The Power of Listening to the Bible Together - Tom Cole

It can take around 98 hours to read the entire Bible. For many working Christians, that's a tall order between holding down a job, caring for family and friends, and going back and forth between responsibilities. It's hard to get those quiet hours with Scripture. And yet many of us believe it's imperative to be formed by God's Word. How can we make it happen? One way we can make it work is through listening to the Bible in groups, which is sometimes called public reading of Scripture or PRS. The phrase "public reading of Scripture" comes from a quote in 1 Timothy 4:13, which says, "Devote yourself to the public reading of scripture."

Groups reading the Scripture out loud meet all over the world, from pastors in Korea to tech workers in Seattle, to a group of financial services professionals in New York City, meeting every week to listen to the Bible and talk about their work. Our guest today has experienced this practice as one of the leaders of the New York group, Faith in Financial Services. He's here today to tell us about how he's seen himself and members of the group, helped by the power of listening to the Bible. Tom Cole is the founder and president of the advisory firm, Narrow Gate Partners. Tom's professional credentials include running leverage finance businesses at Citi, HSBC, and Deutsche Bank. He's also served on the board of directors of the New Canaan Society, and is a frequent speaker about working as a Christian in financial services.

Scripture References

1 Timothy 4:13

Additional Resources

Public Reading of Scripture for Work: www.prs.work

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Transcript - The Power of Listening to the Bible Together - Tom Cole

Leah Archibald: Making It Work is brought to you by The Max De Pree Center for Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary and the Theology of Work Project.

Mark Roberts: Welcome to Making it Work.

LA: Through conversation, scripture and stories, we invite God into work’s biggest challenges... so that you can live out your purpose in the workplace.

MR: I’m Mark Roberts.

LA: And I’m Leah Archibald. And this is Making It Work.

Tom Cole, who you'll hear on this podcast, was a remarkable individual who generously shared his insights and experiences with us and with many others in both the Christian community and in the financial services industry where he spent his illustrious career. He was a key leader in the New York group of Faith in Financial Services, where his dedication to integrating his Christian beliefs with his work made him a respected and inspiring figure.

Sadly, since our recording Tom passed away, and went home to be with Jesus. For those of us who worked with him and loved him, his departure was far too soon. Tom's legacy will undoubtedly continue to inspire and influence many. We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to share his story with you today. Here's our conversation with Tom Cole.

Tom Cole, welcome to the podcast.

Tom Cole: It's great to be with you.

LA: We're so excited to have you tell us a little bit about this practice, public reading of Scripture, which I think will just sound like a new phenomenon to many Christians who are used to daily devotionals or reading the Bible before bed, something a little bit more private. I wonder if you could just start describing the group you're a part of, and how you listen to the Bible together.

TC: Yeah, that's a great question. So I've always had a desire to spend more time in Scripture. It's always been a priority in my life, but it always seemed to not be at the top of the priority list every day when I woke up in the morning. And so I heard about this group that was meeting to listen to the Bible and have a discussion around its applicability to work. And I decided that this would be a good thing to give a try. And what I really underappreciated was the power of being in community, listening to God's Word while reading God's Word at the same time, followed up by a discussion of God's Word. So all those were important, and it have brought to light to me the importance of all those disciplines. And that's why I like what we refer to as PRS, public reading of Scripture, when we combine it with the Theology of Work Project, and we can really integrate what Scripture is saying about how to conduct ourselves in the workplace.

As we think about the amount of time we spend in work, a lot of people talk about this concept of faith and work. And I like to look at it a little differently. It's faith and life. How is our faith impacting all areas of our life? And work is just one area of it. And so being in God's Word and getting instruction on how to conduct ourselves with customers, with employees, with our bosses has been really, really practical for me.

LA: Tom, tell me a little bit more how this practice fits into your life. When do you do it? How much time does it take? Who's there?

TC: Yeah, we meet once a week on Wednesday mornings for a little over an hour. And so that's a regular part of my routine. Separately outside of a group context, I use the PRS materials as a way to actually spend time in Scripture. I find it easier to absorb and comprehend God's Word when I can both read and listen at the same time. And there's a great app that allows me to track my progress through the Bible. So I do once a week in community, and I do the rest of the days just choosing to listen to the PRS.

LA: Mark, do you have experience in... I know you've done a lot of reading the Bible over your career, but do you have experience listening to the Bible in a different way?

