Singing songs to buy good books

A job that’s never done - Gideon’s Joycelyn and John Moore.

He could have just hung up the ‘gone fishing' sign when he retired from his mechanic's shop.

Or pottered off to the golf club. Or moseyed around in the garden.

But John Moore's retirement was pre-destined.

'A bloke called Ron Gardener came up to me after church one day and said ‘why don't you join Gideons?' I was too busy though. He said ‘well, pray about it and I will pick you up tomorrow night'.”

He did. And John found himself at a Gideons monthly meeting – Gideons, the evangelical Christian organisation out of Wisconsin which distributes free Bibles.

That was 1977. Today, 41 years and 6000 bibles a year later, John and his wife are still putting the good word out there.

'It's the good stories coming back to us that is the motivation.” Bibles in schools, prisons, motels, hotels, refuges – anywhere they might just turn some circumstances around; where they might provide inspiration and transform bad into good.

Those 6000 Bibles, even at just $2 a copy because they roll off a heavily subsided American printing press, still have to be paid for.

Cue the Bay of Plenty Men's Choir under the baton of David Cantwell. It'll launch into full song at the Mount Bible Chapel in Monowai Street, Mount Maunganui on Sunday, July 22 to raise funds for Gideons Bibles. Admission is free but offerings will be accepted for Gideons.

The concert, from 2.30-4pm, is a gospel musical afternoon entitled ‘Spiritual Inspiration'.

The Bible project was proposed by one of the Gideon Association's trustees who believed the Gideons should make it their goal to put a Bible in every hotel room in the United States because it 'would be a gracious act, wholly in keeping with the divine mission of the Gideon Association.”

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