IBS to Distribute 100,000 New Testaments to Colorado Springs
On December 19, one-hundred thousand New Testaments custom-designed for the city of Colorado Springs will be distributed with the Sunday newspaper
On December 19, one-hundred thousand New Testaments custom-designed for the city of Colorado Springs will be distributed with the Sunday newspaper as part of the International Bible Society (IBS) city-reachers project. Through the project, IBS—which has provided over 400 million Scriptures in 194 years of ministry—hopes to reach about 260,000 people in Colorado Springs with God's Word.
More than 40 local churches and 90 organizations have joined the outreach effort, partnering with IBS for planning, prayer and follow-up for the city-reachers project. Inspired by similar projects in Germany and Seattle, Wash., the outreach to Colorado Springs follows the city-reachers projects previously done in Jackson, Miss., and Houston, Texas. However, according to IBS, it's the first custom New Testament project, with pictures of well-known places in Colorado Springs and things that are familiar to people in that city, thereby tailored specifically for them.
"We know that the Word of God is relevant, but we do the best we can do to make the Bible pick-up-able, that people will want to pick it up,” IBS’s Bob Jackson told Mission Network News. “And so as they look at this and see the title, which is 'Our City God's Word' and see the images on the outside, we're convinced that many people who wouldn't perhaps pick up a black Bible with gold lettering, will pick this up and perhaps read some of it and it'll get into their hearts."
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The primary purpose of the city-reachers project, says Jackson, is to see the Word of God do its powerful work in the lives of people, "So we're believing that there're going to be some things happening here that perhaps have never happened before, some people who at least come to know the Word of God, or become acquainted with the Word of God maybe who have never read it before, and hopefully some lives transformed."
Jackson emphasized what a tremendous unifying effort the project has been to the church as a whole—which has been preparing for the outreach for over a year—and he is hoping to see great things come about as a result.
In the previous Aug. 20 city-reachers project in Houston, about 430,500 subscribers to The Houston Chronicle received the Gospel of Luke as an insert in their Sunday newspaper in the largest single distribution of Scripture in the history of the city.
