The Davidson United Church is welcoming everyone to take a journey towards shaping and sharing their own stories in relation to the ‘kin-dom’ of God through a resource used to explore and understand the Bible as a ‘novel’ format.

Mary Smillie, a member of the Davidson United Church, said they are working to help people accomplish this goal by presenting sessions on “The Story” at the United Church beginning this Sunday at 9 a.m. with the creation story. She said these sessions are a follow-up on their recently concluded rural spirit study that found, in part, people don’t really know what is in the Bible and consider the book inaccessible.

Smillie said the Bible has a tonne of “chapters and verses and verses and chapters” in different books, so what the authors of “The Story” have done is distilled these parts down to the key stories. She said it reads like a novel in 31 chapters from Genesis to Revelations and in addition to the book there are also DVDs and CDs and a few other different resources to make the teachings of the Bible easier to relate to.

“They suggest that the Bible offers us a glimpse of the upper story, what the authors call God’s plan for us on Earth, as well as the lower story, which is how people of that time either did or didn’t do what God was hoping for, so it’s fairly basic,” said Smillie. “What we have going at Davidson United these days is we’ve had the opportunity to invest in some audio/visual equipment, so we have…the whole big screen and sound system and stuff in the main part of the church, (and) it really lends itself for us to do this multi-media approach to bring together the various resources together of “The Story”.”

Smillie said it is their church’s belief that there is multiple ways to approach God and it is really an individual process. She said they have no intention of saying the Bible is the only way, so they are encouraging people to shape their own path by embarking on whatever journey they may want to be on.

“What we’re creating is an opportunity for anybody who is curious about what is in the Bible to have an easier way (of) figuring out what’s in it and what meaning they might be able to bring from it,” she said, adding “The Story” has many age-specific versions and can be accessed by people from preschoolers to adults.

To read more please see the April 28 print edition of The Davidson Leader.