Harry Griffith founded the Bible Reading Fellowship of the Episcopal Church in 1971, two years after leaving his job as vice president and corporate attorney for Mississippi Chemical Corporation. Although he has held other "day jobs" during this time, including 11 years as executive director of the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer, the Bible Reading Fellowship has always been closest to his heart.

"The Episcopal Church has more scripture per square inch of its liturgy of any church," he said recently. "And yet our people too often kind of let it go at that. That's all the Bible they get; the reading of the lessons on Sunday..."

This year, as it celebrated its 25th anniversary, the Bible Reading Fellowship published six Bible study resources for individuals and parishes: Journey through the Word, New Daylight, Compass, This Week's Word, Good News Daily and Path of Life. These are published by a full-time staff of three, along with 45-50 volunteer editors and writers scattered throughout the Anglican Communion.

Mr. Griffith works with the Bible Reading Fellowship of the Church of England, which is based in Oxford. The English office has regional offices in most of the provinces of the Anglican Communion to distribute its print resources. Although during its initial years, Mr. Griffith's office distributed these materials in the U.S., "We very soon realized that we needed to adapt some programs specifically for use by Episcopalians rather than receiving programs from England and redistributing them. So we started developing our own programs and materials," he said.

The Memphis native graduated second in his class from the University of Mississippi College of Law, where he was editor of its law review. After a year as clerk to a federal judge and three years in the Judge Advocate General Corps of the U.S. Army, Mr. Griffith joined Mississippi Chemical Corporation in Yazoo City as a corporate attorney, where he worked from 1960-69. When he left, he was the company's vice president for administration.

He said he never regretted leaving the job. "The Lord made it so clear that I was being called into ministry as a lay person that I would have been very unhappy doing anything else," he recalled.

Mr. Griffith said he didn't come into contact with the Episcopal Church until college at the University of Mississippi where he met his wife, Emily, who was an Episcopalian. He wasn't confirmed until several years later.

"Soon after we arrived in Yazoo City," Mr. Griffith said, "an Episcopal priest came by and asked if I would like to attend an inquirers' class." Instead of talking about the mechanics and structure of the Episcopal Church, "he stressed the difference Jesus could mean in the different situations we face in life," he said.

"Now I didn't have a dramatic conversion experience. But that was the missing link in my life; I had never realized that Jesus was God and that he could help us in the situations we face in life. So I discovered that in the class. I've been sold out to the Lord since then."

To Central Florida

For two years after leaving the business world, he was president of SPEAK, publisher of the Anglican Digest in Eureka Springs, Ark. Then he accepted Bishop Folwell's invitation to become program and planning officer for the Diocese of Central Florida in Winter Park.

"The main reason I went to Central Florida was to start the Bible Reading Fellowship," he said. "What became obvious to me during the two years in Arkansas was that we needed a Bible study organization in the Episcopal Church. But I didn't have money and funding to do that, so I had to work for the diocese to give me a method of income.

"The Lord seemed to be saying to me that there needed to be an organization whose whole focus was encouraging Bible study. That was a gap that existed in the church that needed to be met. That was why we started it."

Harry Griffith was a staff member for the Diocese of Central Florida from 1971 to 1979 and executive director of the Anglican Fellowship of Prayer from 1979 to 1990. The highlight of those years was the "Prayer in Practice" workshops that he and his wife taught in more than 50 dioceses. "We'd spend two days talking about prayer, Bible study, and giving people the tools to go back to their parishes and take what they learned to others," he said. It was for this work and his six years on the Executive Council that he received the Distinguished Christian Service Award from Seabury-Western Seminary in 1988.

He has written several books including A Gift of Light: A Collection of Thoughts of Father Andrew, Sharing God's Love (with Rosalind Rinker), Adventure in Discipleship, The Personal Prayer Notebook and The Ways of God. With his wife he wrote This Love We Share, a daily devotional guide for couples, which was published by Tyndale House in 1995 and is now in its second printing.

He and his wife have three grown children and have been members of All Saints' Church in Winter Park for 25 years. He expresses much appreciation to the parish, which provides office space for the Bible Reading Fellowship, and its rector, the Rev. David Wilson, who is the current board chairman of the organization.

The most rewarding part of his work with the Bible Reading Fellowship is the feedback he gets from people who use its materials. "They tell us how much it means to them, about the encouragement and help they get in their spiritual lives. Sometimes it's just a note scribbled on the back of a subscription renewal. That's almost an everyday occurrence," he said.

"We've been in business for 25 years and feel like we are a lifeline to those Episcopalians who really believe in the authority of scripture and want a method of studying it daily," Mr. Griffith said.

"I obviously have a heart for scripture. I don't see how we can live as Christians without growing in the knowledge of God. If we want to understand God and how God wants us to live, we need to be regularly in scripture. We're trying to make that possible for Episcopalians." o

David E. Sumner resides in Anderson, Ind., and teaches journalism at Ball State University.