Our Rector, clergy and Spiritual Formation Committee invite you to make a spiritual New Year’s Resolution to read the entire Bible in 2020! The Rev. Marek Zabriskie started The Bible Challenge ministry in 2011, and since then over one million people have participated across the United States and around the world. Join us! The Challenge begins on January 5.
By signing up below, you will receive a short weekly email to support you in reading the Bible this year.
DOWNLOAD The Bible Challenge App
iPhone users | Android users
(Includes daily Bible readings)
OR
PURCHASE The Bible Challenge Book + Bible (Available at Dogwood Books & Gifts)
Go at your pace.
Read the meditations in The Bible Challenge book, edited by the Rev. Marek Zabriskie, alongside the Bible passages outlined for you.
Join the Conversation:
In person:
Join us for one of our weekly Bible study offerings or small group check-ins, and/or join us on Sunday mornings for the Forum series. Or, invite your friends and family to join you in the Bible Challenge, and create your own study group!
For young families:
Families and children are encouraged to participate in a version of the Bible Challenge through the Children’s Ministries newsletter. Each month, families will receive weekly readings and discussion questions that your family can do together. Sign up for our Children’s Ministries newsletter here.
Bible Challenge Check-Ins
January 13 – February 6
Members of our clergy team invite you to join them for small group discussions as we make our way through the Bible.
No questions are too small. No prior sign-up necessary.
Sunday Forum
January 19
The Old Testament in 40 Minutes
The Rev. Terry Elsberry will lead this session with a presentation from his book “The Bible in 60 Minutes.” Through his presentation, Terry will show us how the Bible stories we’ve heard fit together and reflect God’s long-term purpose and overarching plan for humanity. We’ll hear how the holy men and women of old were, like us, flawed individuals. Yet God loved them and used them to carry out His plan. Terry presents the Old Testament as a single narrative; along the lines of the troubadours of old who kept their folk history and cultural traditions alive by telling stories.
January 26
Torah Study: The Heart and the Arrow of Jewish faith and practice.
Judaism values the study of Torah (the first five books of the Bible) to be the highest of Jewish religious practices. Knowledge, gained through study, is the foundation of all other Jewish engagements and ethics. Rabbinic text teaches that the study of the Torah is equal to the performance of all other religious righteous acts, because study leads to those practices. Join Rabbi Gregory Marx as he examines the principles of Jewish study and immerse yourself in an authentic Jewish textual study. Rabbi Marx is an amazing orator and religious leader. He is a close friend of our Rector and has served for 30 years as the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Beth Or in Ambler, Pennsylvania.
February 9
Making Sense of the Historical Jesus
The fact that four canonical gospels tell different versions of the life and teaching of Jesus has for almost two hundred years raised the issue of how best to describe the “historical Jesus.” This talk will review some of the main points of the debate and some of the most convincing current opinions. Professor Harry Attridge, former Dean of the Yale Divinity School and a renowned New Testament scholar will led us.
February 16
The Psalms: The Heart of the Bible
Just as individual psalms appear daily throughout the Bible Challenge, their emotion-filled and poetic expressions of gratitude and loss offer a human pulse that animates each day’s juxtaposition of Old and New Testament prose, the book of Psalms stands at the very center of the Christian Bible. In this session we will probe the very heart of scripture, considering how Hebrew poetry works, pondering the modes of intimacy between God and creation revealed in the Psalms, and reflecting on how the Psalter as a whole sketches the outline of human life. This session will be led by Gregory Mobley, Professor of Hebrew Bible and Congregational Studies at the Yale Divinity School.
February 23
Caravaggio: Bringing the Gospels to Life in Paint
No other painter in the history of art used the subject of the gospels to such powerful and dramatic effect as Caravaggio, as he brought scenes such as The Calling of Saint Matthew, Doubting Thomas and The Taking of Christ to life. An in-depth discussion of these exceptional depictions of Christ and his followers allows us to see how Caravaggio makes these moments in the Bible relatable and inspirational to viewers from the late sixteenth century to today. Page Knox is much loved lecturer in and around Greenwich and an adjunct professor in the Art History Department of Columbia University. She also gives public gallery talks and lectures at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.