Bible Aloud Completed

Tonight we completed reading the whole Bible out loud at St Felix. We had to fit it around the existing church commitments; African Drumming, Women’s Institute, Wriggly Worship and of course Sunday morning Services. Yes you did read that right African Drumming, a small group of enthusiasts are learning to enjoy African Drumming on Monday evenings, in the church hall, apparently the acoustics are really good, and it’s very therapeutic! They’ve been at it for a year, but newcomers are welcome; 7:30 to 9pm pay as you go!

We started two weeks ago after the Sunday service, and we will read the last chapter this coming Sunday which is the first in Advent; the first of the four Sundays before Christmas. As an added celebration we are having a ‘bring and share’ lunch, after the service. Food is an important part of Christianity, Jesus performed many miracles at meals; the first miracle was the turning of the water into the finest wine at a wedding feast.

Thanks to Rachel for championing this project, and to Sarah for making sure everybody knew what they were going to read and when, and of course a big THANK YOU to all those who read, especially those who don’t regularly attend St Felix.

If you want to read the whole Bible in your church, our pdf timetable is a good starting point. I used Excel to create our timetables, and automate the generation of the reading list. We plan to do this again next year so I’m going to create a flexible version, that can cope with variable start and stop times; so if you’re interested keep your eye on this blog or St Felix web site.

Bible Aloud end of week 1

Well a whole week has gone by and, as far as I know, everyone turned up when they were suppossed to! Everyone I've spoken to has said what a worthwhile event it has been, and there's talk of doing it again next year!
By setting it so each slot should be no more than 15 minutes reading there are 354 slots; one person has requested the reading list so she can use it to read through the Bible in a year. Which I think is a great idea. Most people can manage to find a spare 15 minutes each day. And with only 354 readings, you can even afford to miss a few days, and still get through it in a year. For those who like reading I'm going to work out a reading plan based upon 30 mins and 1 hour at a time. Imagine what reading the whole Bible through every 3 months would do for your relationship with God. This event is not just about reading for the sake of reading, it's about proclaiming God's word in God's house. His word is vibrant and practical, I was listening to Rachel reading from Leviticus 14 where it talks about 'infectious skin diseases' and isolating a person for seven days, it goes on to talk about bodily discharges, and washing even the clothes and things a person sat on, and breaking pots etc that were touched. This is approx 14 hundred years BC; and yet when I look in Wikipedia I find the contagious nature of infectious wasn't discovered until more than a thousand years AD

Abū Alī ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) discovered the contagious nature of infectious diseases in the early 11th century. He introduced quarantine as a means of limiting the spread of contagious and infectious diseases in The Canon of Medicine, circa 1020. He also stated that bodily secretion is contaminated by foul foreign earthly bodies before being infected, but he did not view them as primary causes of disease.

When the Black Death bubonic plague reached al-Andalus in the 14th century, Ibn Khatima and Ibn al-Khatib hypothesized that infectious diseases are caused by "contagious entities" which enter the human body. Such ideas became more popular in Europe during the Renaissance, particularly through the writing of the Italian monk Girolamo Fracastoro.

Such things make you wonder, should we pay more attention to God's commands and Laws?

Bible Alound

It's started!!!!
After a great service, and a fabolous puppet show Rev Janice rushed the end of this morning service. In her excitment she nearly forgot the words of the blessing!
But at 12 O'clock today Rev Janice started at Genesis 1v1 and Rachel will finish todays session, reading Leviticus 11 to 13 at 8:45 to 9pm. Then day one will be over. My first session is 7:15 tonight, it'll be interesting to see how many people are there!

Bible Aloud

Our Marathon Bible Reading is drawing closer, we have just 6 slots left to fill, and I know they will soon be taken, and not by Rev. Janice. These last few days have been a real team effort, drawing on our different skills, and availability; Rachel (who initially had the vision to do this), has been 'doing the rounds' encouraging people from the other local churches to join with us. Rachel was passing on names and times, to me to add to my spreadsheet; but having just moved house, she temporarily has other pressing demands upon her time. To make life easier I automated combining the plan based upon times and the contacts sheet, into a list based upon names; which Sarah has taken and used to mail merge into emails and letters, so everyone should soon know exactly what they are reading and when. Matthew created our Bible Aloud logos and manages the church web site, created a Briefing Sheet, so now we everyone doing a reading know exactly what is expected of them. It promises to be a great two weeks, and if you can make the time, we will be thrilled to see you, and read to you. The readings (except Psalm 119!) should take less then 15 minutes, each session starts on the quarter hour, feel free to come and go as your schedule allows. If you want to know what's being read when then this pdf has the answers.

Thanks Tony

I’d just settled in to work, sorting out a new starter, and I get a phone call, “Help the car won’t start”, I’m 15 miles away, what am I supposed to do? We have one of those portable car emergency batteries indoors, but since we moved I’m not sure where the charger for it is and it was only only half charged. Anyway once, under instruction, my wife had managed to open the bonnet, and connected the portable battery, she was sorted,  I wish! As half expected, it made no difference.

Fortunately I have a copy of our Church Directory on my work PC, we do have a paper copy somewhere at home, but the important word here is ‘somewhere’, so needless to say my wife couldn’t find it. But a few calls later, and a night in shining armour turns up, with some jump leads, he had turned his garage out to find them.

Thanks Tony, much appreciated, mate.

p.s.
it turns out the battery was dying, but now we have a new one J

Moving

Yesterday 27 people moved house!
More precisely 27 people helped one family move house.
In a massive family effort in one morning we moved Rachel from out in the sticks into the heart of Rendlesham. There had obviously been plenty of prior work, as one couple were storing 30 boxes of stuff in their house, waiting for us to move all Rachel's furniture etc over; and sorting that lot took the rest of the afternoon.

Many thanks were expressed by Rachel during this mornings service, for everyone's hard work.

St Felix is a family church and when a family member asks for help, or obviously needs it; if other family members can meet those needs, then they do. As well as physically moving stuff, some helped with the cleaning, some provided food (the spicy apple chutney was a real treat), and tea makers are always welcome!

In the Bible it says the early Christians were known for their love one for another, hopefully, in that respect, St Felix is like the early church. You're welcome to come and find out for yourself.

Bible Aloud

We're making great progress in filling all 354 slots for our marathon 88 1/2 hour reading of the whole Bible. We start at midday, straight after the mornig Service, on the 15th November, and allowing for existing church events, (and sleeping!) we will carry on until 9pm on Thursday the 26th. With the very last chapter of Revelations being repeated during the following Sundays service; which just happens to be the first Sunday in Advent.

Over 90% of the slots have been filled, just 33 left of which Rev Janice Leaver is able to do all but 4. There are many reasons for this project and one of them is to encourage us 'non professional Christians' to read more of the Bible ourselves.

The actual reading times are available via this pdf