MR: You know, I do, although not as much in the context of public or with other people, though I've done that in several settings. I haven't done that a lot. But actually, in two ways in my past. So there was a time many, many years ago, where what I did for the Old Testament was I bought this cassette tape, so it's way long ago. And while I was driving, I listened to pretty much the whole Bible. And that was the first experience I had of hearing things I'd never heard before. Not just brand new passages, but familiar passages. When you hear them it's like, "Wow.” Now fast forward, many years, just a few years ago, I'm writing a commentary on Ephesians. And of course I'm reading Ephesians, studying Ephesians, reading it in Greek, doing all this. But I decided that it would be good to listen to it. And so I got a good recording of Ephesians. I listened to the English recording at least a hundred times. And I listened to actually a Greek... Somebody reading the Greek recording probably a couple of dozen times.

But as I listened to this text that I was reading, reading, reading with my eyes, it was amazing to me how I heard, how I "saw things" in the text I'd never seen before, that something about the hearing of scripture goes in differently into the brain. And it does a different sort of thing, which isn't to say reading with your eyes isn't good; that's a great way to do it. But the listening, it really helped me to engage biblical truth in God's Word in a different way than I had. And I just found that fascinating and very encouraging.

LA: Now, Tom, have you also had this experience, that Mark described, of hearing either new things in the Bible or hearing the Bible in a different way from hearing it out loud?

TC: Absolutely. That's one of the things that I find amazing about Scripture, is you can read the same verse multiple different times, and then when you overlay your life circumstances, the verse might speak to you differently, or you might see something because your eyes have been opened given your current life circumstances, or just because of the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart, to seeing things in a particular way.

LA: So, Mark, I wonder if you could help us understand what “public” means in this context. Because we're talking about the public reading of Scripture as a program where you get together with a group, you hear scripture together, but we're not like in the middle of Times Square doing this. I wonder if you could do like a little translation for us in what public means.

MR: Yeah. Sure. Sure. And that's interesting because some of our listeners will have English Bible translations that don't use the word public, just talk about attending to the reading of Scripture or something. And so that's, you say, "Well, what's going on?" So you go back to the Greek, and this is sort of interesting. It's quite minimalistic. The Greek of this text...

LA: So this is... I just wanna interrupt. So this is in the letter, First Timothy...

MR: First Timothy...

LA: Chapter 4 verse 13, which I quoted in my intro as saying, "Devote yourselves to the public reading of scripture." And you're saying some translations don't say it that way.

MR: Well, yeah, because what it said, what it actually reads, if you just went really super literally, it would say, "Until I come, devote yourselves to the reading, to the exhortation, and to the teaching." In other words, the Greek just says, "Devote yourself to the reading." It doesn't give more. Now, in context, this is instructions from Paul to Timothy about what he is supposed to do in, he and the others but especially he, was supposed to do within the Church context. So "public," so if you just put "devote yourself to the reading," many of us might think, well, that's just sort of personal devotional reading or something. We wouldn't understand the context. So the translators often add "public" to make sure we understand that this isn't in this case just reading to yourself, but it's reading in a public context.

Now, the reason that they'll add "of scripture" is that in context, it's about exhorting, it's about teaching. And you would say, well, what is it that Timothy should be reading in Church? Well, it's reading Scripture. That's what it is. So the "public" and the "scripture" are in a sense added to help us really understand what is being referred to here. And what is being referred to here is when the Christian community gets together, Timothy was being instructed to do three things. And one of the three things was to read the Scripture. And basically all those Christians... Of course, many would not even have been able to read. But even if they could have been able to read, it's unlikely they would've had access to these documents. So this is the way that the early Christians would be exposed to Scripture. And it's not unlikely that there were lengthier readings, because that's how the people engaged with God's Word at that point.

LA: Now, I'm very interested in this term that you use, Mark, "exhortation" or ex-hor-tation. Exhortation? I'm very interested in this term that you use, Mark, "exhortation" because in addition to reading Scripture, there's some element of applying Scripture and certainly applying Scripture in a group, like how does this relate to the group dynamics? How does this relate to how I live out my faith as a Christian, but in the context of other people? So Tom, I wonder if you could kind of give a color from your own experience here. What is it like to be applying the Bible, not just yourself and your own reading, but kind of talking about how the Bible applies to your work within this group context?

