I’ve talked about this several times before, but never fully. I’m talking about the Bible study I’ve been writing since finishing Documenting America: Making The Constitution Edition in mid-June. Back on June 28 I posted about my writing choices. That post indicated that I had written a couple of chapters of this study, that it felt good, and that I had decided that would be my next book to write.

The first writing of it was on June 25, 2019. This past Tuesday, July 30, I completed the first draft, coming in at 35,574 words in a little over a month. That’s pretty fast. I’m wondering if, considering how fast it came together, if it’s any good.

But it’s not as if I started from scratch on June 25th. No, I had thought about this for a long time. I’d say it was maybe two or three years ago that the idea first came to me. I re-read Hebrews Chapter 11, the faith heroes chapter, and, as always, was inspired by it. Then I read Hebrews 12:1, “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses….” The idea came to me: a Bible study where a Bible example of faith and a Christian example of faith were together in each lesson.

I’m responsible for choosing the curriculum for study in our adult Life Group (a.k.a. Sunday school). I try to stay a few months ahead. I had curriculum planned out to near the end of September 2019 (this was back in late fall 2018, I think). What to do after a long, partial Easter study and a video-based Psalm 119 study? I had a couple of Bible studies in mind, things that had been brewing in the gray cells for some time, Acts Of Faith being one of them. I developed an outline, deciding it would be a viable study. So I penciled it in on our teaching schedule.

Then I thought, this would be a better study if it were in book form, not something my co-teacher and I had to develop our own notes for. So sometime early this year, maybe in January, I listed it as one of my possible writing works. As the year went on, I was more and more impressed that this was indeed what we should teach later this year, and that I should do my best to have it ready in book form if at all possible.

So, when Documenting America was done, as I posted a little more than a month ago, I shifted right to this. The writing wasn’t laborious at all. It came together easily, I’m sure in part because I had brainstormed it so much. Still, the relatively short time to write it surprised me. I wrote that I hoped to have it written by August 1, and I achieved that. I suspect maybe three or four weeks to edit, followed by two weeks to publish, and I’ll be done with it at least two weeks before we start the study, which right now is targeted for September 26th.

Preparing and teaching a Bible study is one thing. Publishing one is another. If you’re teaching in a class, discussion often takes over, and your notes go out the window. You prepared six hours for a 30 to 60 minute discussion, so you’re essentially over-prepared. At least that’s the plan. But publishing it means it has to all be out there. Make a mistake and the theologians or professional practitioners of the faith could be all over you. You have to get it right. Opinions are okay, but not mistakes.

Thus, I reached out to two ministers in our congregation about the viability of the study. Feeling like I needed more, I reached out to a retired pastor I know from an on-line writing group and got his input. The consensus was that I should proceed, that I wasn’t making any grave errors, and that possibly people would find themselves challenged by the study.

And now it’s written. It consists of seventeen chapters. If taught to a class, each would be a week’s study. If studied individually, I suspect it’s a two-week read. I originally programmed fourteen chapters. Then I thought, if this was taught around Christmastime, I needed some Christmas story chapters. So I added three of those, giving me seventeen chapters in the finished product. I know, I know, they say people nowadays don’t like studies that last that long. Six weeks, eight weeks is about all you should do. Well, I wrote what I wrote. If a teacher and class want a shorter study, they can pick and choose among the chapters.

Each chapter begins a Bible story that illustrates faith, saying how faith is shown by some act. Chapter 1 concerns Noah and the building of the ark, showing how he was acting out his faith all along. The second part of each chapter is a story of someone in the Christian era who also acted on faith. As best I could I tried to get the Bible example of faith and the Christian example of faith to make sense together. I’m not sure I always achieved that, but I think I’m close.  Noah is paired with Martin Luther. Both of these men have sort of the same story. At least, I see many similarities.

I changed the Bible story in the second chapter when I heard a sermon on the radio and thought, oh, wow, what a great story of faith that is. I never saw that before. I didn’t want to lengthen the book, however, so one pair of stories was gone. I found another Christian example of faith and shuffled some around.

What’s next? As I said, I work on editing this into final form, and I see if I can write a leader’s guide for it, trying to have both ready by the end of August. Will I get it done? We shall see. And, of course, I’ll report back here on what progress I make.