Latest News #284 – Europe
June 10, 2004

Societies ready for a European summer of sport

Entitled +além ('A bit further') it contains the newly revised Tradução em Português Corrente with extra colour sections containing testimonies of Christian sports stars.

It was produced by the Society on behalf of the Aliança Evangélica Portuguesa, the Christian sports ministry agency Movimento Desportivo Internacional and the European Christian Sports Union.

More than 115,000 copies have been printed and as the design does not tie it unduly heavily to Euro 2004 – the testimonies it contains do not stop at footballers, for example – the Society is hoping it will remain useable well after the three weeks of the football fiesta.

In Portugal's neighbour, the Bible Society of Spain has published its sports New Testament, Ganar o Perder ('To Win or Lose') which also has testimonies from sports personalities. They are being distributed at a subsidised price, among the young and at sport events, and a thousand copies are being given to the Bible Society of Portugal to distribute free among football fans in Lisbon.

Meanwhile in Greece, where the Centennial Olympic Games get under way in August, the Greek Bible Society is ready with three special publications.

They all contain sports-related texts from the New Testament and illustrations by a well known Greek artist, Stamatis Skliris, who has had exhibitions all over Europe. His striking illustrations for this project draw inspiration from Hellenistic and Byzantine art.

Specifically the three publications are:

• The Apostle Paul in Greece: a Portion with a text from Acts in 11 languages (Greek, English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Korean, Chinese and Japanese). This will be distributed free by all the mainstream Christian denominations and represents the first time that Orthodox, Evangelicals, and Catholics in Greece have shared a common resource in this way. 50,000 copies have been printed.
  
  
• A New Testament in English (Good News translation) which is going to be distributed free by chaplains working in the Olympic athletes' village. This runs to 20,000 copies.
  
  
• A New Testament in Today's Greek Version which will be on sale for €5.00. 7,000 copies are available.

The Bible Society is also organising a Bible exhibition in Volos where the football matches are being held. Entitled The Bible: the Contest of Hope, it opens on July 27 and runs until the end of October, giving local schools the chance to visit it.

September in France will see a meeting of the World Association of Christian Surfers and the French Bible Society would like to take the opportunity to produce a special edition of the New Testament with colour pictures, testimonies and daily Bible readings.

The Society plans to produce at least 5,000 copies for the churches and
organisations – like the Christian Surfers – involved in Christian sports ministry. Prison chaplains, too, have expressed interest in using the resource. The French Bible Society is looking for partners and donors to cover the major part of the costs.

Although its product does not focus on any specific major sports event, the Scottish Bible Society has chosen the year of the Olympics to produce a sports New Testament in the form of a large-format colour magazine. nt:sport, produced in collaboration with Christian ministry Sports Outreach Scotland, incorporates the New Living Translation and a mix of spiritual and sports-based articles.

Writing in the latest edition of the Scottish Bible Society's magazine Word at Work, General Secretary the Rev Doug Campbell describes it as "a fresh tool for Christians in Scotland to use in sharing God's message with sport followers." It is designed for sports fans of all ages "but particularly young people". Within that market, the Bible Society hopes that nt:sport can be used to reach people at the lower end of the income scale, for Scotland, apparently, is home to some of the poorest people in Europe.