How we got here: I was challenged to memorize Ephesians by Bishop NT Wright, and invited my friend Troy to join me in the challenge. To facilitate our joint venture, I set up this group. But I was hoping not to be quite so goal-directed, but rather, to establish a discipline of memorization -- to emphasize a journey instead of the destination. So we added Mark as our next objective, meaning, we were in this for the long haul. Memorization of Ephesians took us about a year, and Troy celebrated by visiting Ephesus and then sending me a can of Efes beer! To date, four group members have made it all the way through Ephesians. Since completing Ephesians, at least two of us have started Mark, and it's very different from the work of memorizing Ephesians, and by comparison, quite slow-going. This is in part because we're still reviewing Ephesians, which takes time and energy (the consequence, or perhaps, benefit, of using ScriptureTyper), and in part because the Gospels are (obviously) written very differently then the Epistles. So here we are, sometimes successful, sometimes not so much. And not a very chatty group, either. But you're welcome to join us, and if you think we can help, please ask. Our official mission statement: "This group seeks to instill a discipline of scripture memory, memorizing whole books, and beginning with Ephesians, and then moving on to Mark. If Max McLean can do it, then so can we."
I would challenge you to consider starting the new year with comitting one verse a week!
...and the Word was God!
Taste and see that the Lord is good!
In His grip, Troy
Ephesians is organized two ways within the memory group. The first is verse-by-verse, chapter-by-chapter. This helps us build up our memorization incrementally. "Ephesians passages" was my attempt to group verses into logical passages. As we progressed, I ultimately began to group these into paragraphs that reflect the layout of the ESV. Putting individual verses into a coherent whole is a whole other discipline, and the passages section is meant to help that.
I changed the name of our from the highly proprietary "Carson - Fournier" to "Ephesians then Mark" -- a name which briefly reflects our memorization goals.