Interconfessional pastoral biblical ministry

For the year of God’s Word On its Way Through Peru, the Peruvian Bible Society formed part of the pastoral biblical ministry team alongside organisations such as the YMCA, the Catholic International Bible Society and the Commission for Catechesis and Biblical Pastoral Ministry. Our efforts included publishing three Bible study guides, holding pastoral biblical workshops, a national Bible Scholars’ Conference, the travelling Bible Museum exhibition, a stand at the Expobiblia bookfair, the interconfessional Day of the Bible, and activities for children and teenagers.

Smallest Bible

For Bible Month we put on a travelling Bible Museum exhibition. With an attractive entrance designed to bring to mind the caves of Qumran, where some of the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, it featured items including two eighteenth-century choirbooks, Megavoice (the solar-powered audio Bible player), examples of money from biblical times and the smallest printed Bible in the world. These not only caught the attention of the public who attended the exhibition in considerable numbers, but of the national and foreign press as well.

Interconfessional study workshop

For the first time we held an interconfessional study workshop which took in both the evangelical and the Catholic perspectives. The topics discussed were The Bible in Peru, Personal Bible Reading, and Homiletics and Tools of Pastoral Biblical Ministry. The 120 or so people attending included pastors, priests, seminary students, catechists and church and parish leaders from Lima and the provinces.

Work and worry

Organised jointly with Catholic, Evangelical and Adventist bodies, the national Bible Quiz aimed to motivate children and teenagers to read and absorb the Gospel of Luke. The 5000 registration cards we originally printed ran out and we had to reprint. In the end there were more than 8,400 entries.

The quiz brought us a great deal of work and worry but all those who worked on it were very pleased with the results. We feel that if so many children and teenagers have read this Gospel with interest, the project achieved its objective.

Incurable diseases

To celebrate the Day of the Bible on September 30 we held a united service of prayer and thanksgiving. As well as representatives of different Christian confessions, guests included hearing-impaired people, people with incurable diseases and teenage mothers. The parable of the Good Samaritan, with its emphasis on solidarity, provided the central message.

Christian bookfair

For the second year running the Christian bookfair Expobiblia was held in Lima. This gathering brings together the main Bible publishers, distributors, and producers of Bible reference material, and puts hundreds of new products on show in a single venue, from woven verses from Scripture to a biblical library on CD.