wfn.org | 125th Anniversary, Uniform Bible Lessons

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in 
the U.S.A.
Contact: Wendy S. McDowell, NCC, 212-870-2227
Internet: c/o carol_fouke.parti@ecunet.org

NCC3/26/97               FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

DENOMINATIONS TO CELEBRATE 125 YEARS OF UNIFORM 
BIBLE LESSONS

 NEW YORK, March 26 ---- On April 13, 1997, 
22 denominations will celebrate 125 years of 
cooperative work in producing the International 
Uniform Bible Lessons used by an estimated 30 
million Protestant Christians every Sunday.  
The celebration will be held in the same church 
in which the original committee met in April of 
1872, the Second Presbyterian Church in 
Indianapolis, Indiana.

 The celebration will feature a  short 
"play" written for the occasion, honoring the 
memory of a Southern Baptist layman (Benjamin 
Franklin Jacobs), and a Methodist clergyman 
(John W. Vincent).  In the 1860s, these two men 
dreamed an ecumenical dream that Protestants of 
all kinds and ages might use the same Bible 
text in their Sunday Bible schools.  Little 
could they imagine that 125 years later, the 
committee would encompass such diversity as it 
does today, or that each Sunday, some 30 
million Christians worldwide would be using 
materials in several languages based on this 
principle.

 The Committee on the Uniform Series is the 
oldest and one of the most diverse of the 
ecumenical committees affiliated with the 
Ministries in Christian Education arm of the 
National Council of the Churches of Christ in 
the U.S.A (NCCC). When it meets each year for 
an intense working week, it has some 60 
members, representing a wide theological 
diversity, including 9 of the historic African 
American denominations and 13 other 
denominations (see participant list addendum).

 Committee members are educators 
representing the 22 denominations who meet 
annually to pray and work together.  They 
choose the cycle of scriptures to be studied by 
studying the texts together and they also 
identify the emphases appropriate to various 
age levels.  Each denomination then tailors the 
lessons to meet its own needs and each Sunday 
School teaches the lessons in its own way.

 The Committee on the Uniform Lessons was 
originally part of the International Council of 
Religious Education, one of the ecumenical 
agencies which came together in 1950 to form 
the National Council of Churches.

 In addition to denominational use, a 
number of independent publishers use the 
uniform lessons in developing their own Bible 
study materials.

 The preacher for the anniversary occasion 
will be the Rev. Dr. Arthur O. Van Eck, who 
served a number of years in the NCCC as the 
Executive Director for Christian Education, and 
for the Uniform Lessons Committee.

-end-

DENOMINATIONAL PARTICIPANTS IN THE
COMMITTEE ON THE UNIFORM LESSONS

Historic African American denominations:
 African Methodist Episcopal Church
 African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
 Christian Methodist Episcopal  Church
 Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America
 Church of God in Christ
 National Baptist Convention of America
 National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
 National Missionary Baptist Convention
 National Primitive Baptist Convention

Other denominations: 
 the American Baptist Churches
 the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
 the Church of the Brethren
 the Church of God (Anderson)
 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
 the Mennonite General Conference and the 
Mennonite Church
 the Presbyterian Church in America and the 
Cumberland                         
Presbyterian Church
 the Seventh Day  Baptist Churches
 the Southern Baptist Convention (with the 
largest number of 
     committee members)
 the United Church of Christ
 the United Methodist Church
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