The Magazine

I remember at Sunday school singing “the best book to read is the Bible”! How does this relate to the digital age in which we live? Doing a lot of traveling in my job, I spend a lot of time listening to audio books, the Bible being one of them. Although I still think nothing compares to turning a page and reading what comes next.

I had a revelation a few years ago while in Jerusalem on Temple Mount: I witnessed lots of small groups gathered around listening and then all speaking. It transpired they were learning the Quran, the traditional way. Jesus explained gospel truths in the oral tradition 2000 years ago. How did we lose a love for retelling stories? When did we lose a love for reading? Can we tell the story in a different way, or is it the story that we have to live out?

When I was a Counties evangelist in West Norfolk one of the things that I enjoyed was putting the stories I had grown up loving into interesting ways that children would enjoy. I used paint-boards, flannelgraphs, puppets and magic. These can seem old-fashioned for those who grew up with these but in a digital age they are a fresh revelation to many. My new job running the Life Exhibition uses a mixture of old and new media to speak out the Bible to thousands of children every year. If we can immerse ourselves in God’s word it won’t take much for it to seep out and affect the lives of those around us.

“66 books, 1089 chapters, 72 hours cover to cover”: that’s what it says on the label of my audio Bible. I try and read the Bible though every year and am thankful we have the freedom to read it but how does it affect my life, my daily walk, my family and friends?

How does all of this fit with my role as coordinator for the Life Exhibition? I am passionate about the Book and want to get it into as many hands as possible. Moving from local evangelist to national coordinator seemed a good step forward and with Life Expo being not “the Word made flesh” but the “word made tech” it was a good move. Life contains both Old and New Testaments, the life of Jesus, what he said and did, his death and resurrection, presented using a variety of media to pupils in primary schools (mainly in Y5 & Y6) on android tablets.

One thing I am often reminded of is the way God often unexpectedly reveals new things to me, things I’ve never seen but read a hundred times. “One generation shall tell another” and, as a new grandparent in an age of biblical illiteracy, “I need to become all things to all men” both ancient and modern.