The Bible is the best-selling book in history, but how many people in Tampa are actually reading it?\u00a0 A Gallup survey reports the average American household has four Bibles. However, research by\u00a0 religions.pewforum.org Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (2008) found that only 16 percent of Americans read the Bible every day.<\/p>\n
St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church is hoping to reverse this trend, starting with its own congregation.\u00a0 Pastor Darryl Matthews<\/strong> believes that The Story, a Zondervan best-seller, is the right tool to increase Biblical literacy, helping readers understand God\u2019s story from Genesis to Revelation and how their own stories intersect with God\u2019s.<\/p>\n Consisting of 31 chapters of carefully-selected scriptures sequenced in chronological order, The Story presents the word of God in an engaging format, reading like a novel.<\/p>\n \u201cI want the people in my congregation, as well as the City of Tampa, to realize the incredible love God has for them and how their story is found in His story,\u201d said Pastor Darryl<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The Story Church Campaign is a unique program providing up to 31 weeks of curriculum for children, teen and adult Sunday school and up to 31 weeks of corresponding sermons.\u00a0 When accompanied by reading through the five age-related books (The Story, The Story: Teen Edition, The Story for Kids, The Story for Children, and The Story for Little Ones), the entire church can be literally on the same page for 31 weeks.<\/p>\n St. Mark plans to begin the experience on February 5, 2012 at the 9:30 a. m. worship, followed by Discipleship Hour at 11 a. m.<\/p>\n With thousands of participating churches nationwide, The Story is becoming a movement that is bringing wide-ranging benefits to local churches. Many have reported increased community outreach, increased Biblical literacy, congregational growth and a greater understanding of how God\u2019s story reveals the reasons for the things that happen in man\u2019s story.<\/p>\n For more information, visit www.stmark247.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Bible is the best-selling book in history, but how many people in Tampa are actually reading it?\u00a0 A Gallup survey reports the average American household has four Bibles. However, research by\u00a0 religions.pewforum.org Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (2008) found that only 16 percent of Americans read the Bible every day. St. Mark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12617\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}