About

BigBible – Bigger Bible Conversations…

This website seeks to draw people into deeper engagement with the Bible, especially, but not exclusively, through the use of social media.  We will work with partners to achieve this aim. We want to offer those who engage with the site a progressive journey through four distinct sections (we will seek to add a video here to highlight ‘the journey’ more visually):

BigBible

This is where people first engage with the site and will offer a host of material about the Bible – events, good news stories, digital stories, explorations of the use of the Bible online and offline.  This area will seek to be “The Mashable of the Bible”, a place to highlight and follow stories from digital sites and projects focusing upon the Bible (Mashable is the ‘first-stop site’ for news in social and digital media, technology and web culture). CODEC is already seeking to support a new theological consultant to edit/curate material relating to the Bible.

The Big Read

Encouraging ‘bigger (digital) conversations’ around Biblical Literacy, including the pioneering work of David Wood in the North Yorkshire Dales Biblical Literacy Project.  Also working with SPCK and 12Baskets, we will once again provide a Lent Resource for housegroups based on Tom Wright’s ‘Mark for Lent’.  We expect the material for Lent BigRead 2012 to be available by early January.

Digital Literacy

Since we expect both of the above projects to include elements of social media to enhance what is normally on offer to readers of the site and to enable people to use social media to engage with these projects, we will provide both a list of social media training and events in the Christian sector (local and national), as well as seeking to provide some of that training ourselves.  We will work with sites such as Digital Fingerprint and DigiMission to highlight training involved as well as CODEC’s own provision and the possible joint development with Premier of the Centre for New Media Excellence.

#DigiDisciple

Living biblically in a Digital Age.  This is the culmination of the journey – from Bible engagement through to living out what we have learned from the Bible – the practical outworking of biblically-informed digital discipleship.  In this section of the site, we will follow a number of people as they consider how they live out their faith in a digital space, and how the Bible helps them with that, or how the digital faith encourages them to engage with the Bible.

The Journey

The BigBible project focuses on the journey to Biblical Literacy in the online/offline spaces. In making the site a ‘one stop’ site, we are seeking to gain an overview of the range of provision as well as working collaboratively with our funders and with other organisations, avoiding competition and enhancing existing provision wherever possible.  We expect some of our key partners to be CODEC, Bible Society, The Methodist Church, SPCK, the Church and Media Network, Biblefresh, Open Source, and MediaLit.

Pete Phillips (Director of Research, CODEC) & Bex Lewis (Project Manager, BigBible): June 2011

The Emergence of The Big Bible Project

In 2010 several thousand people in the North-East took part in “The Big Read 2010″. The events were based on Tom Wright’sLent for Everyone: Lukeand aimed to encourage thoughtful engagement with the Bible individually, in housegroups, and corporately as a region. There was so much positive feedback that the #BigRead2011 went national. The #BigRead2011 involved meeting together in housegroups to read the Bible, making use of Tom Wright’s Lent for Everyone: Matthew with opportunities to go much bigger and be much more creative and join in online (inter)nationally. From quiet sitting rooms with Bibles and books, to coffee shops and Internet chatrooms across the world, we encouraged people to engage locally and online, individually, in housegroups, and with their churches!

2011: Biblefresh

The origins of the project lie in the Big Read outlined above, but 2011 is the year of Biblefresh, so a very appropriate year in which to look for new ways make the best use of the tools available online and offline to engage with the Bible. “It was decided that the Biblefresh initiative, as it was styled, would be focussed on the year 2011, which was also the 400^th anniversary since the publication of the King James Version of the Bible (although those participating are able to celebrate any translation of the Bible).  We would ask churches to join the movement by agreeing to increase their church’s level of biblical engagement in four ways: reading, training, translation and experience.  Centrally we would encourage our partner organisations to respond to the need by providing access to relevant reading, audio, video, and training resources.”

Who’s running this?

There are a number of people involved in this project, as staff, as supporters, and as #digidisciple(s).