Colossians 1 - my attempt at a paraphrase/translation in common English.

1. Paul, appointed by God as a representative of the Champion, Jesus, together with Timothy our teammate,
2. to the Champion's faithful teammates in Colossae:  May you know the gracious acceptance and peace of God our Father.
3. Whenever we pray for you, we thank God, the Father of our Commander, Jesus the Champion,
4. for we have heard about your confidence in the Champion Jesus and your love for his team,
5. Your confidence and love spring from the anticipation you have for all the good prepared for you in heaven, which you learned about from the authoritative source, the Good News,
6. which is changing lives throughout the world even as it has changed your lives since you truly grasped the message of God's generosity
7. which our much-loved coworker Epaphras delivered to you.  He serves the Champion faithfully by serving you
8. and has told us about the love God's Spirit has created in you.
9. Ever since he told us, we have asked God in our prayers to give you all the spiritual wisdom and understanding needed to fully know His will,
10. so you will be able to live the kind of lives that reflect well on the Commander, pleasing him in every way, accomplishing all the good that he intends, and coming to know God better and better.
11. May the Father, out of his magnificent resources, strengthen you with all the power you need to joyfully and patiently persevere,
12. as you thank him for allowing you to share in his team's shining inheritance.
13. He has rescued us from the control of darkness and placed us under the rule of the Son he loves,
14. who has freed us from our debt by securing the forgiveness of our unmet obligations to God.
15. Though we can't see God, His Son, whom he has placed in charge of creation, shows us what God looks like.
16. For through the Son and for his sake God created everything in the spiritual and physical realms, whether visible or invisible, including every kind of spiritual power.
17. The Son is the foundation of everything, and he holds everything together.
18. He is the head of his team, the church.  Everything has its beginning in him, including life after death, so he towers over everything.
19. Everything that God is, the Son also is,
20. and it was by bleeding and dying on the cross that the Son ended creation's rebellion and made peace between God and his creation.
21. You, who were part of that rebellion, rejecting God and doing what he hated,
22. are included in the peace that the Son made through his death on the cross, so you are now clean and innocent and fit for God's presence---
23. if, of course, you keep relying confidently on the Son to secure for you the good that is promised in the gospel that was announced to you and to all creation, the gospel that I, Paul, serve.
24. This service involves suffering for your sake, which I am glad to do, for it completes the work that the Champion's suffering did for the sake of his team, the church.
25. God gave me the responsibility of serving you, his church, by fully and accurately delivering to you his message,
26. which reveals to us, his team, a secret that has been unknown until now.
27. God has decided to tell us that he is offering something of immeasurable value and beauty to everyone regardless of nationality, namely the presence of the Champion in them, enabling them to look forward with anticipation to all of the good that heaven offers.
28. We tell everyone about him, doing our best to warn and encourage them, so that we may present them as well trained members of the Champion's team.
29. I work hard at this, laboring with all the energy which he pours into me.