The Church of England and The Methodist Church
in the
Parish of Sturry with Fordwich and Westbere with Hersden
Parish of Sturry with Fordwich and Westbere with Hersden
Successfully completed in about 74 hours ! ...
This event started at 8:00am on Thursday morning when Revd Peter Cornish started reading from Genesis chapter 1 verse 1. For the next 74 hours, around 150 different people from aged under 9 to over 90 read the Bible continuously from beginning to end, day and night for 4 days. A fuller report will be available shortly, but this page gives a brief summary of what happened.
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Readers on Thursday have included Bishop Stephen and Bishop Michael Turnbull and many children from Junior Kings School. Most of the readings have been in English, but other languages such as German and Afrikaans have also been used.
 Reader from Junior Kings School |
 Bible being read in German |
It took 3 hours 35 minutes to read Genesis, 3 hours 5 minutes to read Exodus and 2 hours 25 minutes for Leviticus.
The first 5 books of the Bible were all read on Thursday, and by midnight Joshua was being read.
 One of the younger readers |
 Thursday evening |
Friday night was staffed by many of the men from church, taking turns to read and sleep, followed by an early morning breakfast.
 Reading through Friday night |
 Breakfast on Saturday morning for some of the night readers |
By Saturday midday, most of the Old Testament has been read, with the New Testament likely to be started around 5pm. in fact this was started earlier, and by Saturday evening the Bible Readers were over an hour ahead of expected time.
For much of Saturday night, the Seekers and Super Seekers group took turns to read before camping out in one of the tower rooms.
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 Reading through Saturday night. |
 Seekers asleep! After taking some of the Saturday night readings |
The last chapters of John's Gospel were read around midnight, and the final book of the bible, Revelation started at 9am on Sunday morning, just before the start of the main morning service.
 Nearing the end of Revelation.... |
 Bishop Graham reading the last few chapters of Revelation on Sunday morning |
Adult readers read for 15 minutes at a time, and children for 5 minutes.
Readers include:
Most of the readers are members of the local parish, living in Sturry, Westbere, Broad Oak, Hersden or Fordwich but some have traveled from further afield to take part. A full list of readers, including the passages read can be found on the Bible Readers page.
The experiences of the Bible Reading Marathon formed the basis of one of Lost Sheep's new songs, as featured on their latest CD.
Further information available from Roger Thompson - email rwt.Thompson@btinternet.com
More details and photos will be available later.
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