TC: Yeah, I'll take a step back. We live in a world where it's becoming easier to be isolated. The surgeon general just came out in May of this year with a warning of an epidemic of loneliness that's happening in the world today. And so while the technology has changed so that we can all read Scripture sitting by ourselves at home, and I do, this concept of coming together in a group, in a community, we worship a God of community, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we're better in community to listen to the teaching and then unpack it a little bit together around what this really means for each of us personally. And you hear different perspectives, and you hear people's stories, particularly as we say, "Talk about how this Scripture reading has applied to your personal life."

So what that does is, we get to know each other so much better as we talk about some of the challenges and struggles we're facing in life, or some of the celebrations we're experiencing in life, and how that Scripture applies to it. And so community is built, and community is formed. So in this specific instance, we're centered around financial services. We learn and we hear when people have had a struggle at their work or might have lost their job or have a personal issue on the home front as the Scripture teaches them how to love better.

And so I think this whole community of experiencing other people's lives and interpretations, and it really shows me how broad and specific and applicable and timeless Scripture is to various situations.

LA: I've participated in different sorts of Bible study groups over the years, and I've found that a lot of our discussions relate to the thing that brought us together. So if I'm in a parenting group, we'll read a piece of Scripture, and we'll probably talk about how God parents us, or how this relates to how we interact with our children. And I've also been in workplace groups that meet before work, and then we're talking together about the projects that we're working on together, especially if it's in the context of an employee resource group, we'll talk about the projects that we're working on together and any guidance that Scripture gives us and we'll pray together.

But something that I love about the public reading of Scripture, specifically for the workplace, is it exercises this muscle that we often don't use, which is relating the Scripture to what we're gonna do between 9:00 to 5:00 or between 8:00 and 4:00, whatever it is. Because we're often very used to saying, "How does this apply to my relationships? How does this apply to my family? How does this apply to my volunteering at Church?" We're less used to answering the question, "How does this apply to the work that I do in the secular workplace?" And yet that is such a rich area not only for interesting discussions, but for bringing the Scripture alive into the lives that we lead the majority of our days.

TC: Yeah. I'm a big-picture guy, right? And take a step back. And Jesus made all this pretty easy to understand. He was asked, "What's the most important thing that I need to know about life?" And his answer was, "You need to love God and you need to love other people." And so I don't put work in a box. Where Scripture comes in handy is, how does this help me love the people that I'm working with better? How should I treat the people that I'm working with? I think deep in the soul of every human is this desire to be known. So am I looking at my employees as just a cog in the wheel? Or am I really getting to know them?

And I think that's where being reminded regularly of, "Where is Scripture pointing me today to become better at loving the people that I'm going to encounter?"

And so I should be able to, as you think of the fruit of the Spirit, how can I be kind and gentle to people and understand that life is hard? And so it's easy to get wrapped up in ourselves. It's easy to get wrapped up in the bottom line. And when you throw pressure and time commitments and lack of sleep into the mix, it's really easy for us to not love well. And that's when we ask ourselves why we're turning to Scripture, we're turning to Scripture to understand our God better and to be able to appreciate his deep love for all of us, but then we're charged to pass that love along to other people. And I find that if I'm not regularly in Scripture, then I don't do that very well.

MR: That's great. So, you know, I think a question some listeners might be asking, and I'm gonna ask it and then suggest a couple thoughts, but either of you can add in. I think there are probably some people who say, "Well, that all is good, but can't I just open my Bible and read a few verses or read a lot of verses? Why listening?" And I think my answer would have several layers. One is, some people are really auditory learners. And for them, this is obvious like, "Wow, this is gonna be great." My daughter, when she was young, she could read just fine with her eyes, but she loved listening to books, and listening was huge and still is. So for her, this would be absolutely intuitive. That's number one. Number two, even for those of us who are not so much auditory learners, a person like me, as I said earlier, when you listen, it goes... It just... The truth goes in differently. It occupies different spaces of the brain. And because of that, number one, you might learn something or have an insight you wouldn't have had.

Or, and here's the other thing, there's literally the echoes. There's literally... Later in the day, Tom, you were talking about, in a situation, if you heard Scripture in the morning, literally the echo of a part of a verse can come into your head. And so it's a way to take it with you into the situation. So as you say, all of life, work being an important part of life. And of course, that can happen also with reading, but I think something special can happen when it's auditory, and then especially for those who are wired to learn that way.

