By Clint Archer

Translating Greek to English is not the same as reading Greek. We covered that last week.

Today I want to suggest some practical strategies for improving fluency of reading Greek. I gleaned most of this from an inspiring and helpful break-out session offered at the Greek for Life Conference in Louisville, Kentucky last month.  These insights were offered by the energetic, knowledgeable, and delightfully candid Southern Baptist Theological Seminary professor, Dr Brian Vickers. At times it wasn’t clear if he was tailoring his advice for language students or cyclists training for the Tour de France. But these strategies obviously work for any grueling endurance endeavor.

Fernando’s Secret.

Dr Vickers told us about a former student of his, who we’ll call Fernando. This young man came to seminary with absolutely no knowledge of Greek, but as soon as he learned the alphabet he began to read, and read, and read. At first he recognized nothing but common conjunctions and words that sounded like their English cognates (kardia sounds like “cardiac” and means “heart”). As his Greek classes started filling in the blanks with vocabulary lists, lessons on grammar and syntax, and explanations of morphology, Fernando’s base was solid and his fluency accelerated. Before the end of formal Greek training at the MDiv level, he could read Greek significantly more fluently with higher comprehension, than any Greek PhD candidate. His secret? He just read Greek. All. The. Time.

Vickers was clear that the strategies that follow don’t work if this is all you do. But he avers that to become proficient in reading and thinking in Greek, you need to be doing at least this. It is the base, the foundation on which all your vocabulary and grammar studies will stand. I realized as he was talking that this is what I had neglected in my studies. I had memorized for the quiz and exam, the paradigms, vocabulary, and rules of translation. But I wasn’t reading Greek; I was analyzing it. And that was enough for years. But now I want to read, think, and enjoy New Testament Greek. If that describes you, read on…

Assess the Damage.

Start with an honest assessment of where you need to begin. Do you need to relearn the alphabet (quick test, what letter comes before and after Xi?).

How many minutes of Greek did you read this past day, week, and month? If you did that for the next twelve months, how would your skill improve? My honest answer was that the amount I was reading daily and weekly was not enough to produce improvement, no matter how long I did it. I needed more volume.

When he qualified that “reading” doesn’t count if you’re using helps or doing it for sermon preparation, my number fell to zero. For someone who wants to read the Bible for enjoyment and devotion, I realized I had been doing nothing to attain that goal.

Resist Buying an App.

Vickers showed us a picture of an Olympic cyclist with medal, and another picture of him as a teenager, with his first bike. It had no tires. But he rode it everywhere. He did what he could with what he had at the time. Most Greek students will spend time on Amazon and the app store looking for the perfect new grammar book, laminated paradigm charts, flashcards, learning apps. It is a black hole of futility this early in the process.  Use what you have. All you need for the first month is a Greek New Testament. If you have Machen on your shelf, that’ll do. If you have a coffee-stained, Dana & Mantey… that’ll do! Just start reading.

Build a base.

The point of this is to build a habit on which to add other studies. Vickers swears that if you start with seven minutes a day, five days a week, for a month, you will experience success. Why seven? Because it’s not ten, but it’s also not only five. In other words, it’s enough to get a chunk done, but not that much that you will be tempted to skip a day.

7 minutes x 5 days = 35 minutes a week. That’s nearly two and a half hours a month, which is a zillion times more than I was doing before.

What counts as reading? Just mouthing the sounds (preferably aloud, unless you have to do it on the subway or in your cubicle at work), and not stopping to look up anything. Just read. You are hardwiring a sense of the syntax, the sounds, the cadence, the structure of the language. You might not understand 80% of what you are reading, but your brain is learning something. The scaffolding is going up. Just trust the process.

Be Consistent.

Show up. Just do your seven minutes every day for a month and see what happens. Don’t break the habit before it begins. Pick a regular time and place, set a timer on your phone, put it on airplane mode, and start reading until it tells you you’re done.

Add work.

After your seven minutes is done, and those unfamiliar vocab words or verb forms are driving you nuts, now is the time to add study. It’s optional. The base is non-negotiable. It’s a duty. But the extra work will be a delight now, not a chore.  It will feel so satisfying to look up a word and when you read the same verses tomorrow you will know more and more and you will want to read more and more. That is why I read the same passage each day. As I read faster I get more verses in. Every few days I change to a new passage by a different writer, so I get a feel for the different styles.

When your base is solid, you can start to increase the time incrementally. So instead of seven minutes, spend nine, and then fifteen, and shoot eventually for a half-hour a day or more. Just take it slow. Or spend more time looking up words after your seven minutes. Just don’t stop the bare minimum of seven.

