President Bugbee teaching on violence in the Old Testament.
WINNIPEG – On the evening of Palm Sunday, 105 people from Winnipeg-area Lutheran Church–Canada (LCC) congregations met at Peace Lutheran Church to mark completion of six months in their two-year effort to read through the entire Scripture. Last fall, 150 participants committed to this spiritual discipline. Reports indicate that nearly all of them are remaining faithful to this daily habit, even though some were prevented from attending the Palm Sunday meeting.
The evening gathering was planned as an encouragement to participants, and to review the ground covered so far. Young-adult members of Peace Lutheran Church provided special music for the occasion, and a narrator traced the story of God’s mercies from creation through to the days of King Saul, which is roughly the place readers had reached by late March.
LCC President Robert Bugbee spent time grappling with a recurring question among the Bible readers—namely, why so much bloodshed and violence seems to mark the Old Testament record up to this point. In addition, the President provided a brief study on the Palm Sunday epistle (Philippians 2:5-11) to demonstrate how details of the Lord’s humiliation and exaltation can help shape the mind of Christ among His people, especially when tensions, jealousy, and other difficulties arise in a congregation or Christian family.
Many participants in the Winnipeg Bible reading effort have purchased copies of Today’s Light Bible from Concordia Publishing House, which includes a two-year table of daily readings. Others utilize the same reading schedule and apply it to Bibles they already own. Winnipeg-area pastors have been encouraging their members in the effort, and a number of parish-based Bible classes and Bible-reading groups have come into being in the six months since the project began.
“I told the participants quite frankly,” relates President Bugbee, “that I’m not encouraging them merely to read Scripture once through to earn some sort of ‘merit badge’ or to be able to boast later that they did this a single time in the past. I’m urging them to keep reading and reading for the rest of their lives. The Lord will use a stronger Biblical literacy among our people to deepen their sense of stewardship, to create an outreach heart and mind in our local churches, to help us overcome conflict when it arises, and to equip believers to cope with the ongoing spiritual decay in Canada.”
If other circuits and/or regions in LCC wish to implement this approach in their part of the country, they are encourage to contact Iris Barta (pres_sec@lutheranchurch.ca) at the LCC national office in Winnipeg.