LAST SUMMER'S FAITH-SHARING NEW TESTAMENTS: Where Are They Now?
By Annette Bender
If you attended Annual Conference on the day the Discipleship Team handed out 1,800 free copies of a red, pocket-size book known as "The Faith-Sharing New Testament," please read this closely: Where is your copy now?
Jean Henderson hopes you didn't keep it as a souvenir of your four-day stay in Lake Junaluska last June. She hopes your New Testament is dog-eared from study and prayer. Better yet, she hopes you gave your copy to someone who has questions about the basics of Christianity.
The principle behind "The Faith-Sharing New Testament" – and behind Christianity – is to share it with other people, says the Discipleship Team chair.
"If we believe what we say, then we have to share our faith with others," says Henderson. "The main problem with us is we don't sense an urgency É The Bible teaches that people are going to hell if they don't believe in Christ."
Of the 4,200 New Testaments ordered for Annual Conference members and their congregations, only 15 are left, Holston staff members say. After distributing free copies at Annual Conference, the Discipleship Team sold copies for $5 each ($4 for 100 or more) to people who wanted to share the book and their faith with others.
Inspired by the special-edition book as well as a study led by the Rev. Eddie Fox and the Rev. George Morris at Annual Conference, Holston members have been snapping up the book.
First Farragut United Methodist Church bought 200 copies and is planning to dedicate them during a special faith-sharing service on Oct. 13, according to the Rev. Bernice Kirkland. The Oak Ridge District church will then join in the faith-sharing study developed by Fox and Morris.
The Rev. Tom Reed, pastor at Ebenezer UMC in Tazewell District, bought 20 New Testaments and offered a summer faith-sharing study to his parishioners shortly after Annual Conference. "It seemed to me [the New Testament] would be motivational," Reed said. "I know people who want to share their faith but don't always know how."
Wears Valley UMC, a small Maryville District church, obtained 100 copies for their members and for the visitation team to hand out to neighbors. Some copies are being saved for future parishioners in this growing community favored by retirees, according to the Rev. Beecher Dunsmore.
Wears Valley members remember the former Maryville District preacher, Eddie Fox, who helped birth the faith-sharing New Testament, Dunsmore adds. "He preached his first sermon at Wears Valley."
Born in Georgia
"The Faith-Sharing New Testament" was conceived in south Georgia but has ties to Holston Conference.
In the mid-1990s, lay members Jack and Phyllis Jones of Thomasville, Ga., questioned why other groups had Bibles to share while the United Methodist Church did not.
The dream for a New Testament to train and encourage Christians to witness to their faith became a mission shared by many. The people involved in the book's early stages include the Rev. Curtis Schofield, former Foundation for Evangelism vice president for development; the Rev. Eddie Fox, director of world evangelism for the World Methodist Council; and Bishop Richard Looney, then-resident bishop of the South Georgia area. All are Holston Conference ministers.
Bishop Looney, now retired and serving as Foundation for Evangelism president in Lake Junaluska, N.C., remembers Jack Jones' dedication in making "The Faith-Sharing New Testament" a reality. Jones, who was in the oil business, is now deceased.
"Jack not only provided the funding but the inspiration and the push," Looney said. "He was a businessman eager for things to happen. Eddie and George wanted to have [the faith-sharing book] written just so. It was an interesting dynamic."
In addition to the New Testament and Psalms, the book contains simple questions and answers concerning "what it means to be a Christian," "what is grace," "who is Jesus Christ" and so on.
The back of the book has questions and answers about leading a person to Christ. The questions include, "What are some essential principles that guide us in witnessing?" and "What are the key steps in this process of being saved by grace through faith?"
Looney says that Jones wanted the book to be pocket-size and affordable. He also estimates that Jones invested $75,000 for each district in the South Georgia Conference to have first-edition copies in 1996.
Today, the book is published in 34 different languages. Fox and Morris not only developed the original book, they created an accompanying faith-sharing video and textbook. Through the World Methodist Council, Fox and Morris have helped distribute thousands of books all over the world to countries including Brazil, Nigeria, and Estonia. More than 200,000 New Testaments have been published in the English language alone.
It was the Discipleship Team's idea to make use of these faith-sharing resources at Holston Annual Conference 2002, says Henderson.
"We hoped, in the light of ÔBy All Means Win Some,' to provide some practical guidance for actually talking to somebody about their soul and leading them to Christ," says Henderson, referring to the conference's evangelism-themed mission statement. "This little New Testament has been so effective all over the world, we thought it could be a tool to help our people, too."
Special edition
The New Testament distributed at Annual Conference was printed especially for Holston Conference. It includes a letter from Bishop Ray Chamberlain that says, "The people of the Holston Conference É join me in praying that you will learn through this booklet how to follow Jesus."
When the remaining 15 special-edition New Testaments are gone, members can buy regular copies and the accompanying resources through Cokesbury.
When the Rev. Stephen Burkhart learned at Annual Conference that New Testaments were available in Spanish, he went to Cokesbury Bookstore to get 12 copies.
"I've given out four already," says the pastor at George Street and Grant's Chapel UMC in Morristown District. "If I had unlimited finances, I would give one to everyone I meet."
For now, Burkhart gives English- or Spanish-language New Testaments to new members or people who come to him with questions about Christianity. Having learned about the pocket-size book at a Red Bird Conference missionary school, Burkhart said he already handed out about 150 copies before they were promoted at this year's Annual Conference.
"If they're new to the faith, if they're out there searching, if they say they've never been to church, I try to get one of these in their hands," Burkhart said. "It's better than swamping them with 66 books and telling them where to start. The beauty of this book is, you don't have to be a Christian to understand it. If they're holding it, they have all the answers."
To order "The Faith-Sharing New Testament" or the accompanying textbook or video, contact Cokesbury at (800) 672-1789 or www.cokesbury.com. Another resource is "The Faith-Sharing Congregation" by Roger K. Swanson and Shirley F. Clement, also available at Cokesbury.
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