Cary church encourages Bible reading

CARY -- The reading assignment this past week was massive: The end of the Book of Daniel, the books of the 12 minor prophets and most of the Gospel of Matthew.

The readers, members of Kirk of Kildaire, a Presbyterian church in Cary, aren't full-time students, either. They have demanding jobs, homes full of children, engagements to keep.

But these church members have taken on a unique challenge - reading the entire Bible in 90 days. They started Jan. 3. They'll be done April 4, Easter Sunday.

As anyone who has taken a foray into the books of Leviticus or 2 Chronicles can attest, the readings are not always page-turners. And as Brett Mastalli, a member with 3-year-old triplets at home can tell you, keeping up isn't easy; catching up is even harder.

Nevertheless, 175 Cary Presbyterians signed up for the marathon reading assignment.

The project is the brainchild of Ted Cooper Jr., a Houston businessman who gave up his day job as a computer software consultant in 2002 to run a full-time ministry. Cooper offers resource materials and DVDs to support the challenge. Some 600 churches have so far bought the curriculum, including Bibles with large, 12-point fonts and no footnotes.

"It's our Scripture and we need to know it," said Susan Mazzara, one of the Sunday school teachers. "We need to be able to say, 'I read this book.' "

At a Sunday school class this week, Mazzara asked class members to pick one of the 12 prophets they read and jot down the dates the book was written, the audience the prophet was speaking to, and the major themes or images used.

As they scribbled the answers on large sheets of paper taped to the walls of the classroom, members got a chance to make comparisons and consider what these ancient men were trying to tell the backsliding people of Israel.

"Maybe we don't worship idols, but we're making the same mistakes," said class member Anne Shambley.

Few have read it all

Examining the broad scope of the Bible is something few churchgoers experience. Sunday school classes typically select a book or two and go through it methodically. The conservative Bible Study Fellowship, an independent nondenominational course, can take eight years but doesn't examine the entire Bible.

The advantage of the 90-day program is that it gives a quick overview in a short time. The prepackaged materials divide the New International Version of the Bible into 12-page daily increments, or 84 pages a week.

Still, even this run-through has prompted some powerful questions from churchgoers at Kirk of Kildaire, said the Rev. Jody Welker, the pastor who first suggested the exercise.

One person told Welker he noticed while reading the laws in Leviticus that we "pick and choose what laws to follow." Another said he was horrified by how bloody the conquest of Canaan really was.

"Is the God we worship the same one who calls us to wipe out other people?" the church member asked Welker. The pastor responded that the Bible is in "conversation with itself." While the Moabites are enemies of the people of Israel in one book of the Bible, another book contains a beautiful narrative about a Moabite woman named Ruth who becomes the grandmother of King David.

Learning the rules

Those kinds of questions may not have been what Cooper, the founder of the 90-day ministry, had in mind. An agnostic when he first read the Bible in 1999, Cooper became a believer halfway through his first reading. In 2002, he quit his consulting job to launch a ministry that would help others access the book.

"Life is God's game," said Cooper, 54. "We need to know what are the rules of this game. There's really no other place to get that."

Cooper said the purpose of developing his program was not so much to convert agnostics, such as he used to be, but to give Christians a better tool for understanding their faith.

"I was extremely surprised that laypeople said not, 'Why did you do it?' but 'How did you do it?'" Cooper said. "Anecdotally, only one in 50 people who start off reading the Bible actually finish it."

Mastalli, the father of the triplets, said he took up the challenge as a New Year's resolution that has also turned into a Lenten exercise. The goal was not to become a biblical scholar, he said, so much as to read the entire book.

"It's something I've always wanted to do," said Mastalli of Apex. "Personally, it's a test."

But Welker, who fashioned his sermons to reflect on material churchgoers will be reading in the week ahead, said the best thing to come out of it has been the camaraderie.

"It's fun to have casual conversation over the same thing," he said. "There's a synergy that was unexpected. We're doing this together."