Outside of the Bible, What Is the Most Important Piece of Christian Literature Printed Today?

In my position with the Witt Company, I communicate with church professionals every day. Recently, many of you have stated that the size of your congregations have been "holding steady" while some have said, "we are getting a little smaller" so I started doing some research. I wanted to find some valuable information to help you build your congregations. I was fortunate to discover a book written by Yvon Prehn and called her. She is based here in Southern California. Yvon was very gracious with her time and she granted her permission to share some terrific information with you that I am presenting below. In the coming weeks, I will share more of her wisdom designed to help church professionals in various ways. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

First, let me ask a question: Outside of the Bible, what is the most important piece of Christian Literature printed today? One answer may surprise you; it could be your church bulletin!

Yvon Prehn wrote in her manual Toolkit For Church Communicators (excerpts reprinted with permission) that the church bulletin is, for some people, the first piece of Christian literature they have ever seen and is usually the first thing a new visitor will read about your church.

New Visitors Come Hungry

Yvon goes on to say that everyone has a spiritual vacuum inside and they come to church looking for a way to fill it. They will read anything that you give them.

Does Your Church Bulletin Present the Right Message?

What does your church bulletin say to them? George Barna says that 91% of "unchurched" people believe churches are not sensitive to their needs. Yvon wondered where they got that idea? Could it be you tell them that in your church bulletins? Many times, bulletins are filled with terms only familiar to regular visitors. They talk about events and meetings without explaining them, just assuming everyone knows what you are talking about. Sometimes, they don't even talk about what is going on in your service that morning.

What Should You Put in Your Church Bulletins?

Producers of the bulletin should look at it through the eyes of someone unfamiliar with how a church operates. As you seek new members and try to connect with them, Yvon suggests some tips to keep your bulletin up to date but not to lose your church's personality or traditional values.

Welcome People

Few bulletins start out with a WELCOME! It should be right up front and before the order of service. Make in genuine and "reflect the tradition of your church."

Please Give an Order of Service

A visitor has no idea what to expect.

Acknowledge Both Visitors and Members in the Announcement Section

Some of the best bulletins welcome visitors and then give essential details such as bathroom locations, nursery info, even an invitation to have coffee after the service where they can meet and ask questions. In a section such as "church news," accommodate visitors by saying something like: "Below are the various events hosted by our church in the coming weeks. Everyone is invited to these functions and we hope you will attend. If you need more information, please call the contact numbers listed with each activity."

Do You Encourage New Visitors to Become More Involved?

Your bulletins should pull back first time attendees by suggesting that they attend a small group or social activity, even an event for their children.

Don't List Events That Are Closed to Newcomers

Let regular visitors and members know about "closed events" in a verbal announcement and at the start of your small groups attended by active attendees. If you must list closed events, label them as such.

Include the 5 W's: who, what, when, where, why

Who is putting on the program? What is going on? Where will it be located? What time will it start and end? What is the cost? Is child care provided?

Repeat the Information (Event) for Several Weeks

Remember, no one will see the information as often as you do. Because of school and work obligations, many regular attendees cannot attend every week. Repetition is important. Marketing experts tell us that people need to see something 6 times before they remember and respond.

Have a Place for Testimonials and Always Include a Gospel Presentation

Yvon has been recommending for years that every bulletin put in a short piece about how someone came to trust Jesus as their Savior. Here is one that ran at Christmas:

"In the midst of the gifts and goodies we are all enjoying at this time of year, remember the message of Christmas is that God came to Earth in the form of a person-Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus grew up and not only became the greatest teacher and miracle worker the world has ever seen but he died a unique death. In His death, Jesus was not a victim of evil men. Jesus willingly gave up His life and died on the cross so that He could pay the penalty for our sins. His death was His choice and His story does not end with His death. Jesus rose from the dead after three days and by doing that, showed that He was God!

When you believe that Jesus died for our sins and accept the forgiveness He offers us, and decide to follow Him, Jesus promises to forgive us and give us eternal life. If you would like to have your sins forgiven, if you would like to be at peace with your God; if you would like to live forever, tell Jesus you are a sinner and you need His salvation. Ask him to come into your life and be your Savior and Lord. After you do that, please read the Bible to learn how to live as a Christian. Talk to God daily in prayer. Go to church and get to know other followers of Jesus and grow in your faith."

