Category Archives: Reading Challenges!

2017 Bibliopolis Summer Reading Challenge!

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I am excited to announce the 2017 Bibliopolis Summer Reading Challenge, which starts today, and ends September 1st. And yes, if you’re in the middle of a book right now, you may use it for the challenge.

Sorry to all the adults, this is a chapter book challenge for high school and younger only. I’m guessing the participants will be 2nd-12th graders, but if your K-1st grader wants to tackle it, they are welcome to, especially if you the parent want to read along with them.

How does it work? If you’re at Gracepoint Berkeley church, you can pick up a copy of the bingo board at Bibliopolis. If you’re at one of our church plants, or away for the summer, you can download your own copy of the 2017 Summer Reading Challenge bingo board here.

There are 25 squares (of course you can read MORE!). You can choose what bingo line you want to start reading. You’ll get one raffle ticket per book, and one bonus ticket for every bingo line. So you don’t necessarily have to make bingo lines for this challenge.

Read the rules carefully, though. You can only use a book once on the board! I suggest doing it in pencil, so that you can move books around later if you need to. 🙂

For each book you read, you’ll fill out a book review. Below is a picture of it, but again, you can download your own copy of the Book Review form here.

You’ll want to put this somewhere safe. I would strongly suggest using a folder or binder for your entire challenge, as you’ll need to keep all of your book review forms together as well!

The book review doesn’t take too long, but do notice at the bottom it says that you will be asked to redo your book review if you do a shoddy job.

I hope you have fun doing this challenge, and yes, I will do it too!

What’s the first book you’re going to read?

 

 

 

Farewell to the Spring Reading Challenge

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There’s been so much going on over at Gracepoint Berkeley church these days that the official end to the Heroes of Faith Spring Reading Challenge came and went yesterday and I didn’t even realize it!

Several lessons learned, the most important one being that when a challenge is too long, people lose momentum. I thought that having a longer time period to read the requisite books would translate to more people completing the challenge, but the opposite happened. Perhaps procrastination has something to do with it too!

Lesson #2 is that the hype man exists for a reason. I didn’t want to keep beating people on the head with the challenge, but because I didn’t hype it up everywhere I went, people kind of lost steam, and most just…forgot about it.

Don’t worry! I’ve learned and have some ideas for the summer reading challenge. So stay tuned!

With regards to the Heroes of Faith challenge, *EVERYONE* gets an extension until Friday, May 19th to complete your reading and to post a mini-review of your favorite amongst the books you read. So it’s not too late! You can fill out the challenge completion form and post a comment on the main page of the challenge. (If you already posted on the Alas post or elsewhere, that’s ok! You don’t have to repost.)

***by the way, all the people who have completed the challenge thus far have been women. Just sayin’!***

 

 

Alas! The Spring Reading Challenge

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Even though no one took me up on guessing what our next reading challenge at Gracepoint Berkeley church would be, I’ll tell you!

So many of us were challenged and inspired by the many Christian heroes of faith we learned about at our respective winter retreats, and I’ve noticed biographies flying off the bookstore shelves! To keep up the momentum, our spring reading challenge is going to be the Heroes of Faith Reading Challenge.

If you click on the link above, you can find the details on what you need to do in order to complete the challenge. In short, you only need to read 5 new books on any Christian heroes of faith. They don’t have to be about 5 different people. If you want to get super deep into one hero’s life, that’s totally fine.

My hope is that you’ll be inspired to greater faith as you read about these real people living out their commitments to love and serve God…and grow as a reader, too! 🙂

If you don’t know where to start, here is a short list of books you definitely can’t go wrong with!:

john-wesley-web

Our key quote for the reading challenge. (You can find it on your bookmark!)

 

Excited for all of us to continue being inspired through this challenge.

Oh, and yes, for those of you who are highly motivated by the prize, you can win multiple times. The more biographies you read the better for your soul, so it’s a win-win for you. 🙂

If you remember, I’m working on my goal to read all of the Christian Heroes series this year. I’m starting with all the women’s biographies, and I’m currently reading about Isobel Kuhn.

Which hero of faith are *you* going to read about first?