Goal: Present the Word of God so that people might encounter Him and His message and be changed.
Though not unique to our time, one of the great challenges that the Church faces today is the stark reality that she does not know what her God has said. Our churches are filled with people who are ignorant of God’s message and its place in our lives. The cost of this ignorance is high, and the church is paying the price. Over and over again, statistics show our levels of divorce, immorality and injustice to be no different from the world around us. We shouldn’t be surprised. When the standards of virtue, the commands of God, are forgotten, why not live like the world? When the truth of the transforming gospel is no longer known, why should we expect to see changed lives?
Josiah’s Gift
Josiah’s Gift is a simple vision derived from the story of King Josiah recorded in II Kings 22. When King Josiah was 26 years-old, the Torah was accidentally uncovered during the Temple’s renovation. Curious, Josiah read the Torah and was devastated when he realized how far his people, the nation of Israel, had strayed from the covenant between them and their God. King Josiah sought the Lord’s counsel and purged the nation of evil, injustice, idolatry, and apostasy—so much so that it was said of him “Neither before nor after Josiah was there a king like him who turned to the LORD as he did—with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his strength, in accordance with all the Law of Moses” (2 Kings 23:25).
In light of the current state of the Church and what the Word of God can do in the lives of those willing to hear, we strive to simply present the Word of God to whoever will hear with the hopes that they might encounter both God and his message and be changed. There are essentially two ways we are seeking to do this – Scripture dramas and what we call the Tent of Meeting (Scripture reading marathons) – in two different venues – college campuses and churches.
Scripture Dramatizations
Much of people’s exposure to the text of the Scripture has been in their own heads as they read and the monotone ramblings of either the pastor or congregation. We rarely read the text with the passion, emotion and energy it was written with, and we lose a bit of the message when we read it unfeelingly. What we seek to do is to reintroduce those elements into the reading of Scripture. When we have presented the Word to people with that passion and emotion, they have been surprised, often commenting that they have “never heard the Bible like that before.” It’s not that we have added to the text but shown what the text has always said. God cares about his people and how they live their lives.
The best way to learn about Scripture Dramas is not to read about them, however, but to see and hear what they are like. We have links on this website to video dramas that we and others have done, but we suggest starting with these three:
Ezra’s Creed at Northwestern College, Hebrews 9-10, Isaiah 40-44
The Tent of Meeting
Though God commanded Israel to come together every seven years to read through the Book of the Law, they rarely ever did so. It wasn’t until the reign of Josiah that the Bible records that the people actually fulfilled this commandment of God. (They also did it during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah–and in both instances a nationwide revival took place.) Very few people today have ever read through the entire Bible, creating an environment of Biblical ignorance and illiteracy that permeates our churches. We want to encourage the church to reintroduce the practice of reading the Bible out loud. To not just read small portions, but entire books and even the whole of Scripture as communities of believers, learning from and affirming the truth of the Word of God. Since the spring of 2007, students at Northwestern College (MN) have read through the entire Bible four times, and students at George Fox University (OR) twice, during week-long Bible reading marathons. Students’ almost universal response has been that the Word of God impacted them in a new and fresh way:
“I remember first truly starting to understand God’s holiness when I heard Leviticus, or wept my first tears over the Word when I heard Mark read Hosea, or marveled at Paul’s finely-wrought argument in Romans, or finally understood the continuity of the story of God’s unconditional love and pursuit of His people through the triumphant, glorious, overwhelming conclusion as I read Revelation. It was through the Tent of Meeting that I began to grasp the concept that it truly is a living book, beyond what I had ever experienced before.” Catherine Rivard
You
There are many more specifics about Josiah’s Gift and what we do on the other pages of this website, but before you leave to find out more, we ask that you take a moment and see where you are with God. Are you seeking him, do you know what he has said and are you living it out in your life? The Word of God is living, active and relevant to your life. Immerse yourself in it and be changed.
