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Word in the Wild is a one year Bible adventure with friends. Join from anywhere and enjoy a fun, rewarding, and doable 12-month journey through the Bible where you read it from cover to cover and understand it. It’s not a devotional or recap. It’s a guide by your side through God’s Word. With support from a weekly podcast and an online community of fellow travelers, this is the year when you finally explore the Bible in its own words and on its own terms for yourself.
Gear Up for Adventure
Word & the Wild | Episode One
Learn more about Word & the Wild: wordandthewild.com
Word & the Wild is a services of LineHouse Community Network.
Host: Owen Wildman
[00:00:00] Hello and welcome in, this is The Word and the Wild. It's a one year Bible adventure with friends. My name's Owen, I'm your host and your guide, and together we are a podcast plus community on a 12 month journey where we read the Bible for ourselves, but not by ourselves. Why, you ask? Well, we're here for the fun, to explore and to learn and to discover insights and inspiration from the Bible.
And it's always more rewarding, doable, and fun when you roll with some friends. Today, we are just about ready to hit the trail on this one year Bible adventure. And as we get set to go, I just want to offer up a few tips and tricks to help us all get the most out of our adventure together.
Now the first thing you can do is just simple.[00:01:00] Join the fun and subscribe, hit subscribe to this podcast right here on your favorite platform. And then go ahead and become a Word and the Wild Plus member. That's where you get access to our private, safe, and lively online community. Where you can interact and find bonus content like our weekly live stream video Q&A.
Get all the details over at wordandthewild.com.
So as we get set to go, I think it's important to answer the why question, why are we doing this and what are we doing? So first the why. All this started, man, almost exactly four years ago with a woman who came up to me, grabbed me by the arm and said, See she [00:02:00] and a few friends were trying to read the Bible together in a year and they were a couple of weeks into the process and they were stuck.
The Bible was hard for them to understand. It was hard for them to get their footing. And so they reached out through this lady and just said, Hey, we're getting stuck. Can you help us? And I'll be honest. I was a little bit. I guess dubious because people get this inspiration all the time right the certain time of the year hits Maybe it's January or I don't know You know spring or summer sometime in the calendar the urge hits to go ahead and read the Bible And like most of these, you know, resolutions that we have, you stick with it for, I don't know, maybe a month, maybe two, maybe if you're really strong and brave, you get to month number three, but at some point.
You just kind of throw in the towel. [00:03:00] And so I kind of figured that's what would happen in this particular case. And so I decided just to be upfront and throw out a couple of ground rules and say, look, I'm happy to help you out. I'm happy to walk with you through the Bible this year. But we're gonna do things a little differently than your typical, I don't know, reading plan.
For the first thing, I just said, look, no guilt, no shame. If you stop reading, it's over. Like, don't feel guilted into it. This has to be something you really want to do and more importantly, even than that, it's something you enjoy doing and get something out of. Otherwise, I mean, what's the point? Right? So that was one of the rules.
The second one was simply this. I'm not gonna teach lessons. There's not gonna be any devos or study guides. It's just gonna be simply getting together once a week and you bring your questions and your thoughts and your observations and [00:04:00] together we're gonna get through it. So that's how we began. I figured we'd be at, you know, two or three weeks, maybe a month.
but we finished the year together and then the next year there were more groups and the following year even more groups. These community Bible reading groups popping up around town and just an assortment of people coming at the Bible for different reasons, with different perspectives, but all united by this desire to read it for themselves, to understand it and to get something out of it.
So that had prompted me here at the start of our journey to just widen that circle of friends and invite more people in.
So that's where the Word and the Wild podcast and community kind of came to be. It's this idea that I'm just having So much fun interacting with people about the Bible discussing what's [00:05:00] inside of it, all that brings out to the table, talking about life, talking about belief and faith and their journeys, all that inside of just a low key, community driven conversation.
