. And so, that's been my story. And I've been around Bible publishing and I've been around, you know, training for parents and training for curriculum. But it really comes down to having the kids own their own faith. So, on the artisans side, well, Sergio continues to do illustrations for David C. Cook.

18:41 We continue to come out with different products. There's other products. There's devotionals around the faith and action Bible or the action Bible. There's Christmas stories. There's Easter stories. We're going to have a little children's book. We have evangelism, little packets that we give and we take to children overseas. So, we have a whole line of products that we're trying to be able to give to parents who might say, well, that Bible is so big. I have a, you know, a first grader or a second grader. Well, we have stories that are appropriate for them. We have different resources. You know, you can find this at your favorite bookstore. Action Bible is now almost everywhere. Just look up Action Bible and you'll be able to find the right product for you.

19:30 That's good. And I want to have you tell people, I mean, it's one thing to say go to a bookstore, but like there's no Christian bookstores in my county. There aren't as many as there used to be. More and more sold in secular. So, it's probably in Barnes & Noble, Books of Million, probably in Walmart, and those kinds of places. But this is very important to get for your children, grandchildren, even neighbor children. This is a nice gift. I went on Amazon right before we started this program and find out you can get a pretty good discount there. Yes. If somebody wants to save some money, Amazon kind of does what they want to with pricing.

20:13 And I'm just so excited about this and this, doing this podcast and the different things we do here at Christmas Media is just one more way to help get out the word. Do you have any last word that you want to say to my viewers and listeners to encourage them about the, the faith in Action Bible? Yeah. Well, you know, personally, I've always wanted to work in a ministry that is transformative, you know, that it's God honoring and that can help people. And we're getting just so many testimonials for the, for the Action Bible. I just want to share one quick testimonial with you. We have a couple who live close to an apartment complex. And so God put in their heart to give one of these Bibles to each of the kids in that apartment complex. And many, many of those kids have come to know Jesus. These are un-church kids. Their parents do not go to church. And so the power of God's story on children is just powerful. And I would just encourage parents to just help connect your children to God at their level. You need to understand that the way you understand the Bible is not the same way a small child or an elementary school or middle schooler understands the Bible.

21:34 And this is an ideal resource for them to be able to experience God within their own level in a very personal way. So well said. And what a great idea. And I'm actually doing my version of that. I'm giving several copies of the Bible away myself. I want to thank people who, who watch the Strangler Report every Tuesday and Thursday at 4 p.m. Eastern time. If you haven't subscribed, now is a good time to do it and hit the little bell to, you'll get a reminder every time we're on live. And share the link with others. You could put on social media. Let's help get the word out. Let's do a little, make this viral as a possible, a simple little podcast like this could viral to get out the message on how important it is for the Word of God and what a great resource. And thank God is enjoying all the success it is. But you know, there's so many more children that need to know the Word of God, not just because it's a clever product, but because it's God's Word. And God's Word is eternal, no matter what's happening in our culture. And there's a lot of bad things happening. But there's also good things. I think new products like this that are reaching un-churched children in apartment complexes, like you described and other things. I think that they're exciting and we can thank God that he has a remnant who are articulating how important it is to serve God and to read the

23:10 Bible. So thank you, Rudy Kish. And congratulations to all of you at David C. Cook. Keep up the good work. I know there are probably some days when you're enthusiastic and flags a little bit. Don't. You are doing some very, very important things. And congratulations to you and God bless you. Thank you, Dr. We'll wrap up this edition of the Strangler Report podcast. Thank you for tuning in and tune in again next time for another edition of the Strangler Report on the Charisma podcast network. God bless you.

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25:29 the Holy Spirit is here to help us now and for all the days ahead, no matter how upside down the world gets, enjoy the book and God bless you.