My daughter, Megan, starts middle school on Monday. When I tell people that they tend to make this crinkly face. Like, “Oh… middle school sucks.”
To the contrary I’m pumped for her to start middle school.
New school. New friends. New stuff at church. It’s a nice fresh beginning. It’s one of those rare restart moments that life provides. Yup, there will be bumps. But yup, that’s not filling us with trepidation.
I’m also excited because this means that my life merges down just a bit more. We now have stuff in our house, stuff we store here that’s for sale at The Youth Cartel, that’s actually designed to minister to the unique things middle school brings up. Not just stuff… but the very best stuff!
All that to say I’m really pleased that Megan’s entering middle school coincides with the release of a brand new Bible designed specifically for Megan and her friends. It’s called Ignite. My co-conspirator at the Cartel, Marko, was the general editor on it, and I think it turned out great.
I was a tiny bit nervous when he told me about Ignite. Allow me to explain:
- He’d just finished a Bible project called, The Way. I was concerned that he couldn’t possibly put the same level of creative energy into creating another project without it all kind of blending together. As it turns out, Ignite is completely unique from The Way in a good way. Both are wonderfully different.
- The publisher, Thomas Nelson, was developing it using the New King James Version. (NKJV) That fact made me turn my nose up a bit… I mean, they also publish the wonderful [and popular] English Standard Version. (ESV) Why not use that? And now that Zondervan and Thomas Nelson got married, why not use the New International Version? (NIV) But over the past year or so that he’s been working on it I’ve kind of reintroduced myself to the NKJV. In truth, I don’t think I’d ever given it a fair shake because I automatically associated it with the King James version. (KJV) It’s totally fine. I’ve actually used the NKJV several times as part of getting ready to teach and my pushback was purely a pre-conceived bias. If you turn your nose up at this simply because you don’t like the NKJV than you’re really missing out.
- I was kind of over the idea of “a teen study Bible.” I don’t want that to sound negative. What I mean is that I don’t like the general idea of have stage-of-life Bibles that cater to every demographic. Walk through a Christian bookstore’s Bible section and it’s laughable. There are Bibles for every population of people. But in reality, there’s really ONE Bible, with many flavors of fancy wrapping papers. So that’s just a personal bias I had to get over as I looked at Ignite, as well. Did there really need to be another teen study Bible out there? In reality, Ignite isn’t just catering or dumbing things down to the developmental needs of middle schoolers. It’s a whole lot more like a Bible with a built-in guide to keep saying, “OK, so what’s that got to do with you?” Plus, it totally helped me realize that I was being a bit of a snob when I handed it to Megan and she said… “Oh, this is cool. I like it.“
All that to say, I’m really digging the Ignite Bible. I’m glad we’re selling them in our store. And if you haven’t I want to encourage you to check it out.
Visit the Ignite page at The Youth Cartel. (download the free sample) And if you’d like to buy it, use coupon code IGNITE8 to save $2 per copy in the month of August. That’s just my little hook-up for readers. Plus, Marko is out-of-town and he’ll never know!
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