Reading Mark as a Household

Mark is the shortest Gospel and the fastest, and that makes it the best place for a household to start reading the Bible together. It has almost no long speeches. Something happens in nearly every paragraph. Children can follow it, adults are surprised by it, and it can be read aloud in a week of evenings. This guide offers a way to do that with the first four chapters, which the reading plan covers this week, and a pattern you can carry on through the rest of the book.

Begin by deciding when. The most common failure of family Bible reading is not lack of interest but lack of a slot. Choose one that already exists rather than inventing a new one. After the evening meal, while people are still at the table, works for many. So does the last ten minutes before bedtime for younger children, or the car on the way to a regular activity. Fix the time and keep it short. Ten minutes, done six times, does more than an hour attempted once.

Then decide who reads. Adults tend to take the reading themselves, but children who can read should be given a turn, even if they stumble. A child who reads Scripture aloud to the family learns that the Bible is theirs, not only the grown-ups'. For a household without children, or with grown children gone, the same applies to spouses or housemates: alternate. And a single person is a household too. Read aloud anyway; the ear catches what the eye slides over.

Here is a simple shape for each evening. Read the section once. Ask one observation question: what happened? Let the youngest answer first if there are children, so that older ones do not answer for them. Ask one meaning question: what does this show us about Jesus? Ask one application question: is there anything here for us to do or to remember tomorrow? Pray one sentence each, or one sentence for the whole group if that is all the room will bear. Then stop. Do not extend a good evening into a long one.

For Mark 1 to 4, the sections divide naturally. Mark 1:1-13 gives John the Baptist, the baptism and the wilderness; ask what the voice from heaven said and why it came before Jesus had done anything. Mark 1:14-45 covers the first disciples, the synagogue at Capernaum and the man with leprosy; ask what it means that Jesus touched him. Mark 2:1-12 is the man through the roof, and children love it; let them imagine the dust falling. Mark 2:13-28 brings Levi, the question about fasting, and the grainfields; ask why the religious people were upset. Mark 3:1-19 has the shrivelled hand and the choosing of the twelve; look at the list of names and notice who is in it. Mark 3:20-35 has Jesus' family and his critics; ask what Jesus meant by calling the people around him his family. Mark 4:1-20 is the sower, which can be acted out with a handful of dry rice on four surfaces. Mark 4:21-41 ends with the storm; ask what the disciples were afraid of before the wind stopped, and what they were afraid of after.

A few cautions. Do not turn the reading into a lecture. Parents who know a great deal about the Bible can crush a conversation with information. Aim to ask more than you tell. Do not moralise every passage into a rule for bedtime behaviour; the Gospels are about Jesus first, and children can tell when a story has been hijacked. Do not skip the strange parts, such as demons or the warning about blasphemy against the Spirit. Say honestly that some things are hard, and that Christians have thought about them for a long time, and move on. Honesty builds more trust than a tidy answer.

Expect interruptions, bad moods and evenings that fail. A toddler will melt down during the calming of the storm. A teenager will answer every question with one word. These are not signs that the practice is not working. They are signs that you are doing it with real people. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 pictures God's words being talked about at home and on the road, at bedtime and in the morning, in the ordinary traffic of a family's life. That is what you are doing, and the ordinariness is the point.

Finally, let the reading spill into the week. If Mark 2 came up on Tuesday, mention the roof on Thursday when someone is struggling and needs carrying. If the sower was Friday's passage, talk about thorns on Saturday when the schedule crowds out prayer. Scripture read together becomes a shared language, and a household that shares that language has something it can lean on when the storms come. Mark is a good place to start learning it.