New Year 2023!
Welcome to a new year!
As we transition from 2022 to 2023, I want to take a week to accomplish two things:
Review last year’s studies. This will help those who joined us throughout the year to get caught up.
Talk about plans for the new year. This will help you know what is coming.
I’ll do these two things in reverse order.
Systemic Changes
As I look forward into another year of writing Bible studies, I’m going to make a couple systemic changes.
Grounded in the Bible has a new logo photo! I took this picture in the mountains around Salt Lake City, Utah. This is a perfect reflection of the essence of what I want as a Christian—to be “grounded” or rooted in the Rock—Jesus Christ.
I will be transitioning Grounded in the Bible to a primarily free newsletter. All content (other than Spontaneous Ponderings) will now be free, including the premium resources. It may take me some time to transition old posts to the new system, but I’ll get it there eventually. I have over 100 Bible study lessons to review for needed updates! However, all the index and premium resource posts have had the paywall removed, so you should be able to access them through the paid subscriber links.
The paid option will still be available, but this is mostly there for those who want to financially support my continued efforts to write and publish Bible studies. If you want to give a one-time gift or smaller gift than the subscription price, you can do that through Grounded in the Bible’s Ko-fi page.
I will continue to create premium resources for long-term studies that already have templates (for example, Bible Essentials and Characteristics of God). However, some of the newer studies may not include premium resources. I will only create them if I feel strongly that a particular resource would be valuable for that study.
Study Topics
As for study topics in the next year, I have several in mind. I’m not sure which ones will end up at the top of the list, but here are some options. If you have one that interests you more, let me know in the comments!
Characteristics of God in the Psalms – This one will be our January study, and it will be an ongoing study that will appear at the transitions between multi-week series studies. This will be an opportunity for you to practice identifying Characteristics of God in the Psalms!
The sacraments – baptism and communion
The 7 “I AM” statements in John
The “one another” statements
Bible Essentials – Key stories in Genesis
I have so many other ideas, but I can’t tackle them all at once, so these are my top 5 for now. That may change tomorrow!
Witness Wednesday
I plan to add a key component to the Witness Wednesday posts. I’ve come across a resource for encouraging prayer for missionaries working around the world, with short videos to highlight each country. I’ll be sharing a new country in each Witness Wednesday post. If you have a country you want to see highlighted, let me know in the comments!
Witness Wednesday posts are your chance to share what you have seen God doing in the world around you. This can be a story of something that someone did for you, something you did for someone else, something you witnessed or experienced, or even a news article you see that you want to share. I’d love to hear from you in the next year! These posts go out every other Wednesday.
2022 Study Review
2022 started with finishing two studies that we started in 2021—the overview studies for the Characteristics of God series and a couple added studies to Set 1 of the Bible Essentials series.
I introduced two new features at the start of last year as well—Witness Wednesdays and Songs of Scripture—and we’ve added to these features consistently throughout the year.
I did a couple short studies, with a single lesson on self-forgiveness and a three-part series on what the Bible has to say about children.
Then we got into our two major studies of the year: a word study on self-control and Set 2 of the Bible Essentials series: Sin, Sacrifice, and Salvation.
In the midst of these, I continued to expand on the Characteristics of God with individual lessons on a handful of characteristics. You can find links to these lessons in the Characteristics of God lesson index.
We also had a special guest post from my niece, Hannah, who wrote a skit.
I even tried my hand at a video lesson!
When I look back, we covered a lot of ground! I’m looking forward to diving into some new topics this year with you!
In Christ,
Karen
Thank you Karen for all of your deep digging in scripture for us. You do such an awesome job!