2017 Scripture & Evangelism Planner
The earnest and traditional 2017 Scripture & Evangelism Planner seeks to add meaning to a Christian’s life by encouraging daily Bible reading.
Jerry Walters’s Scripture and Evangelism Planner brings fresh insight to the Bible through three months of lessons and readings.
The planner includes readings for three months of 2017: July, August, and September. Each dated entry includes four Bible readings, further broken up into a pair of morning and evening offerings. Each entry also includes a summary of a portion of the Bible.
These daily lessons incorporate material from the Bible’s wisdom traditions, a historical book, a gospel, and a letter from the New Testament. For example, August begins with readings in Job, Mark, Genesis, and Romans, and the book ends with selections from Deuteronomy, 2 Corinthians, Psalms, and Luke. The book also provides commentary and applications for each book, broken up into chapter-by-chapter segments.
The book’s classic reading format allows for approaching a range of biblical texts and ideas. It makes some bold choices, including the inclusion of Leviticus—a challenging book to make relevant. The book effectively translates complex cultural ideas from the Bible into contemporary language. Its aim is not to fully engage with the nuances of the texts, but to make them broadly understandable. More could be said about each of its passages, though; what the book offers in variety, it lacks in depth.
The material reflects a conservative Christian standpoint that is inclined to take the Bible at face value. Often, the book simply largely repeats what the text of the day is saying, with little commentary or added explanation. Elsewhere, as with the book’s entry for Psalm 34:11–22, the text offers deeper explanations; for example, explaining David’s background and why he might have felt that he could safely rely on God. The best parts of the text expand on Bible readings in this way, but such explorations come far too infrequently for the work to offer much beyond what the Bible itself includes.
Writing is clear and soft-spoken, often mirroring the phrases that would be found in the accompanying textual citations. The book sometimes follows those citations so closely that the words trip over themselves, leading to some poor grammatical choices.
This book provides a clear avenue into the discipline of daily Bible reading. Entries are generally short and hit the high points of the materials presented, even if this work is done for just a small portion of the Bible, and for only a few months of a bygone year.
2017 Scripture & Evangelism Planner seeks to add meaning to a Christian’s life by encouraging daily Bible reading, with earnest if limited results.
Reviewed by
Jeremiah Rood
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