So that is Word in the Wild. That's the why behind what we're doing. So I love that you're interested in joining in our circle of friends. So, as we get prepared as a, as a crew… as a trail group or whatever you want to call it, we get ready for this 12 month long adventure reading the Bible for ourselves.
We got to set things up by talking a little bit about what we're doing. Okay. So here it is simply. We are doing a chronological daily reading of the Bible, including interactive conversation. That's it. Okay, so let me unpack chronological. [00:06:00]
That just means we will watch the Bible unfold in story order.
We're still reading. every bit of the Bible in the next 12 months. But instead of doing the Genesis, Exodus, Matthew, Mark, Luke, et cetera, the book by book traditional format, we're going to do things a little differently. We're going to walk through it in the order the story happens. So we're going to follow the timeline of events.
In other words, we're going chronological. All right, so that's one thing. We're doing daily reading for yourself. That's another. Key to this adventure. Well there are a number of approaches to reading the bible in a year a lot of these one year bible reading plans you know, they take the format of Lessons, recaps, devos sermons, Bible studies.
There's a lot of content that they generate and those are all okay, but a side effect of all that is they [00:07:00] can take you away from actually just reading the Bible for yourself and, and, and instead you find yourself just, you know, listening to somebody else. it, read it, think about it and sharing their ideas.
I mean, nothing wrong with that at all, but we're on a different path. Word and the wild is all about staying synced up together and following a daily reading plan. The plan we're going to use, it comes from. The one year chronological Bible New Living Translation. That's the, the, the, the, a nice one. I like it.
It's very readable. Every day is divided up into just a nice section of reading. 15, 20 minutes, you're in business. So the best thing you can do Stay synced up with us is get your hands on a copy of that new living translation one year chronological Bible And I know it's old school, but I'm gonna say get your hands on a physical copy get the print [00:08:00] Now there is a Kindle version and there is even an audio version But you can do that if you want I'm gonna say do yourself a favor get the paper copy keeps you distraction free when you read It's effortless to keep up with us and you know when we refer to a section or a verse or a page number You're gonna stay once again just in sync with us So I'm gonna drop a link to the Bible you want in the show notes.
Okay, so chronological daily reading for yourself and finally Interactive So my heart behind all of this with the word and the wild is to make sure you don't get stuck. That means you need to have a place to ask questions. Also means you need a place to share the joy of just discovery with some friends.
When you find a nugget, gain an insight, [00:09:00] something hits you you want to be able to share it. So that's why Word in the Wild is set up as a podcast plus community. The community part is every bit as much a part as the podcast part. I'm confused. Okay, so here's how you connect with the community aspect of Word in the Wild.
First off all, follow on social, we're at thewild. us on Insta. You can also look for the Word and the Wild group on Facebook and join that, because there'll be some interaction happening there as we roll. And then the other thing, again, do yourself a favor, consider chipping in a few bucks to become a Word and the Wild Plus, where you have full access to yours truly. Some pastor friends of mine will come through from time to time. And like I said, there's that weekly live stream Q and a that is entirely driven by questions and thoughts [00:10:00] from the community. So if you want to get the most out of it, stay interactive with us.
Consider those ways to jump in. All right. So that is all you need to know to get set up. Those are the mechanics of it. Okay. It's simple, right? So step one, simply subscribe to this podcast. Make sure you're with us every week. I'll be setting up each week's reading here just to help you get into it. See what's coming up ahead.
Have a little inspiration and then check out wordandthewild.com for more information on how to join our community. Get your copy of the Bible we are using and get set to go. Lace up those hiking boots. Adventure awaits.
Word and the Wild is a LineHouse community as part of the LineHouse Community Network. The non profit organization with a mission to bring neighbors together. and to [00:11:00] promote awareness, appreciation, and understanding of the Bible to change lives and change cities. It's presented by the Lumivoz podcast network.
Thanks to those guys. And until next time, I'm Owen, your host and guide. See you on the trail and in the wild.