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BY CARRIE MADREN
UMCONNECTION CORRESPONDENT

If one Bible can change a life, imagine what a million Bibles can do. The people at the Maryland Bible Society know first-hand.

There are, for example, many prisoners who write to the Society requesting Bibles. The Rev. Raymond Moreland Jr., the Society's executive director, receives countless letters of appreciation from inmates who write to say the free Bibles changed their attitudes toward life.

"I will get letters that say ‘I am not just a man in prison, I'm a child of God and by reading the Bible and studying the Word with the chaplain, there is a transformation taking place.' I get stories like that all the time," Moreland said.

Detention centers are just one of the hundreds of places that receive Bibles from the Maryland Bible Society. Each year, the Baltimore-based, non-profit Society sends out upwards of a million Bibles and New Testaments to youth, soldiers, pastors, missionaries and others around the state, country and world.

It's the Maryland Bible Society's mission to get Scripture into people's hands. "Hopefully they'll read it and understand it in the heart language, or their native language, that which is most comfortable," said Moreland, who's been leading the Society for 14 years. He is a United Methodist Elder of the Baltimore-Washington Conference.

Moreland can't guess how many Bibles the Society has given out in the last 200 years, but says that the last director, the Rev. McCarl Roberts, who led the Society for 25 years, distributed some 25 million copies.

This year, from April 1 to March 2010, the Maryland Bible Society celebrates its 200th anniversary of spreading written Scripture.

This year, the Society will print a special anniversary commemoration Bible, a full Contemporary English version, slated for release this summer.

Autumn's anniversary kick-off will feature a luncheon lecture on translation by Barclay Newman, retired senior translations officer from the American Bible Society. Next April, the Morgan State University Choir will offer a sacred music concert in honor of the Word in music. The Society is also planning a special prayer breakfast and an invitation-only anniversary reception.

Bible societies started back in the early 1800s, and there was one in nearly every state in the Union. Now, of the 11 societies that still exist, Maryland is one of the largest and fourth oldest.

"We're the largest in terms of distribution and grant ministry," Moreland said. "This year, we will have contributed over $50,000 in Bible grants, paid for in donations from churches and ministries.

"We consider ourselves to be the Scripture resource center for the Christian faith community," he said.

One important part of its mission is the Society's grant program. Funds for the grant program come by way of donations from groups, such as United Methodist Women's groups, and from the 85 different Christian denominations across Maryland that work with the Society.

Donations pay for the Bibles given out by chaplains and other Christian workers at pregnancy centers, schools, homeless shelters, hospitals, prison ministries, detention centers, youth programs and other ministries, as well as by Volunteers in Mission teams around the world. The program typically works one-for-one, so the receiving ministry buys a case of Bibles, and the Society donates a case.

"We give about 5,000 Bibles a month to prisoners at the detention center in Baltimore City," Moreland said.

Just after the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, the Society gave out 7.2 million Scriptures and New Testaments.

The Society has also been supplying the military with Scripture since the War of 1812. During the Civil War, Maryland Bible Society volunteers gave out New Testaments to troops on "white flag days," when Confederate and Union forces ceased fire for a day.

In the last four years, the Society has sent some $37,000 worth of special edition military camouflage Bibles to soldiers heading to Iraq and Afghanistan. "We're still very committed to military Bible distribution," Moreland says.

The Society has donated thousands of Bibles and Scripture to every youth attending Metro Maryland Youth for Christ's IMPACT and the conference's ROCK weekends in Ocean City. The Society will soon ship 12,000 New Testaments to the Son'Spot beach ministry in Ocean City, which has been serving beach-goers for more than 20 years.

"If a kid is reading the Bible and understands it, the hope is that their lives are going to be changed," Moreland says. "We're providing a life-transforming Word and the stories are multiplying."

Testimonies that pour in about how God's Word changes lives help fuel the Society in its mission.

"The Bible Society has to get in touch with life, we can't just put Bibles in people's hands, it's more than that; we want to know the stories, because it's the stories that make the difference," Moreland said.

He told of one Baltimore woman who had fallen away from the church. She came across a New Testament at a book festival outside of Mount Vernon Place UMC.

"In a letter to me, she revealed that the result of having that New Testament prevented her from committing suicide," he said. "She read in Paul's letter to Romans, chapter eight, ‘Nothing can separate us from the love of God,' and she saw there was a way out. If somebody's life can be channeled from suicide to hope, that's why we've been in business for 200 years."