|
The Bible Challenge: 2013!
Welcome, Bible Challenge participants, New and Returning! Thank you all for joining me, and thousands of others around the country and around the world in the Bible Challenge!
(If you engaged the Bible Challenge last year, but would like not to receive emails this year, please email me directly and I will remove you from this list.)
For starters: The Bible Challenge reading schedule may be found here...more resources to come below!
Because I am just returning from vacation, I have not had time to do much more than add our newest members to our email list (Welcome!). Fr Joe and I are still looking into the possibility of a blog or list serve--if the list serve will get us off and running more swiftly. (For transparency's sake, much of the content of this email is from last year... confessions of one facing her inbox upon return from a week away!)
This week's readings have taken us on a few adventures already... The two creation stories, Noah's ark, and soon we begin of the Abraham saga... some meaty psalms, and the Angel's visit to Joseph, the visit of the Magi, the flight to Egypt, Jesus' baptism, temptations, and soon we will find ourselves in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount.
If you'd like some context for these Gospel readings, I encourage you to take a listen in on David Moseley's series on the Gospel According to Matthew on our web Sermon Player. The first edition may be listened to here. You can find the rest of the series by going to the Sermon Player and putting "Moseley" in the search window on the player.
Since the Bible Challenge is mostly a practice of familiarity, of spending time with scripture, and not a Bible Study, per se, the readings may bring up many, many questions. That's great! If you'll email me your questions at I will do my best to answer them in an email to the group on a weekly basis. Last year's emails, and more resources for The Bible Challenge are found at www.stpetersdelmar.net/biblechallenge . In addition, the group that gathered at the end of our 2012 journey agreed that quarterly gatherings would be welcome-- so I will get on calendaring those, and let you know asap so you may save the dates.
Some additional resources... Forward Movement has published a wonderful Bible Challenge Companion that you may wish to purchase. It includes reflections by many church leaders, including our Bishop James Mathes, and the Archbishop of Canterbury-Designate, (++)+Justin Welby (he'll get all three +'s when he is enthroned on March 21...bit o'clerical trivia for those who like Anglican doo-dads...before the name for bishops, after the name for priests, and 2 for primates, 3 for Canterbury ;) ) But back to the Bible... One of your fellow journeyers suggested this resource for reading the Bible on your phone or tablets: http://www.youversion.com/ . Another site I like is http://www.biblegateway.com/ . I find that reading multiple translations of a tricky passage and seeing how different scholars and translators have interpreted it gives me a few lenses through which to make my own prayerful interpretation. In addition, this site, www.textweek.com has a wonderful Scriptural Index, which proved very very handy last year.
And if you'd like more secondary reading, I encourage you to visit our Parish Library, where there are many resources about the Bible in general as well as specific books of the Old and New Testaments.
Thank you for engaging this journey! It will be quite an adventure!
Peace,
Paige+ |
