Read the Bible with… Mike Bird

Mike is a lecturer in theology at Ridley College in Melbourne. He enjoys running, rugby league, and tennis.

Where do you live and go to church?

I live in Doncaster, Melbourne and I’m an assistant curate at St Mark’s Reservoir in North Melbourne.

Name a Bible character you resonate with and why.

Judas Iscariot. We both have red hair.

What are you reading in the Bible at the moment?

Revelation.

Where do you read the Bible?

In my office at Ridley College, at my office at home, with my children, in bed, and at church.

What’s one thing from the Bible that’s stuck in your brain at the moment?

What the apostle Paul meant when he said: “Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what counts” (1 Cor 7:19). Oh, and how to preach this text in church: “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses” (Ezek 23:20).

Name one part of the Bible you keep coming back to again and again and why.

Paul’s claim that he has been crucified with Christ (Gal 2:20) since it wonderfully sums up our identity as those tethered to Christ.

Describe one of your Bible reading failures and what you learnt.

When I read Psalm 23 for the first time I could not figure out why I didn’t want the Lord to be my shepherd – “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” Thankfully I later read a translation that said, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.”

What advice would you give someone struggling to read the Bible each day?

Everything takes discipline and practice. If you want to grow in wisdom and knowledge of God, then you need to commit yourself to reading God’s word every day, even if it is only one pericope or paragraph.

And just for fun, if you were a monster what would be your defining feature?

I would have retractable claws made of adamantium and travel around the world in a super-jet fighting bad guys.

Bird lg