This past Sunday at Life Valley Community Church, I shared a vision of what 2024 will look like for our church – preaching, small groups, and more. I’m calling this our “Year of the Bible”, and here’s how it’s a going to look for us…
Our preaching calendar across the year will walk through the entire story of Scripture, in 52 Sundays, from Genesis to Revelation. Now it’s not realistic to do justice to every single book, chapter, and verse of Scripture in just 52 weekly sermons, even if I covered an entire book every week. So the preaching calendar I have planned out isn’t attempting to do that. Instead, we’ll focus on the overarching “meta-narrative” of Scripture, with the goal of helping our people deeply grasp the overall layout, themes, and purpose of the Bible as one cohesive story. Of course, I will take special dedication in specific points to appreciate the deeper nuances of specific books and segments of the Bible. For example, we’re starting the year with a full 5 week series in Genesis, but we’ll also cover all of the Old Testament History of Israel in a 5 week series as well.
To fill in many of the gaps I couldn’t possibly preach over in a single year, we’ll also be leading our church through a One Year Bible Reading Plan, beginning January 1, 2024. If you want to join us and follow along, follow our church on the YouVersion Bible app. I love this plan because of how it systematically walks through Scripture, while breaking up Psalms and the Gospels across the year.
But we don’t want to just read the Word, we want it to take root in our hearts. So we’re also preparing a Scripture memory list, and challenging one another to learn dozens of verses to memory over the new year.
Additionally, we’re going to lead our small groups to dig deeper into the Word, especially in studies that we’ll touch on in the preaching, but not have the time to dig into more of the details for. It’s my hope to continue creating more Bible studies to engage our church – and other ministries – deeper into the Scripture.
The heart behind this is to sincerely know the “Word of Truth”. I have committed my life to learning, studying, and teaching the Bible. And it continues to open up to me in new, powerful ways. And this is what has compelled me to lead our church in this direction. Of course, we always teach and preach the Bible, but I want the Word of God to mean more to us than a long menu of seemingly disjointed stories and instructions. It is truly much more than that. And the magnificence and beauty of the Bible continues to blow my mind, even after 20 years of pastoral ministry.
I can’t wait to unpack the entire story of the Bible in a meaningful way this next year! You can catch our services and sermons here on Youtube.
Blessings,
Pastor John