The Bible Society has released a new Bible Sunday resource pack this week, which will focus on “Bible-power at work in William Wilberforce’s life”.

|TOP|The new resource will be titles ‘Chain Reaction – Uncovering the awesome power of the Bible’, and has been made available free for download.

Discussing William Wilberforce in depth and focusing on the life of the great slave trade abolitionist, the resource pack has been published with the hope to lead churches to think again of the awesome power that can be found in the Bible. The resource goes on to clearly reveal how it was through this ‘power of the Bible’ that God guided and led Wilberforce’s life and work.

Wilberforce was one of the leading men fighting for the abolition of the slave trade, which finally found success with the signing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in 1807. The Bible Society aims to show, just as Wilberforce’s Bible-fuelled campaign against the slave trade sparked a chain reaction to bring about victory against the evil business, in today’s era the same is happening as the Scriptures are “sparking new chain reactions”.

By focusing on William Wilberforce and his abolitionist companions the pack forms a powerful springboard for churches preparing to commemorate the bicentenary of the1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade Act next year. The commemorative campaign is being supported by Set All Free and Stop the Traffik.

The new resource will be launched to celebrate Bible Sunday; which itself is a campaign first launched 102 years ago. It first took place on 6 March 1904, expanding on the previous regional celebrations held at different times of the year.

|AD|At the time, The Times newspaper published a leading article on 8 January 1904, promoting the celebration which said, “it seems a felicitous proposal to celebrate the 100th birthday of the British and Foreign Bible Society by observing the first Sunday in March this year as, ‘Universal Bible Sunday’.“

Soon it was adopted into the church liturgical year and until recently was celebrated on the second Sunday of Advent. Following the liturgical revision in the late 1990s Bible Sunday was moved to the last Sunday in October.

Each Bible Sunday free resource pack includes: a PowerPoint presentation which looks to communicate the chain reaction effect of Scripture; an easy-to-perform drama available both as a script and as an audio recording to play; a complete youth multi-media meditation to help young people take the message forward, which has been designed by musician and youth worship leader Jamie Hill.

Bible Sunday, which is also held by some individual national Bible Societies worldwide as a weekly celebration, is this year scheduled in the UK to be celebrated on 29 October 2006.

Ann Holt, Programme Director, Bible Society said, “Bible Society has a vision for a day when the Bible’s chain reaction is shaping the lives and communities of people everywhere. Part of our task is to help churches value the Bible - for themselves and for this world.”

The Bible Society are also quick to highlight that even today slavery has not ended.

The Christian organisation tells: “Today, men, women and children are trafficked across continents. Elsewhere families are bonded in debt for generations. A Bible poverty exists for people like this.”

The Bible Society has declared as its commission, to work to address these issues by providing Bibles to Immigration Removal Centres across England, Scotland and Wales.