Just two days after a buffet lunch marked the end of Autumn Leaves it was MBC’s privilege to say thank you to Norman Hiley who after almost twenty years is stepping down from hosting his regular Friday morning bible study course – Explore the Word.
Norman has led an amazing life, a flavour of which you can read about in From Pit to Pulpit, a series of articles which four years ago we shared on line and which you can access by clicking HERE.
Here’s an extract from one of those posts in which Norman tells us a little bit about how Explore the Word started and the effect it has had… world wide.
During the time I was serving as the Superintendent’s ‘trouble-shooter’ a group of believers in the Moortown Baptist Church asked the then Pastor for more expository Bible Study, which was not provided at the Sunday services. His reply was that sadly he was too busy with other aspects of the church’s work and they should have to find someone-else to do it. Subsequently they found me which is why for the past 15 years I have led a weekly, hour long study group that has not only worked its way through the whole Bible book by book, but has also looked at special series of teaching concerning the Work and Person of the Holy Spirit, The Life of Jesus and the Life of Paul.
Later members of the group ‘complained’ that now they were getting more than they could take in just by listening and I was asked if I could write out the teaching so that they could study it later at home. The result of that request is that now I have all my expository preaching notes in the form of a personal Bible Commentary of the entire Bible Message of Old and New Testaments. At present (2014) we are studying the whole Bible again, but this time concentrating on the Message of Salvation through faith in Christ alone.
I’m pleased to say that over the years these ‘notes’ have been requested by others and now each week they are sent in full by email to 30 different preachers and churches in Australia where they are transposed for use in Fiji, in the USA, Belgium and Bangladesh and of course England. In Romania the notes are published on the church website in both English and Romanian.
However, Sunday’s service wasn’t simply a time to say thank you for just one thing, no, it was also an occasion on which we could congratulate Jean on her ninety second birthday and both of them together on their seventieth wedding anniversary.