Several years ago, Trinity adopted the ESV Bible as our primary translation for teaching and preaching. It may be helpful to know why we made that move. So, here's a brief answer, along with a link to why others use the ESV Bible.  

A good Bible translation should be literal and readable. 

  Literal

Some translations are not literal enough. They take liberties with the text. They add or take away words in order to explain the author's meaning. But that makes the translators' idea clear rather than the biblical author's idea. Some translations take liberties with the text, either adding or hiding words unnecessarily. A Bible translation should show the reader what the biblical author wrote, doing so without interpretation.

   Readable

A translation also needs to be readable. Some translations are more difficult to read because they use outdated language (such as the King James Version) or because they are overly wooden (such as the New American Standard). 

Balancing literalness and readability is what makes Bible translation so difficult. It's also what makes some translations preferable over others. At Trinity, we've found the ESV to be faithful to the author's original words (literal) while also being easy to understand (readable). 

Of course, we don't mandate what Bible our folks use, but it is the translation from which most of our public teaching comes. 

This article from Kevin DeYoung helped us in deciding which version we would use.