TC: The one thing I'd add for me personally is, I am a better learner when I can read and listen at the same time. It just is more impactful to me. And yes, I can do that, and I do do that when I'm home and alone. But there's something about the structure of being together in a group that... Will I pour through three or four chapters of the Bible in one sitting? Will I regularly return to some of my favorite verses? Will I Google a topic and just spend time on a topic? What I love about public reading of Scripture is it gives me a greater exposure to more pieces of the Bible than I would naturally turn to. So there's something about the discipline of being in a group and diving through Scripture in bigger chunks than I would naturally do if I were home. I would naturally... And this is just me, but I probably wouldn't read three chapters of the Bible consecutively if I was just reading. But this combination of listening and reading, reflecting, it's made it easier for me to be exposed to more of the less popular pieces of the Bible, if you will.

MR: Yeah, that's a great insight. The thing I would add is that, as I've done this myself with people and then talked to many people who've done it, I'm just impressed with the diversity of experience. Some people will talk about, "The first time I did this, it's like the heavens opened up, and I felt so close to God." And then I know people... And honestly, I'd kind of be one of these people. It's like the first time I did public reading of the Scripture in a group, it's like, "Wow, my mind is wandering. I can't keep my head... " I mean, really, it was like a spiritual battle going on inside of me [chuckle] to pay attention. And so what I've heard from people is, for some, there's some learning involved. It's a developing of a practice. It's like any muscle. If you decide you're gonna go workout one muscle and you haven't worked it out for a while, it doesn't work great at first. So there's this development that comes. And so partly the encouragement then is, for some folks, you're gonna do great from the get-go. For others, it's like, yeah, maybe you need to sit with it for a while and do it. And over time, most folks will report that it becomes more and more important in their lives in very much the way you've described, Tom.

LA: I had this funny experience the first time that we did public reading of Scripture in my workplace. So we got together, we were having this... The Christians in my workplace were having a before-work meeting and someone said, "I want to try this new app where we listen to a couple of chapters of the Bible together. And we just sit here in silence, and we're gonna listen to these chapters of the Bible, and at the end we'll discuss how it applies to our work." So it was me and two of my co-workers, we're sitting there, someone has their phone in the middle, and we start listening to three chapters of First Samuel, I think it was. And we're listening and we're listening, and the only thing in my head is, "Look holy, look holy, look holy. Look like you're doing a great job listening.

So I had just had all this whole meta narrative in my head, and everyone else was looking way holier than I was. And then we got to the end and someone said, "So, how do you think this applies to the work we're doing today?" And there was a dead silence. And then my coworker goes, "Was that really in the Bible? [chuckle] That was really bloody, man. There's a lot of... There's a lot of yucky stuff." And then we kind of all laughed. Our entire reflection was, "Oh, wow, I've never listened to that much First Samuel before. It really goes fast. There's a lot of action. It could be an action movie. This doesn't sound very holy at all." And it was... There's just some... Sometimes I think my own conception of myself and what I think it means to be a good Christian needs to be knocked down a peg by actual encounter with Scripture. Mark, you were laughing at my story. Did you identify with that at all? [chuckle]

MR: Oh, I'm just reminded of how easy it is in some sort of... Whether it's a public reading of Scripture or corporate worship or a prayer meeting, we get worried about how we're looking, and are we holy enough and good enough? But thank goodness, God doesn't worry about such things. [laughter] But it just made me laugh that you're trying to find the appropriate posture of holy listening. Yeah. And...

LA: Like, you know, do I put my elbows on my knees? Do I put my head down... Do I look down? Do I look at the other people? I appreciate also that the Scripture doesn't change based on how I'm feeling or how I'm trying to project myself. The Scripture is the same as it has been as Christians have listened to it since they've started listening to it. And there's a power in that.

TC: And listen, different people, I think as we've already talked today, different people learn in different ways, right? And some people get more out of listening, and some people get more out of reading. Some people get more out of observing. But to me, the combination of reading and listening takes it to a whole new level. I think you talked about the posture of people as they're consuming Scripture, I do find it funny that you mention that because a number of people in our meetings are on Zoom. And what's interesting is, when we turn to the public reading of Scripture part, many of the people turn the video camera off so that they're not visible during the actual public reading part. And the Scripture itself is consuming 90% of the screen anyways, so we wouldn't be able to see people for the most part, but...

It is interesting, as you put Zoom into the mix here or some kind of video distribution, that a lot of people just turn the cameras off.

LA: It's a great blessing. [chuckle] There are certain moments in my life where I wish I could turn the cameras off, in real, in person interactions. So, we've talked a lot about the act of listening to Scripture in a group, our experiences. I wonder if we could turn a little bit to the impact...

