Trey Oetjen, associate pastor at Heather Hills Baptist Church in Cumberland, reads a verse from Ecclesiastes during a corporate Bible reading time Monday at the church. Marsha Schultheis would read the next verse.
Anne Durham Smith | Daily Reporter
CUMBERLAND — The flow is simple: One person reads a Bible verse, the next person reads the next verse, and around the table they go until a book of the Bible is finished.
Heather Hills Baptist Church has launched a monthly read-aloud of Bible books. On the last Wednesday evening of the month, or the last Monday noon of the month, people can gather in the church’s student center to read aloud together.
Marsha Schultheis showed up at noon Monday, with a journal-style booklet with the chapters of Ecclesiastes printed on its pages, alternated with blank pages for note taking. The church has been in a sermon series on the book, 12 chapters attributed to Isreal’s King Solomon, so her pages are filled with sermon notes.
She came for the reading “just to be in the Word more,” she said — “just reading the Bible with friends here at church.”
Trey Oetjen, associate pastor, said reading a book of the Bible out loud together is often part of church leadership team meetings and retreats, and afterward it often feels like the best thing they did, regardless of what else they might have accomplished.
“We think reading the Bible’s a great thing,” he said.
Reading the entire book of Ecclesiastes together takes about half an hour. Out-loud Bible reading has taken various forms, and lengths, around the area over the years.
In October 2020, the congregation of Brookville Road Community Church in New Palestine signed up for time slots to read the entire Bible around the clock in the days leading up to the first service in its new auditorium. The reading spanned more than 72 hours.
Joel Sauer and his wife, Kathy, went to the Jan. 26 reading session at Heather Hills.
“It was a really neat experience, just to read it from start to finish,” Sauer said. He had read the book through on his own before the sermon series but found it meaningful to hear it out loud with fellow parishioners.
“It’s kind of a heavy, heavy book … how the wisest man who ever lived struggled with ‘What’s the purpose of life?’ … Life can be very difficult, demoralizing under the sun. With God, there’s a higher purpose in life,” he said. “… Between COVID and all the riots and stuff that’s been going on the last couple of years, it was helpful for me to remember all that and apply it to my life.”
