Through all of the excitement of deciding to host the Bible in 90 Days challenge and the Blogging Thru the Bible in 90 Days promotion, enlisting bloggers to help and watching so many participants join, I forgot to share how the program was started in the first place. And I do apologize because I think you should know.
It’s been a lot of fun reading emails and tweets from people who have found a variety of resources on-line, from the reading plans to iPhone apps to listening plans, as I know all of those resources stemmed from one man’s question and determination to find the truth.
Several years ago Ted Cooper, who is now a friend of mine, was happily Agnostic. But then his kids started asking questions. And he started to wonder. And he wanted to just put the whole thing to rest. So he decided to find the quickest easiest way to find the answers to his questions and decided to read the whole Bible, cover to cover. He found an NIV thinline (fewest footnotes, large type yet still small enough to be very portable), counted the pages and divided by about 3 months. And off he read. And half-way through the Old Testament he became a Christian.
I’m sure you can imagine that this experience was life-changing for him in more ways than one. He quit his job and made it his mission to help others also read the Bible in 90 days.
He assembled study notes to go along with the reading, week-by-week, and convinced someone at his church to prepare a weekly discussion applicable to what the reading would be week to week. And he asked if the church where he had attended for years would allow the curriculum to be offered. And, thus, Bible in 90 Days was born.
I was fortunate to go through one of the classes just before I moved out to the suburbs… and brought the curriculum with me to my new church. At first we used photocopied notes in blue notebooks and watched a rough cut of a video which was shot live for another group Sunday morning. We used that same blue NIV Thinline Ted had used with the reading schedule taped into our Bibles.
He insisted we use that official Bible, which was the same one he had used… and almost all those that did succeeded.
Since then, Zondervan has picked up the program and is publishing the curriculum and it is used in about 250 churches nationwide. They developed more videos to go with the program. They also replaced Ted’s blue NIV from their line-up with a Bible in 90 Days Bible featuring page markers for the daily reading. (And they did so at a very reasonable cost.)
There have been small groups, large groups, church-wide groups and even community reading groups. And now you’ve been invited to join our online group. At last count there were well over 100 participants, with more than 50 bloggers also sharing the challenge on their blogs.
Every 90 day program you see out there for reading the Bible stemmed from Ted’s questions and determination. And I, for one, am so thankful he pursued those questions in a diligent way and sought out truth… and then shared his process with us.
Had it not been for his program, I know I would not be the only one out there still struggling to read the entire Bible… someday.
So there you have it! Hope to see you back here January 1 when we begin the challenge together!
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