Mid term, I'd suggest having something that very slowly varys the pattern with a different harmonic (how that works is up to you, and depends on what's available).
Sometimes you want to stick to a theme, and skip from page to page, picking the next occurrence of "hope".
Sometimes you want to read a book lightly, experiencing it moving on at the same pace as the original listeners, and seeing how things join together, but letting the details wash over.
Sometimes you do want to start at a verse and go spinning off into modern culture immediately (or indeed you get plenty of studies that start at modern references and go back to scripture, sometimes less successfully than others).
Sometimes you want to spend moving slowly through a small section, last week we did "the" (it was evidently English), today is "beginning".
Sometimes (and probably most often) something more average.
None of these are sustainable by themselves.
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When I was young we had a book (I think it might have been "The Bible From Scratch"), that had cartoon pictures giving a very very fast overview.
(there was also the Lion Handbook and Man who moved the World cartoon and an RE schools textbook, and a few talks of varying quality).
Obviously something like those are extremely selective and vulnerable to stereotyping and forcing a narrative (similarly the ones that go at length about a small verse, obviously add a lot of the author to it)
I'm doubly tempted to read the NT in the light of Steve Chalke's oeuvre. In the light of the orthodox gospel of universal salvation and now the late re-realisation (no not the same stream twice!) of divine genius in Jesus' mission.
Comments
Sometimes you want to stick to a theme, and skip from page to page, picking the next occurrence of "hope".
Sometimes you want to read a book lightly, experiencing it moving on at the same pace as the original listeners, and seeing how things join together, but letting the details wash over.
Sometimes you do want to start at a verse and go spinning off into modern culture immediately (or indeed you get plenty of studies that start at modern references and go back to scripture, sometimes less successfully than others).
Sometimes you want to spend moving slowly through a small section, last week we did "the" (it was evidently English), today is "beginning".
Sometimes (and probably most often) something more average.
None of these are sustainable by themselves.
__
When I was young we had a book (I think it might have been "The Bible From Scratch"), that had cartoon pictures giving a very very fast overview.
(there was also the Lion Handbook and Man who moved the World cartoon and an RE schools textbook, and a few talks of varying quality).
Obviously something like those are extremely selective and vulnerable to stereotyping and forcing a narrative (similarly the ones that go at length about a small verse, obviously add a lot of the author to it)