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4. E n g l a n d :
NEW STUDY BIBLE HELPS READERS "KNOW GOD AND MAKE HIM KNOWN"A NEW STUDY Bible which captures the heartbeat of one of the world's largest missionary organizations is to be published next year.
The International Discipleship Bible - its working title - will lead readers through a study of the nature and character of God ,and missions, embodied in Youth With A Mission's motto "to know God and to make Him known".
The new Bible - a joint project between YWAM-England, the International Bible Society, and US publishers Zondervan - distills teaching from the mission's foundational Discipleship Training School, a six-month program for new staff and others just wanting to grow in their faith.
During the past 20 years more than 50,000 people around the world have completed the course, which includes teaching on the father heart of God, intercession, worship, evangelism, stewardship, guidance, and missions. Currently YWAM has 10,000 workers in 140 countries.
Using the New International Version, the new study Bible will include 30 thematic tracks, as well as a series of mini-biographies of "heroes of the faith", and profiles of more than 20 of the major unreached people groups in the world.
Also featured will be extracts from books by senior YWAM leaders, including founder Loren Cunningham, former international director Floyd McClung, and well-known international Bible teachers and speakers John Dawson, Joy Dawson, and Dean Sherman.
An international team of editors finishes work on the study text this month, ending an 18-month project which has involved contributors from more than a dozen different countries.
Initially to be published in English - and available from next July - the new Bible will later be published in ten other languages, with YWAM's proceeds helping fund other translations, and distribution.
"This Bible should be a great help to Christians everywhere who are wanting to deepen their walk with God," said executive editor Lynn Green, YWAM's field director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
The new publication - believed to be the first missions-oriented study Bible - is "very much needed, as many Christians today desire and need further discipling", said managing editor Betty Barnett, who has overseen the project from YWAM-England's headquarters in Harpenden, Hertfordshire.
"We want to see something of the dynamic that occurs so often in the DTS classroom, where people are not only provoked in their mind, but in their heart and spirit, too, so God truly does a work in their lives through what they have read and heard."
While the studies follow YWAM "curriculum", they are intended to "hopefully serve the entire Body of Christ, and be used by many different organizations" said Barnett.
"We want it to serve people and get it into as many hands as possible without being obviously tied to one organization - one reason we have avoided putting YWAM in the title. We have also written the text without overtly mentioning YWAM, to keep it as universal as possible."
The content is "very fresh, quite different to anything that's on the market", said Zondervan editor Jean Syswerda.
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