A lady decided to include a brief gospel presentation like this in her bulletin and reported to Yvon that one of the men in her church had to go to prison for a time. To keep him in touch with the church, she sent him the bulletin regularly. He wrote her later and thanked her and said it made him feel that he wasn't forgotten and he had even led several inmates to the Lord in prison. By including a gospel message, the eternal destinies of men were changed by her bulletins.

I was moved by Yvon Prehn's inclusion of testimonials and her good ideas to build a strong, user-friendly, church bulletin that I hope will help you build your congregations.

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The Bible As Literature, An Introduction - A Review

SUMMARIES

a. Chapter 15 (The Text of the Bible)

This chapter assesses the evidence available to Biblical textual scholars as they work toward realistic goals like determining the earliest among the variant readings that ancient manuscripts provide and understanding the development of Biblical texts during the history of their transmission. How have the ancient Biblical texts been transmitted to our time? In what forms do they exist? To what extent can we trust those forms to embody the actual words of the original authors? The writers observe that printed Hebrew Bibles and Greek New Testaments are artificial entities which are created in relatively modern times from the evidence in ancient manuscripts. Repeated copying introduces alterations and some copyists deliberately alter the text to ''correct'' or ''improve'' the original. The writers observe that there are about 5,350 different manuscripts of the Greek New Testament. What can account for this wide variance among documents written so early in the history of the New Testament text? In addition to errors of copying and writing, Christianity was evolving rapidly during the first several centuries and the New Testament evolved along with it to meet its needs. Generally, the textual situation of the Hebrew Bible appears far more stable than that of the Greek New Testament. This notwithstanding, the situation is far more complicated than it would appear to be. We should not suppose that the urge to ''correct'' text was any less active among Old Testament writers than among Christian Scribes. The writers observe that there are passages in the Bible that are sufficiently similar to indicate that they derive from the same source (or from one another) but also sufficiently different to demonstrate that there was great freedom in handling the text even during the time of the books of the Bible were being written. Some duplicate (Psalms 14 and 53; 40: 14-18 and 70: 2-6) and triplicate texts (II Kings 18:13ff, Isaiah 36:1ff and II Chronicles 32:1 ff; and Jeremiah 39:1ff, Jeremiah 52:4ff and II Kings 25:1ff) provide supportive evidence. The textual situation of the Apocryphal text, Ecclesiastics (known to Jews as The Wisdom of Jesus been sire) is discussed. The writers observe that it was sometimes cited in rabbinic literature although it was never formally admitted to the Hebrew canon.

b. Chapter 16 (Translating the Bible)

It is a paradox to note that not more than one percent of Bible readers can read the text in Hebrew and Greek. The implication is a very heavy reliance on translation. This chapter discusses some challenges faced in translating the Bible. How well readers are served who must depend on translations? Can such readers be confident that translations in general, or any one in particular, will give them the whole Bible and nothing but the Bible? Gabel, Wheeler and York are correct to observe that a completely faithful translation cannot be made into another language because there is no universally agreed upon text of the Bible to translate from and secondly that complete faithfulness in translating anything (the Bible included) is not always possible.

Establishing a text therefore is very complex and potentially tedious. Demanding a translation of "the whole Bible and nothing but the Bible" is imagining an entity that does not exist. The ideal of translation (to carry over the whole sense of the word from the original language to the ''receptor language'') can never be realized. Some original sense is left behind while an additional sense could be imposed. How can one choose among the diverse translations? What criteria should guide the choice? The writers propose that readers should use the characteristic combination of formal correspondence and dynamic equivalence. The former is the quality of a translation in which the features of the form of the source text have been mechanically reproduced in the receptor language. The latter is the quality of a translation in which the message of the original text has been so transported into the receptor language that the response of the receptor is like that of the original receptors. Depending on a translation is to be at the mercy of the translators. A realistic recommendation is to use at least two or three versions in order to double or triple the number of expert opinions available on a given passage.

c. Appendix II (Writing in Biblical times)

The Bible had been a handwritten book for a much longer time than it had been a printed book. What was required to create a formal written document during those many centuries before the printing press took over? In this appendix, the writers surveyed the technology of writing in order to shed light on the conditions that gave us the Bible as a physical object.