Home stretch, like a few more questions and we're done, but I would hate to like have it cut off in the middle. So one last question I want to ask. We've talked a lot about the experience of public reading of scripture or the experience of listening to the Bible together in a group. I wonder if we could switch and talk about the impact. How have you seen it change either your own work or have impact in your own work or the other people in your group? Tom, I wonder if you have, I don't know, a particular story or kind of a sense of how the people in your group or even your own self have impacted your workplaces differently as a result of this practice?

TC: Well, absolutely. I'm trying to think of some specific stories. I think from a big-picture perspective, there are two, amongst many things probably, there's two key benefits of public reading of scripture. One is the word of God, being immersed in the word of God, and two is the community that forms when we gather together. And there's something about combining the two of those that allows us all to broaden our perspective and make us more impactful, I hope, in the marketplace. We had a woman who works at American Express, and she leads their employee resource group for Christians. And she talked about after the shooting in Israel, how their group called together the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian employee resource groups and prayed, and prayed for peace.

And so obviously we're constantly hearing in scripture about how to love our neighbor. But when we hear stories of how that love is put into action in the workplace and how powerful that was, and how employees of different faith backgrounds had come together and were all weeping over the pain and agony and hardship and war that was occurring. That gave everyone else the courage and the idea to think through, "How do I bring this to my work?" So it's not just the scripture piece of it. It's the gathering of community, and it's how we are interpreting scripture to our own lives, and what can we bring into the workplace to love people better and to show the love of Jesus to our co-workers? Because New York can be a pretty hostile environment. And I like to quote, if you looked at the top 10 Google searches of "Why are Christians so... Fill in the blank?" None of the top 10 searches would be anything that any of us would be proud of. They are none of the attributes that Jesus describes in scripture.

But the culture that we live in, and some for good reason, don't perceive, particularly in the financial services community in New York City, they're not perceiving Christians to be loving and kind, for example. So to the extent we can come to the workplace and be an attraction and be loving and kind. And one of our guys in the group gave me one of my favorite phrases of late. It's called "pain shared is divided and joy shared is multiplied". And to the extent we can be a community of believers turning to God's word, interpreting our lives, and life is cyclical. We're going to just like the business world that we're in, we're going to go through lows and highs in our personal lives.

We're gonna go through lows and highs in the workplace and doing that in community together to be an encouragement to each other, to be accountable to each other, to think through, "And what is Jesus really saying? What is the scripture really saying about this particular topic? Now, how can we go apply this to our workplace?" It makes us all better workers. That's like indisputable, that if we did a better job following scripture, life would be better, our entire life. It wouldn't be easy, because life is hard, but we would be better. We would do a better job at work. Life would be better. And so I think the community aspect is not just in sitting around a table and listening to God's word, but it goes far beyond that.

MR: You know, that makes so much sense. And I'm just imagining that there are folks listening right now who are saying, "OK, that sounds really good, but what should I do?" So my question to both of you is if somebody is out there and says, "Man, I love this, what should I do?" How would you respond?

TC: Well, the beauty of PRS and PRS.work, which is where it combines public reading of scripture with the theology of work, where they actually discuss the scriptures application to our workplace, is so easy. It's one click. That's the beauty is there's no preparation. It's two people can get together and it's public reading of scripture. And so, if you're interested and you want to do it, find a few people, get a conference room, schedule a time and go to PRS.work, and one click, and you're there. So I think they've made it very, very easy to do. There's not a lot of preparation. There's not a lot of planning that goes into it. And where two or more together, he is there. So it's not hard.

LA: So again, if you want to use the free video resources for public reading of scripture that Tom is talking about, you can go to www.prs.work where you can find all the resources you need for your group. They're all free. That's www.prs.work. And this conversation has been such a blessing. Tom Cole, thank you for being with us today and sharing your journey with PRS.

MR: Indeed, yes.

TC: Thank you. It's great to be with you. And I hope this just spurs some people on to give it a try, 'cause I must admit, when I first heard about public reading of scripture, I was like, "Well, I can read scripture at home. And this is just not something I need to put on my schedule." And I can tell you, it's one of the highlights of my week right now, just the opportunity to gather together and be in community with others, listening to God's word and trying, trying to put it into action.

LA: This is great. Tom, thank you again.

MR: Yes. Thank you.

TC: Thank you. Have a great day.