Letting the Bible Transform Your Church

The Bible can transform our lives. It also can transform your church. The past year was phenomenal for our congregation. David Petro, our Minister of Education, gave us a novel idea: He suggested we “read the Bible.” Seriously, his idea was that we—the entire congregation—covenant together to read the Bible through during the year. We had a commitment service the first Sunday in November, and every member committed to read the Bible through in a year beginning on Jan. 1. In our staff discussions, we took David's idea to task. The one thing we knew for sure was that if we read the Word of God, it would change our lives. We wanted to saturate ourselves with God's Word, believing it would help us understand better the Bible and God's covenant with us. After weeks of discussion, we decided to use Alan B. Stringfellow's Through the Bible in a Year as a general guide and study outline for our reading plan.
The Bible is divided into two “covenants” of God with man, so we decided to call it “The Covenant.” Our goal was to learn how God developed the Old Covenant and brought His plan to completion in the New Covenant in Christ Jesus. This required careful consideration and planning. The plan developed in this way:
Year One: THE COVENANT
1) Every member was given a copy of Through the Bible in a Year and asked to commit to reading through the Bible within the year according to the schedule.
2) Sunday School teachers were asked to give an overview of the book we read that week. The teachers felt threatened by this until they fully understood their assignment; it is difficult to go from exegetical teaching to giving an overview of many books. Genesis, for example, has 50 chapters, so you must stay focused on giving an overview of how God began the covenant with the first fathers after the sin of man. Once the teachers understood the task, they complied with the plan willingly and have done a wonderful job.
3) The pastor was to preach a sermon from the book of the week. He was not to try and teach the book—his goal was to find a passage that spoke to the need of this covenant being active in the lives of the members each day.
4) With all this, we did not feel there was the saturation we envisioned. What would we do with all the questions that would be raised in the reading of an entire book in one week? When do you talk about ways to let the covenant affect your life? Many questions and ideas can come from just one verse.
We looked at having small groups of 10 or 12 discuss the readings each week. Even this presented a challenge; we are committed to preserving family time with minimal extra church meetings. Therefore, we entertained the idea that we could do this on Sunday evenings instead of holding our regular worship service. After getting through the discussion of not having an evening service at the church, we began to see the benefit of small fellowship groups in which covenant

Jerry Sosebee
Pastor, Northside Baptist Church, Rock Hill, South Carolina