Guest Blogger Series: Rebekah Abel Lamar and the BIBLE
Guest Blogger Series: Part 4 
This is the fourth post in a guest blogger series on the Bible. To see all the Bible posts in one window click here.
Year of the Bible
by Rebekah Abel Lamar
Decatur Presbyterian Church has named 2008 the “Year of the Bible.”
“That’s funny,” you might say, “Shouldn’t every year be the Year of the Bible?” Well, yes, but this year is different. This year our church has taken on the challenge of reading through the Bible by the end of the year. About a third of our members have committed themselves to this task. The pastors have left the lectionary in order to preach from the texts that people are reading each week. Six new Bible study opportunities began this month to go along with the effort, and a Year of the Bible family devotional guide has been distributed.
These programs are great, and programming is a huge part of what I do. However, the reason that the Year of the Bible is so exciting is not anything I can program. It is less planned and less defined. It is a family reading the Bible together, the youth showing off her brand new Bible, the young professional reading the Bible on his blackberry on work trips, the stay-at-home mom looking forward to her Bible reading at the end of a long day, the elder opening his meetings with devotions from his readings, the retired couple reading scripture aloud to one another after dinner each night. It is also the conversations and questions about the Bible that are happening inside and outside of the church daily.
I have been excited about it for months and the response has been better than I ever hoped for. However, there is a question that routinely gnaws at the back of my mind:
How will the Year of the Bible change our church?
It is a question that scares me, really. For all the planning I have done, I really have no idea what the results of the Year of the Bible will be. What I do know is that the Bible is a radical book which calls people to do radical things and that it could change us in ways that I don’t expect and may not like.
So, I have stopped praying for the program to go well. I think I prayed this when I foolishly assumed that I had something to do with the outcome. Now I am just praying that we have the courage to follow where it leads us.
Rebekah Abel Lamar is Director of Christian Education at Decatur Presbyterian Church in Decatur, Georgia. You can find a pdf of their Year of the Bible readings on their website.
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Sounds like a great program. I couldn’t find the PDF files on the website…which tab is it under?
It is probably a good sign that you are a little “scared”. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be taking either the Holy Spirit or the Word seriously.
I think it is an important ministry though. So many presbyterians rely on what other people tell them the Bible says, rather than reading it for themselves. I hope this works out well.
A link to the pdf is on the homepage. You can click the link just under all the tabs. I hope that this time next year I can report about some amazing things happening in and around DPC.
Thanks for the great post, Rebekah. I’m especially struck how intergenerational the Year of the Bible is. Too often, churches get split into age-groupings, or coffee clubs, or cliques of some sort and forget their connections to each other.
Gathering together around the Word is perhaps the most central act of being Christian together. I look forward to seeing how this year’s emphasis plays out.
Rebekah/Adam — This is good. Real good. A church should be so intentionally focused on the Word.
Last year at Rockville we did the “Bible in 90 Days” twice. In the Winter and again in the Fall. A very powerful experience for many in our congregation. and very interesting the variety of people who signed up and participated from the long timer to the guy way out on the periphery. We saw that God’s Word was indeed for all people and speaks to us wherever we may be on the journey.
There were many powerful testimonies about the experience — one was of a long time, older member who has served in many capacities of leadership who shared that she had never read all of Scripture before and was humbled by the experience and could only say to others – - “don’t wait as long as I did.”
And then a man, new to our church, who had been through much personal turmoil said that he had always had a “back pocket” religion. He figured when he needed it he could pull it out. But when he had a personal crisis in his life he found that his back pocket faith was totally inadequate. he really didn’t have any kind of relationship with the Lord, nor did he know the Bible. He did the 90 day reading. At the end he shared that his back pocket faith was now breast pocket faith – God’s Word and a relationship with Christ were close to his heart. It was an incredible experience. And so simple to do.
The Bible is the perfect revelation of God to us and it will transform us. I think that’s where a lot of people don’t want to get to close to it because they really don’t want to be changed.
Finally, whether you are doing a plan like “90 days” or some other reading set-up the goal is not to only read the Bible from start to finish but to cultivate a life-long love of God’s Word and the daily discipline of Bible reading.
Sorry to be such a long commentator!