Writing is regarded as a very old human invention. Clay, animal skin and papyrus are identified as three major materials employed for writing in the West and in the Near East until the introduction of rag paper from the Far East long after the Biblical period. The writer traces a number of Biblical accounts concerned with the writings. Moses writes on stone labels (Ex. 34:28-29); Joshua engraves a copy of the Law of Moses (Josh. 8:32); Isaiah is instructed to take a large tablet (Is. 8:1) and write a symbolic name upon it; Ezekiel is given a scroll to eat by Yahweh, which according to the writers, is perhaps understood as a small roll of papyrus (Ezek. 3:1-2); Jeremiah dictates an oracle concerning Judah''s coming destruction to his secretary Baruch, who takes it down in ink on a scroll (Jer. 36). At the end of II Timothy, the author requests that the scrolls be brought to him especially the parchments and John is required to eat a little scroll (Rev. 10:9-10). According to the writers'' supposition, the Pentateuch, history books, Job, Proverbs and Psalms would have been written on leather (locally available to Israel) or papyrus (from Egypt). They opined that the oracles of the prophets probably circulated orally and might have been written down initially in the form of notes on potsherds or wood and then on leather and papyrus. Parchment, they believed, could have been chosen later as an alternative. They also traced the movement from roll to codex and papyrus to parchment.

RESPONSE

a. Chapter 15 (The Text of the Bible)

The writers are correct to observe that the task of biblical textual scholarship is not easy since its theoretical goal (that is to weed out alterations of any kind and thus to arrive back at the original texts as the authors wrote them) will never be reached since there will never be enough evidence to accomplish it. It is rightly observed that the very notion of a single original text is itself an illusion.

b. Chapter 16 (Translating the Bible)

The writers did very little to separate the challenges faced in translation, making it relatively difficult for the reader to fully appreciate the discussion. This is where the strength of Omanson (1988) lies. He divides the problems into several categories ? textual, grammatical, terms of kinship and pronoun gender. Another vivid summary is also worth mentioning:

First, no matter how wonderful a translation is, it has limitations. The Bible was originally written using 11,280 Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek words, but the typical English translation uses only around 6,000 words. Obviously, nuances and shades of meaning can be missed, so it is always helpful to compare translations (Warren 2002, 325).

It is a truism that "the translation you are using may be correct, of course; but it also may be wrong" (Fee and Stuart 1982, 29). One limitation of this chapter is surveying the history of Biblical translation only in English though the writers acknowledged the fact that there is an equivalent history for other European languages.

c. Appendix (Writing in Biblical Times)

Perhaps the most impressive feature in their presentation is the manner in which the writers portrayed the vast gulf that separates our world, with its inexpensive printed materials and widespread literacy, from the world within which the Bible developed ? and within which it was disseminated for so many hundred years. It is however unfortunate that theirs is not as impressive as Patzia''s similar presentation on writing, copying and transmitting the New Testament manuscripts (Patzia 1995). Unlike Patzia, there are no pictures to give a graphic illustration of how these texts appeared on different writing materials. Generally, the fact that the text itself is in its third edition has been published in twenty seven cities reveals its importance. The writers provide essential background information of the sort that few students have either the time or ability to piece together out of the enormous mass of published material on the Bible.

LIST OF REFERENCES

Fee, Gordon and Douglas Stuart. 1992. How to Read the Bible for all its Worth: A Guide to Understanding the Bible. Michigan: The Zondervan Corporation.

Omanson, Roger L. 1988. Can You Get There from Here?: Problems in Bible Translation. Christian Century. June 22-29.

Patzia, Arthur G. 1995. The Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection, Text and Canon. Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter Varsity Press.

Warren, Rick. 2002. The Purpose Driven Life: What on Life Am I Here for? Grand Rapids, Michigan:Zondervan.

