Press - p1
On BBC Radio 4
I was interviewed about Bible Summary for Radio 4's 'Beyond Belief' programme, broadcast May 16 at 4:30pm.
If you can access BBC iPlayer you can hear the episode here.
In the news
I've finished! How absolutely surreal!
And just to bring things full circle, I'm in the news all over the place again. Here are some stories, starting once again with the Northern Echo...
- 'It is finished' - Christian completes tweeting the Bible (The Northern Echo, The Durham Times)
- Man tweets Bible in three years (BBC website)
- Testament To Twitter: Christian Chris Juby Tweets The Entire Bible (Sky Tyne and Wear, with video)
- Durham scholar completes Bible Twitter project (ITV Tyne Tees)
- Interview for Ingrid Hagemann (BBC Newcastle, from 1:22:10)
- Six O'Clock News (BBC Radio 4, from 14:17)
- La Biblia entera, de versísulos a 'tuits' en @biblesummary (Protestante Digital, in Spanish)
- Man tweeted the Bible, one chapter at a time (Metro New York)
- Hombre comparte la Biblia entera en 1.189 tweets (Terra Chile, in Spanish)
- Man Finishes Tweeting Entire Bible After Three Years Work (Christian Post)
- British man tweets entire Bible in three years (New York Daily News)
- Man tweets entire Bible over three and a half years (Examiner.com)
- Briton tweets entire Bible in just 3 years! (Deccan Chronicle)
- Christian Institute News Bulletin 15 November 2013 (Christian Today)
BBC Look North were almost here this afternoon, and I've done interviews for the Newcastle Chronicle and the Press Association. So watch this space!
I'll keep updating this post with additional stories. Do let me know if you see Bible Summary featured somewhere that I haven't listed.
If you're interested in writing a story about Bible Summary, I've written a new press release to mark the end of the project. And do feel free to get in touch for an interview.
On ITV Tyne Tees
Kenny Toal from ITV Tyne Tees interviewed me for a piece on Bible Summary yesterday, which went out on the local news this evening.
Here's the video.
I was in the Northern Echo again this week too. They've been great supporters of the project. And the story was picked up in the local free paper which went though every door in Durham today.
I've gained 150 followers since this morning. Thanks for your interest!
UPDATE Mar 1: Looks like I'm in the Church Times too.
Out with the Old
I can hardly believe it, but I'm going to finish the Old Testament tomorrow morning! It will be my 929th consecutive day of Bible Summary.
Which means, of course, that I'll be starting the New Testament on Friday morning.
This would be a great moment for new followers to join, so if you like the project please do spread the word.
Here's a press release: Bible Tweeter reaches the Gospels
@TweetTheBible86 and Mashable
Bible Summary has been mentioned on Mashable again, in a post about a new project to tweet the whole Bible, a verse a day.
Yes, the folks at @TweetTheBible86 are making my 3.5 years look easy. Their project will take 86!
Of course, they do have the advantage of just pasting the verses as they are (rather than writing an original summary each day), but it's still an ambitious undertaking!
If you like the idea of @TweetTheBible86 but would prefer a quicker pace, you can follow @BibleBird, who are in the middle of tweeting a verse every 20 minutes.
Looking forward to the Psalms
I've almost finished Job... which means the Psalms are just around the corner!
I've been looking forward to the Psalms since I began the project. I'm a worship leader in my day job, so it's going to be brilliant tweeting the songs of ancient Israel every day for five months!
I've written another press release to highlight this part of the project. Please do pass it on to anyone you think may be interested!
An interview and a screenshot
Bible Summary was on TV in Canada this week as part of an interesting piece on 'Jesus in a Digital Age' for the show 100 Huntley Street...
It was a bit of a shock doing a TV interview again - I'd got a bit out of the swing!
Also this week, CNN's Belief Blog used a screen grab of the Bible Summary Twitter page at the top of their article 'My Take: How technology could bring down the church'. The article doesn't mention Bible Summary so I'm not sure whether I'm implicated!
Interview with BIGBible
BIGBible have just published a video interview that I did with with Pete Phillips last week.
It was great to have a bit longer to explain the project and reflect on how it's going.
The BIGBible Project itself is well worth checking out, so do follow the link above and explore!
PS. Many thanks to Pete for sparing my blushes by editing out a mis-attributed reference (I confused my Victorian literary classics).
Recipe for Media Interest
File this under ‘light-hearted’...
A few people have asked me what my ‘secret’ is for getting so much media coverage for Bible Summary.
The answer? I sent an 80-word press release to my local newspaper, and that’s pretty much it! I’m sure 999 times out of 1000 that wouldn’t lead to an interview on CNN. It just snowballed!
But with my 15 minutes surely almost over and the three-and-a-half years of the project still ahead, here are a few semi-serious reflections on what contributed to these very strange and exciting few days...
The official Bible Summary Recipe for Media Interest*
* greatly enhanced if taken with a pinch of salt
- Find a subject that a lot of people can relate to: religion
- Bring it together with something trendy: Twitter
- Take on a marathon task: summarising the Bible one chapter per day
- Make it even harder: 140 characters per chapter
- Have a concrete measure of the scale of it: I’ll be going till November 2013
- Send a press release when there’s not much else going on: in August
- Await results: articles around the world, 12,000 followers
So there it is – I hope it works for you too!
A fully-serious final note
It’s amazing (truly!) that so many people have heard about Bible Summary, but I didn't set out to get that kind of publicity. The main motivation in starting the project was engaging more deeply with Scripture myself.
Now that Bible Summary has become popular my biggest hope is that others will be inspired to engage with the Bible too.
So join me reading Genesis 17...
I summarised all 1,189 chapters of the Bible on Twitter - one tweet per chapter, one chapter per day for over three years.
Click ☰Summaries above to view the archive.
Find out about the project here, you can buy the Bible Summary book on Kindle or in paperback, and feel free to get in contact if you have any comments or questions.