This article features New Zealanders and the Bible.
Initially, I refer to 5 years ago the Bible Society New Zealand (BSNZ) highlighted from the Bible is 'Good for Life' and wanted to encourage everyone to read it. I want to go back and see where that landed.
“Good for Life is all about equipping Christians with the tools they need to ensure the Bible remains an important part of their faith,” said BSNZ CEO Francis Burdett.
To help churches do this, the organisation has produced a set of seven unique videos showing the transformational impact the Bible can have in people’s lives. These stories feature a surfer who broke his back, a Kaikoura earthquake survivor and a young girl who loves Bible stories.
And to help church leaders understand more about the relationship New Zealanders have with the Bible, BSNZ and Nielsen conducted a nationwide Bible reading survey. One key finding centred around the ancient biblical truth, “Do to others has you would have them do to you”.
Respondents were asked what they thought the main message of the Bible is. Aside from those that answered ‘Don’t know’, the strong impression from the general population is that the Bible points to the Golden Rule, “Do to others as you would have them do to you,” (Luke chapter 6 verse 31). In fact, some young people quoted the verse directly from the Bible.
Another interesting research finding was nearly three out of five New Zealanders over 13 years old own a Bible and 7% read the Bible every day. A further 5% read the Bible weekly, meaning more than one in ten New Zealanders over 13 read the Bible every week.
Teenagers
Teenagers (13-18) are more likely than those aged 19-64 to read the Bible and attend church regularly. Those aged 19-24 are significantly different to all other age groups in many areas of the survey.
The 2017 Bible engagement survey also reveals the top barriers to Bible reading for Christians as a lack of self-discipline (28%), being distracted by other activities (26%) and being too busy (24%).
More than 1,000 churches throughout New Zealand had already received Bible Month 2017 resource packs containing a DVD of the seven film clips and a booklet outlining the other campaign resources on offer.
BSNZ’s mission is to help make the Bible accessible to everyone and encourage interaction with it.
(This survey was conducted by Nielsen in February 2017 through the SSI online survey panel and was answered by 1,208 people over 13 years of age. The results are weighted by age, gender and region to be representative of the New Zealand population).
Today, 5 years later, indicators are that New Zealanders and the Bible have a similar agreement. That is good news.
Dr Mark Tronson - a 4 min video
Chairman – Well-Being Australia
Baptist Minister 45 years
- 1984 - Australian cricket team chaplain 17 years (Ret)
- 2001 - Life After Cricket (18 years Ret)
- 2009 - Olympic Ministry Medal – presented by Carl Lewis
- 2019 - The Gutenberg - (ARPA Christian Media premier award)
Gutenberg video - 2min 14sec
Married to Delma for 45 years with 4 children and 6 grand children