How one congregation is tackling the Bible in its chronological entirety—and changing the way they do life together because of it.
By Jennifer Colosimo
Thirty years ago, Rev. Dr. Charles Qualls moved to Greensboro, N.C., to work with pastor Dr. Randall Lolley. Lolley was in the middle of a sermon series that tackled the Bible in its entirety—an interesting twist on the dime-a-dozen sermon series. But it was one that got Qualls’ mental wheels turning.
Today, as the senior pastor at Franklin Baptist Church in Franklin, Va., Qualls’ decades-old nagging had begun to take shape, and in September of last year, he and his staff embarked on a similar quest. The result, titled, One Story, would be much more than a sermon series; it would be a comprehensive dive into the Bible to inform their congregational life.
“One of the things that ministers acknowledge is that we all carry around a tiny little thin Bible that’s made up of our favorite books or our favorite passages and the rest of it we don’t pay attention to much of the time,” Qualls said. “A pastor’s challenge over time is to force our congregations to try and be aware of the whole—to grow that tiny book.”
One Story gives Qualls the chance to encourage everyone to study the entire Bible, knowing that with each sermon, they will discover parts of it of which they may not have been aware.
“We live in a world where we have complex problems and issues and differences,” he added. “And biblical literacy—teaching and preaching all the way through the Bible— is not going to solve those; but if we say that our faith is important to us, knowing the central document of our faith seems like an elementary idea. And it should be a prerequisite or starting place.”
But at FBC, it isn’t just about the sermons Qualls delivered on Sunday mornings. He meant it when he said it would be a comprehensive dive into the Bible, and his staff jumped on board.
In worship, every prelude, postlude, offertory hymn and worship song is selected based on the Bible story or book of the Bible they would learn about that day. Then, on Wednesday nights, Qualls delivers on a promise to bring them “everything about that book that he couldn’t fit into Sunday.”
Rev. Jeremy Poplin, associate pastor for music and composer at Franklin Baptist Church, is also going to write what will be a capstone celebration. He is composing a choir and orchestra cantata for One Story that will give shape to a whole concert after the preaching series has been completed.
In addition, during something called Faith on Draught, Qualls meets with a smaller group off-site and discusses life-based topics that reflect the greater story told on Sunday and Wednesday.
“We’ve been doing Faith on Draught for six years at our church,” Qualls said. “This semester, we are basing those conversations on this pilgrimage of going through the Bible. The first one talked about God’s creation of the world and how did God self-limit? Another, dealt with the time when David offered to build a temple and God said, ‘No. Build me a people.’ The conversation asked what would that really look like, especially today? What might a “built” people act like or talk like? Or serve like?”
Five months in, the response has been exciting. Anecdotally, Qualls hears positive feedback every single week. Whether it’s a church member who takes the handouts from Wednesday for coworkers at her office who are following along in fascination, or a typically-cynical member who lets him know this is the most interested he’s been in church since he was in elementary school. It’s also the fact that local businesses have FBC’s promotional posters up in their windows.
“I think the goal is to better equip our congregation to go out and be a witness,” Qualls said. “We have a lot of people talking about their faith, and about Christianity; but having biblical literacy is the starting place to developing a more mature Christianity, a more substantive Christianity.
“I want people to move beyond using the Bible as an answer book where they pluck out of context the verse that makes the point they already believe. People are doing that in their lives, in their filtering of culture, bias, prejudice and justice issues. A more informed, biblically literate faith has to serve us better when we get into loving each other, serving each other.”
Actual service rounds out the comprehensive goal for this study. FBC is filming missional videos to illustrate its long history of serving their community. But Qualls also “wanted to see if we could model how what we say we believe should color how we live and how we make decisions about participation in the culture around us.
“Now we are validating those missions with stories from the Bible. We’re not just doing nice things. We’re doing things that speak of what we’ve read. We know why we do them”
In continuing this proposed year-long study, Qualls said that he hopes, if anything, other churches will see them model an investment in trying to make this important. He wants to emphasize that they’re purposefully taking their time.
“We can say we love the Bible as much as we want to. But I observe that it’s more performative than it is substantive,” he said. “People profess a love for the Bible they really haven’t read or studied and that’s a big deal, because biblical literacy ties directly into Christianity’s place in culture.
“[Along this journey] I hope our people will come to see the Bible as one story—hence the title. They can read Revelation and hear the Old Testament quoted. When we begin to see it as one story, every piece is connected to all the other pieces. We become more connected.”