year of biblical literacy

In 2016 we embarked on an adventure in the scriptures.  As a church we spent an entire year immersing ourselves in the Bible, grappling with the texts and exploring the big themes as we delved deeper into the story of God the Father and his people, seeing Jesus in it all, and allowing the Spirit to inspire, challenge and empower us to live for the sake of the world. This "year of biblical literacy" (affectionately known as "YOBL") was all about rooting ourselves in the Bible and living it out. 

We know that many of us want to read the Bible but don’t always know how to. And we know that when we understand what the Bible is, how it fits together, how to read it and how to let it shape our thinking/acting/praying, we come alive. “YOBL” is our attempt to facilitate this.  Our YOBL sparked new depths of faith in each of us and lead us out of the door to play our part in the ongoing story.

We’re in the process of repackaging all of this so others can use them in their context. Feel free to use any of our resources. Our YOBL was inspired, encouraged and resourced by Bridgetown Church who first did this.

There are four elements to YOBL:

1. Do it yourself

First up, we committed to reading through the entire 66 books of the Bible over the year. You can use a paper version of the reading plan or the brilliant app “Read Scripture” - it's free to download: click here for Android, or here for Apple. To help us along the way, we used the superb animations produced by The Bible Project which introduce each new book/section that we encounter in the reading plan. 

2. Sunday teaching

All our Sunday teaching over 12 months was under the banner of YOBL with different series charting our path and exploring the Bible in different ways. Some unpacked particular books or genres or themes, others delved into some of the key moments in the story of God. You can catch-up with all the YOBL talks here. And to help all this 'land' in our lives we set out follow-up material (further reading/questions/links) each week as part of our weekly eNews.

3. Engaging together

We produced simple resources to accompany each teaching series so that the various smaller communities within All Saints could track with the Sunday teaching and continue to engage through discussion, prayer and study together. These resources aren't prescriptive nor comprehensive but aimed to get our conversations going and give further space for all this stuff to get inside of us.

4. Take it further

Fourthly, we created some additional opportunities for us to go deeper through occasional lectures, workshops and a monthly Q+A podcast where we answered some of the questions that came out of all of this for us.