Add to your plan the memorization of a verb paradigm, maybe one a month to start. You will start to see the endings and augments all over the place. When it’s stuck in your mind, add another.

Be patient.

You are not translating yet, you are first learning to read. Comprehension will come. Remember “Fun with Dick and Jane”? Slow, faltering, leads to fluency over time. Measure your progress over long periods of time; months not days. Six months from now you will compare your first week of stuttering incoherence with less than 10% comprehension, to an unprecedented rapidity of recognition, improved pronunciation, dexterity with accented emphasis, and noticeable growth in reading comprehension.

Be merciful.

It’s okay to skip a day or two. No need for self-flagellation. If you get down about missing a day, you may resign your efforts. You will not lose what you’ve gained in 48 hours. But get back on the horse as quickly as you can, lest it leave you in the dust. Again. 

Samuel Sey tweeted something recently that came as a shock for many christians. A church in Canada is going to reopen next month (after being closed since covid began) but with a twist, they will be requiring a vaccine passport for people to come in the doors.

The writer of the article, who is the pastor of the church, said that if Jesus been alive today, he would have done the same. 

After appealing to science for his decision, the pastor made a shift into theology. He said Jesus would agree with him.

Theologically, the argument is stronger. To be a Christian is to model one’s life after Christ. Jesus always put others first. He gave up his individual rights for the common good and sacrificed for the sake of the weak. He loved others as he loved himself and would have surely done anything to best protect the unvaccinated children in his neighbourhood. A Christian ethic always puts the vulnerable first.

Not only is this argument not strong it is actually quite foolish.

Jesus consistently exposed himself to sick people. People with Leprosy (Matt. 8:2), fevers (Luke 8:38-40), blood discharges (Luke 8:43), demons (Matt. 5:1), and even dead people (Mark 5:21, Luke 8:40) were constantly approached by Jesus without regard for his own safety.

He could have healed everyone he came in contact with yet he didn’t. There were times where he chose not to heal people who needed it. (Mark 6:5) In fact, Jesus could remove not only Covid from this world in a split second, but all pain and suffering whenever he wants. But doesn’t.

Jesus’s mission was not to eradicate suffering in this world, but it was to suffer himself for the sake of the elect. (Heb. 2:9-10) He was willing to die for the sake of the lost! And He expected his disciples to follow suit! (John 15:20)

The only reason you might require proof of vaccines for entrance to a church service is because you have lost sight of the cost of discipleship and are controlled by the fear of death.

You should be willing to die for people to hear the gospel.

Jesus said very clearly that we should be willing to suffer and even die for His sake. (Matt. 10:38, Matt. 24:9)

Paul said that for the sake of his people, Israel, he would be willing to be accursed in their place, if it meant that they would get to go to Heaven. (Rom. 9:3) And Paul believed in a literal eternal hell.

Every follower of Christ should be willing to suffer and die for the sake of expending our energy and our whole entire lives for the lost. 

It is for this reason that it is shocking that there are churches that are forbidding people from coming to church. I know that this is a hot topic and that many people are sensitive about this. I am not against being careful and using wisdom, after all unlike Jesus, we don’t have the ability to heal people. But under no circumstance are we allowed to turn away people from hearing the Gospel and gathering with the saints.

We should be begging people to come, not banning them!

We truly need to pray for pastors around the world. These situations are not easy to navigate. We need to pray for churches to not be afraid. 

We need to pray that elders who are afraid of dying, would remember their high calling and either repent or resign. 

Sadly too many shepherds right now, instead of fighting away the enemy of their sheep, are dropping their staffs and running away, afraid to die.

If you should be willing to be speared in the chest to bring the Gospel to a tribe in Equador, you should be willing to be exposed to a respiratory disease that you have more than a 99% chance to survive.

This is not to minimize the fact that this virus does harm some people in a significant way, but it is to say that if the fear of death is driving you to make your decisions then you are not being a faithful shepherd.

We need to pray for much wisdom from the Lord. Obviously we don’t want to have a martyr complex where we expose ourselves and those around us to unecessary risks, but we must, if we desire to follow our Lord’s example, be willing to expend ourselves for the Lord. 

I can’t help but think of Peter who was told by Christ that he would die on a cross, (John 21:19) yet boldly declared Gospel, each and every time he had the opportunity, without compromise or concern for his own body.

By all means get vaccinated if you want, protect yourself as best you can, but never forbid people from hearing the good news. Elders, (and really every member of the church) go and preach boldly the word of God, leaving your life in God’s hands.

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