The “Reading Classics Together” effort has taught me that blogs (even this blog) can offer a kind of excitement and accountability by community that helps me do things I wouldn’t otherwise have the discipline to do. And from what I hear, it works for some of you, too. Many of us would never have read Owens or Edwards or Pink if we had not had the crowd accountability we’ve found here. This has been the reason for the success of the “Reading Classics” program, I’m sure. Shared enthusiasm means that more than one person will be reading a particular book and shared accountability means that more people will continue reading a book. It has worked well!

Today I’d like to introduce a similar effort dealing with Scripture memorization. But just like “Reading Classics” isn’t quite an easy book club dealing with short, simple, modern books, I don’t think this “Memorizing Scripture” effort will be exclusively dedicated to memorizing short and isolated verses. Instead, I’d like to focus on longer passages—whole Psalms, poems, portions of prophecy and maybe, just maybe, entire books (Colossians, perhaps?).

Don’t freak out yet.

I have a terrible memory. Memorizing comes to me only with great effort so I will be—will need to be—moving through these passages at a reasonable pace. I do not intend to try to memorize Psalm 119 in a week (or a month, for that)! But over time I would like to challenge myself and others to commit to memory lengthy portions of the Bible. I am convinced that we can do it, if we do it together.

So here is what I propose. For those who are interested in working on only verses or short passages (still a good and noble goal) I will provide a weekly verse and will post it on this site every Sunday. This will coincide with the verse my church has committed to memorize that week. But I will also be progressively working on larger portions of Scripture and I’ll post these larger passages as well. That way you can commit to individual verses, larger passages, or both. In any case, you’ll be memorizing Scripture and that can only be a good thing!

I plan on sending out weekly emails (every Sunday) to remind you of the commitment and to tell you about the new verse. If you’d like to participate in the program, I ask as well that you sign up for these emails (though you certainly do not have to if you don’t want to). And then, beginning on Sunday, we’ll get memorizing Scripture together.

Are you in?