AUTHOR SIGNATURE
Oliver L.T. Harding, who obtained his GCE O & A Levels from the Sierra Leone Grammar School and the Albert Academy respectively, is currently Senior & Acting Librarian of Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. He is a part time lecturer at the Institute of Library, Information & Communication Studies (INSLICS), Fourah Bay College and the Extension Programme at the Evangelical College of Theology (T.E.C.T) at Hall Street, Brookfields; Vice President of the Sierra Leone Association of Archivists, Librarians & Information Scientists (SLAALIS); a member of the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) and an associate of the Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals (CILIP). His certificates, secular and sacred, include: a certificate and diploma from the Freetown Bible Training Centre; an upper second class B.A. Hons. Degree in Modern History (F.B.C.); a post-graduate diploma from the Institute of Library Studies (INSLIBS, F.B.C) a masters degree from the Institute of Library, Information & Communication Studies (INSLICS, F.B.C.) and a masters degree in Biblical Studies from West Africa Theological Seminary, affiliate of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he won the prize for academic excellence as the Best Graduating Student in 2005. Oliver, a writer, musician and theologian, is married (to Francess) with two children (Olivia & Francis).
Email: oltharding@yahoo.com
Mobile: 232-2233-460-330

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Poetic Literature of the Bible

The study of the poetic literature of the Bible is one of the most rewarding endeavors in biblical hermeneutics. Psalms, Proverbs, The Song of Solomon, much of Job and Ecclesiastes are all examples of Hebrew poetry. Poems and songs are sprinkled throughout the Old Testament books of history and prophecy. A right understanding of the principles behind interpreting biblical poetry is essential if one is to enjoy the benefits of these Hebrew sonnets. They are jewels of theology set on fire by Hebrew creativity.

"Poetry to the modern mind and in the English language is primarily a matter of meter and rhyming. This is not true of biblical poetry. Although a poem in Hebrew may have elements of meter, those elements are not the major characteristics. Rather, the distinguishing mark of Hebrew poetry is a a correspondence in thought, or parallelism, between one line and the following line; or between one section and the following section. That is very helpful indeed, for it means that the poetic form of the Old Testament is almost fully accessible to us in the English language."1

R. C. Sproul says, ". . . there are three basic kinds of parallelism: synonymous, antithetic and synthetic."2

Synonymous parallelism means that different lines or parts of the passage present the same thought in a slightly different way (Proverbs 14:13). Proverbs 14:13 Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; and the end of that mirth is heaviness.

Do you see that the subject is sorrow of the heart even when the sorrowful heart laughs? The second part of the verse is synonymous with the first because it says that the end of such mirth is itself heaviness.

When a verse has antithetic parallelism the two parts are set in contrast to one another (Proverbs 14:12). KJV Proverbs 14:12 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

Man's ways seem right to him....but the end of man's ways are death itself. Though man's way seems right it is extremely wrong. The first part is antithetical to the second part.

Synthetic parallelism is when the first part of the passage creates a sense of expectation which is completed by the second part. There is progression of information (Psalm 92:9). KJV Psalm 92:9 For, lo, thine enemies, O LORD, for, lo, thine enemies shall perish; all the workers of iniquity shall be scattered.

The first part of the verse declares that the subject of discussion is the enemies of the Lord. The second part of the verse adds information and tells us that they will perish and that they all will be scattered.3

It is important to recognize poetry for what it is. It is not narrative. It is not telling a story in a narrative form. It is rather a powerful way to publish truth. It catches the eye and captures the imagination. That is what poetry is supposed to do. In biblical terms, it is not for entertainment or to show the poetic gifts of the writer. It is given to develop great truths about God and mankind in an imaginative way.

1. Robertson McQuilkin. Understanding and Applying the Bible (Chicago: Moody Press, 1942) 199.

2. R. C. Sproul. Knowing Scripture (Downers Grove Illinois: Intervarsity Press,1977), 85.

3. Sproul., 85

Dr. Morrow is pastor of the Union Baptist Church in Western Kentucky. For more resources go to http://www.breakingthebreadministries.com

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