Central Bible Reading Plan Extending to Doctors in Georgia

Last week I received an email from a physician in Augusta, Georgia, asking if he could use our church’s Bible Reading Plans program with a group of physicians he leads!  In his email, he said that he is encouraging the physicians to be in the Bible daily, so he googled “Bible Reading Plans” (because if you want to know anything anymore, you google it, right?).  The Central Bible Reading Plan came up.

He liked what we were doing and wanted to adapt to his setting.  He asked if he could access previous reading plans and if he could have permission to use them.  Yesterday, I sent a zipped file of the whole folder containing every reading plan file we’ve used in the two years of doing this program, and committed to sending him the most recent plan for the next year, since our reading plan program goes through the whole Bible in 3 years (approximately).

Some observations about this situation:

1. It’s a good thing to share.  Some Christians and churches are reluctant to give away their resources.  It’s not wrong to accept payment for resources that you’ve put hard work into, but I think there is a heart issue with creating resources in order to profit off of them.  These reading plans aren’t an amazing creation that took so long to work on that we can’t just give them away.  I’m glad we can help.
2. I’m encouraged by a group of physicians being in scripture daily.  What a great way for these men and women to rely on the Lord in their very difficult work environments and highly stressful work.
3. The Word of God is everywhere and never returns void.  I know Georgia is not too far away from Ohio, but the fact is that what we do in Ohio can be directly translated to ministry in Georgia when it’s all about Scripture.  Why?  Because it means the same thing there as it does here.  Application might be different, but the meaning is the same.
4. It pays for churches to be online.  This is hopefully an obsolete statement by now, because I think most churches understand the importance of being online in an online world.  But if we weren’t online or only kept this program going “in-house” then this doctor wouldn’t have found it.

Any other thoughts or observations with this?

New Series: “Ruth: Unfolding the Story of Jesus”

I will not be preaching for the next two weeks, but when I return to the pulpit on June 27, I will begin preaching a new series in the book of Ruth.  Our church announcement page has the details.

I’m pretty excited about this series because Ruth is a book of the Bible that is rich in content and application for our lives.  It also points us directly to Jesus and makes the plan of salvation extremely clear.

I also issued “The Ruth Challenge” to our church yesterday as it is the new plan in the Central Bible Reading Plan.  The Ruth Challenge is to read the entire book of Ruth (4 chapters total) once a week for the next 3 weeks.  This will allow us to be saturated in the book and ready for the series starting June 27.  I asked our congregation to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the text of the book in new ways each time they read through the book.

I already heard one person tell me last night that she found it helpful in her first reading of the book (she did her first reading in one day!) to read from the perspective of Boaz, one of the characters.  This is always an interesting technique to use when reading scripture, especially OT narratives, because it will reveal new things you might not have caught before.

Take on the Ruth Challenge, and be ready to get into Ruth starting June 27 during worship at Central.

Thoughts on Acts

I just wrote a post on the Central Bible Reading Plan website with some thoughts on the book of Acts, the reading plan that we are finishing up tomorrow.  Information can be found on the site for the new reading plan starting this Wednesday on the Gospel and letters of John.  Read my post and find more info on this Scripture reading initiative by clicking here.

Updated Plan at Central Bible Reading Plan

Our church’s initiative to get people studying Scripture is starting up a new plan on Monday.  The current plan ends this Sunday.  The new plan is a 30 day journey through the book of Acts.

Go to the Central Bible Reading Plan website to access the plan and learn more about the initiative.  GET INTO SCRIPTURE!

New Post up for Central Bible Reading Plan

I just added my post to the Central Bible Reading Plan’s site today, sharing something that stuck out to me this week in the reading.  You can check it out at the site.  The main point- Jesus isn’t confined to our ideological boundaries.

Excited About a Great Start to the Central Bible Reading Plan!

A little screenshot of the reading plan site

Our church started a new initiative this week to read, learn, and live Scripture together. It’s called the Central Bible Reading Plan and has had a great start!

The initiative encourages everyone to read through the given plan, which each day’s scheduled reading is short enough to not be burdensome to those who have other daily devotional materials, and is not too long for those who are usually intimidated by reading Scripture together.

This type of initiative won’t work without accountability though.  So two levels of accountability has been set up.  One level is that Sunday School teachers will be asking each week in their classes how the reading is going.  This will also provide an opportunity for some to share what they’ve been learning.  The other level of accountability is online, at the Reading Plan’s website. The accountability here is that people can post comments on the site about what they’re learning.  It has already become a collection of thoughts and song lyrics for everyone to benefit from.  I will post a thought each week of something that stuck out to me in the readings for the week, which will then allow people to comment on that post.  Some have already commented and I haven’t even written yet!  Way to go church!

So how good of a start has it been?

We haven’t had a Sunday School gathering since we started this initiative this past Sunday, so we can’t know anything there yet.

But online, we’ve had a good turnout.

• Since Sunday, the plan’s website has seen 48 visits.  Not bad for a church of about 100 people, some of whom don’t regularly use the internet, and who have never tried a reading plan like this.
• There have already been 3 comments posted (with great thoughts too!), and my post for the week hasn’t gone up yet (although that’s not necessary for people to leave comments)
• 3 people have used the site to access the current reading plan in its pdf format.  Plans are available at the church building, but it’s also printable from the site.  So this tells me people are able to get what they need to do what they need to do.
• Just a note- if people don’t have the reading plan’s web address in front of them, they are finding it via our church website.

I’m excited about how this has started and even more excited about how it will continue to go from here.  So if you’re not reading, it’s not too late to start!