This article by Rosalie Currier originally was posted Dec. 13 by The Daily Reporter of Coldwater, Mich. We thank that newspaper for granting us permission to repost it here.
_ _ _
By Rosalie Currier, The Daily Reporter
Northview Christian Church of Coldwater, Mich., isn’t a large congregation, but on Dec. 10 its members loaded about 27,000 Bibles into a shipping container headed to South Africa Christian Mission.
It’s a project the congregation has been involved with for at least 20 years. For 12 months they collect Bibles for the annual shipment.
Robert Snyder, a church member, used to store the gathered Bibles in his barn. After Snyder passed away in 2019, the Northview congregation built a garage, which pastor Jeff Bream calls “the Bible barn,” so the project can continue.
Northview isn’t alone the effort to supply Bibles for South Africa project. A cluster of about 25 Christian churches and churches of Christ join forces to make the annual shipment of Bibles a possibility, Bream said.
Recently, as the deadline for the shipment drew near, a delivery truck arrived at Northview Church with 280 boxes of Bibles sent from supporting churches. The Bibles had filled the truck and it was the driver’s only stop.
To bring another shipment to Coldwater, the congregation rented an enclosed straight truck and drove to the Grand Rapids area for a major donation.
The contact with South Africa originated in the 1950s, said Dave Foust, a Northview member. Al Zimmerman was the pastor of the First Church of Christ in Coldwater when he was called to South Africa Christian Mission. He gathered support for the mission from his hometown and, after Zimmerman passed away, his son, Steve, took over being the local contact for the mission in Cape Town, South Africa.
The donation of Bibles is one way to support mission. Although Bibles are easy to come by in the U.S., that is not true in all countries.
Bream said when news of the arrival of the Bible shipment spreads across the continent of Africa, people travel for days to get one. Walking away, they are often clutching the book to their heart.
“If they get a used Bible with a person’s name in it they get down on their knees and pray for that person,” Bream said.
Over the years, things have changed and now most of the Bibles are new, although used Bibles are in the mix. But with the cost of shipping being what it is, the supporting groups often order online and have new Bibles shipped directly to Northview.
On the recent Friday, Northview members were joined by supporters from other churches in the area, including Stroh Church of Christ and Lake James Christian Assembly—a camp in Indiana. It took the group three hours to load the shipping container, but it didn’t hold all the Bibles. They had gathered a total of about 29,000 of various languages.
“So we’ve got a 2,000 head start on our next container,” Bream said.
0 Comments