BIND Redux

Sunday I led the first session of Bible in 90 Days at my church. We're having two classes--one during each of the Sunday School hours and I'm facilitating the early one. The church offered BIND a couple of years ago when it was still in the developmental stage, but now we are using the curriculum published by Zondervan.

This will be the fourth time I've read the Bible in 90 Days and facilitated a class. It's interesting to see the difference between doing it at a mid-size church and at a very large church:

• Almost everyone registered online through the church website. I didn't have to handle lots of registration forms myself.
• Lists of all registrants and their contact info was forwarded to me from the church's secretary for Discipleship. I didn't have to try to collect it from several sources.
  
• An audio-visual tech guy actually shows the DVD--I didn't have to set up the TV/DVD and fool with the controls and cables and haul it around. Cool!
• Publicity for the classes was handled by the church's communication director. I didn't have to write my own articles for the newsletter, beg the powers-that-be to include notices in the bulletin, or create my own banner for outside use.
  
• Instead of knowing everyone in the class, I only know a few people.
• The class is large enough to require several small groups for discussion instead of just one. That meant recruiting small group leaders to assist but I had help with that.
  
• Yesterday morning I actually had someone I don't know email and volunteer to be a small group leader exactly at the time I realized we would have to form one more group. Amazing. Providential. Yippee!
  
• People I don't know ask me how things are going at presbytery.
  

The first of the year is a great time to start, especially this year since Lent and Easter come early so we will be reading the Bible all through Lent. A couple of weeks ago I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and thinking maybe I had over-extended myself, what with the unbloggable happenings at presbytery that keep me busy along with some personal stuff. Now, though, I'm really glad I am doing this again because it keeps me grounded and connected to scripture as well as to my congregation --both of which are really important to me in this year of the Momderator.

(ASIDE: I've blogged a number of times in the past about Bible in 90 Days so I'm not repeating the details of the program in this post. If you're interested in learning more about it check out the website:Bible in 90 Days.)