'How we examined the scriptures - every day'

Sandbach Baptist Church decided to undertake an adventure—in the form of a whole church Bible reading week. Secretary George Hill explains more

Our church family at Sandbach Baptist Church in Cheshire, encouraged by our minister the Revd Alistair Stewart, has always been rich in prayer.

We have two prayer meetings weekly (for evening folk and morning folk!); and on Sunday our service leaders and music group gather before the Lord ahead of worship.

God’s Word gives us our other focus: Alistair preaches strongly from Scripture; and many of us read the Bible in our daily quiet times.

However, most people use Bible reading notes—and therefore read just a few Bible verses, each day.

So, we decided to undertake an adventure—in the form of a whole church Bible reading week. This is a whole church exercise in pure Bible reading, not a series of Bible-based talks as held at conventions.

To facilitate this, I worked alongside Alistair to draw up a plan. It was circulated in our weekly emailed newsletter, with paper copies for those not online.

The plan highlighted Luke’s description of one church’s best practice in reading Scripture:

‘Now the Bereans were of more noble character than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.’ [Acts 17:11 (NIV)]

On each day of our chosen week (the one after Bible Sunday), our plan offered a choice of specified Bible passages, with six for each day—usually whole chapters. The daily selection was from the following:

1. a chapter from the Gospels;
2. a chapter from elsewhere in the New Testament;
3. a chapter from the Old Testament;
4. a Psalm or a chapter from Proverbs;
5. a famous passage from anywhere in the Bible (for those wanting to stay on homely ground); and
6. a short, entire book of the Bible (for the keen!).

 
More could be read, of course, by those with the time, or during subsequent weeks. The sets of readings were themed and the first day’s theme was ‘God’s Plan Throughout History’; themes on subsequent days included wise living, personal examples, testing, growing, the Cross, praise, and commitment.

We looked at the life of Jesus in the gospels and followed His journey from His birth through the parables and the Last Supper to the Resurrection. In the Gospels we also discovered the lives of Zechariah, Mary or Peter.

Our journey through the New Testament letters included Ephesians chapter 1 which begins what evangelical writer Jim Packer once called ‘the letter of the rich things’.

Other choices were Paul’s poignant last letter to Timothy, or Philemon, or 3 John.

Our Old Testament passages introduced us to brilliant human accounts such as Jethro’s mentoring of Moses in Exodus 18, Abigail’s wisdom (greater than David’s!) in 1 Samuel 25, and the books of Ruth and Haggai.

At the end of the week, we finished with Revelation 22 and then invited folks, as a real challenge, to read an entire Gospel in one sitting!

One aim was to encourage people to go beyond their favourite readings. And many Bible passages not only nourish us spiritually by pointing us to the Lord but are also really good stories. In the Bible’s wonderful accounts, we can see our own true reflections.

So how did our church react? On the following Sunday 11 February, with a full church congregation, we invited folks to feed back their thoughts; and this (slightly abbreviated) was what they said,

‘I found it a real blessing being able to look at a book in its entirety. I hadn’t looked at the book of Ruth for a while, or only in small sections, but to be able to read the whole book was brilliant. In Ruth we think about love but what came through to me was about kindness, so much kindness, that was a real lesson to me…’

‘I found it a real encouragement, it jogged me to reading bigger chunks after I’d deteriorated to just reading my Word for Today; and it was nice to have that impetus and have the encouragement and support that everyone was doing it…’

‘Normally I wouldn’t read a chunk. You don’t, do you? You just start to read little bits of the Bible. And as I read a whole chapter, I felt my heart sort of slow down; and then I really listened; and I really got drawn into the Scripture… a really good selection…’

‘I enjoyed the challenge of reading a Gospel in entirety and that was really helpful to me, to go from start to finish, and that was a real blessing…’

‘I can’t see to read my Bible; but I was audioed a whole lot of readings (by Whatsapp), which have been a real blessing to me.’ 


For those interested, the five-page PDF of our 2024 Bible Reading Week plan (with the reading list) can be downloaded from our church website at sandbach-baptist.org.uk  

Next year, we’re going to do the same again!


Image | Pexels
 

George Hill is church secretary at Sandbach Baptist Church, and a group leader of the Association of Christian Writers