Thursday, July 18, 2019

Core 52: A Fifteen-Minute Daily Guide to Build Your Bible IQ in a Year by Mark E Moore

Book description: 

Build your Bible IQ and Christian worldview in just fifteen minutes a day! Over the course of a year, Core 52 will help you master the 52 most important passages in the Bible. 

Most of us want to know the Bible better, but few reach our goal, often because we're too busy or we don't know where to start. Core 52 removes both barriers, offering a common-sense solution that fits into our busy lives. Respected Bible professor and teaching pastor Mark E. Moore developed this proven process from thirty-five years of helping people grow deeper in God's Word.

Each week features a brief essay, memory verse, Bible story, trajectory verses, and practical ways to put what you've learned into practice. An optional "Overachiever Challenge" offers the chance to memorize the top 100 Bible verses by year's end.

This simple approach allows you to become familiar with the big ideas of the Bible in less time and with less effort than other reading plans. In one year, you can master the core of the Bible--focusing on topics from God's will to worry, happiness to holiness, and leadership to love. These fifty-two core passages are lenses through which you can read the rest of the Bible with clarity and confidence.


My review:

   This book is set up to be used as a sort of weekly devotional. The author took what he considers 52 of the most important subjects and passages for the book. The subjects cover Creation, prayer, money, love, grace, and several other topics. 

 Each chapter begins with the topic title, a Bible verse about it, a question about the topic, and then the answer. After a few pages covering the topic and question, the key points are listed, and it ends with  a plan to master the Bible in a year, 15 minutes a day. Day 1 is read the essay. Day 2 memorize the core text - which is only 1 or 2 verses usually, and review verses from the previous two weeks. Day 3 is read a story from elsewhere in the Bible that illustrates the text from the current week. Day 4 is read the 3 trajectory passages and mediate on them. Day 5 is put it into action.

  I didn't read all 52 chapters/topics, but did several. It seems the author did a great job of picking topics to cover that are at the core of the Bible. He also did a good job of making the book an interesting read, and it doesn't come off at all like a stuffy boring theological book like some are.

  There are Bible memory cards here: https://core52.org/wp-content/uploads/resources/core52-memory-cards.pdf, and downloadable discussion questions here: https://core52.org/wp-content/uploads/resources/core52-discussion-questions.pdf

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher. All opinions in this review are my own.

About the author:


Mark Moore joined the staff at Christ's Church of the Valley (CCV) in Peoria, Arizona in July 2012 as a teaching pastor. As of July 2015, CCV has six locations and over 23,000 in weekly attendance. Prior to joining the CCV team, Mark was a Professor at Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Missouri, an Adjunct Professor at Hope International University in Fullerton, California and Haus Edelweiss, Vienna, Austria. He is also the author and co-author of many books. His PhD on the Politics of Jesus was earned through the University of Wales. His life passion is to make Jesus famous.


Core 52 is available from Waterbrook/Multnomah Publishing.

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