Church members inscribe the Bible

• By CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jan 5, 2009 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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With Bibles now available in a multitude of translations, styles and formats, is there really any need for one more?

The Christian publishing house Zondervan thinks there is such a need.

On Sunday, members of the congregation at Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge were busy crafting this new Bible, writing out this sacred Christian tome by hand, one verse at a time.

“You get to say you wrote part of the Bible, but you didn’t really,” said Chris McDonald with a laugh.

Writing in print, no cursive, people formed long lines to add their best scrawl.

“Did my best, messed up a lot, had to white-out. My husband writes better than I do,” said Lequita McCloud after she finished writing out a verse from the Gospel of Matthew.

Seth Cannon was also self-conscious about his penmanship.

“Not so good, but I took extra care, since I knew I was writing, you know, the Bible,” Cannon said.

Ty Bateman was more confident.

“I’ve actually been told several times before that my handwriting looks like a girl’s,” Bateman said.

Zondervan is sponsoring this promotion, called Bible Across America, to highlight the 30th anniversary of its best-selling New International Version of the Bible, or NIV, a version popular with many evangelicals.

To amass the necessary 31,173 handwritten verses, Mandy and John Jones have been traveling the country for Zondervan in an RV, visiting 90 cities in 44 states. They are even keeping a blog to document their travels, complete with pictures and even GPS coordinates.

In addition to churches, the couple is stopping at bookstores, conferences, restaurants, college campuses, even a skating rink. Except for two short breaks, when the Joneses were able to go home to California, the tour is a five-month jaunt that will continue through March.