“My wife passed in 2008 from cancer. I never knew there were so many rules for widows and widowers. Rules about how long you can mope along, when you can go out on a date, how many times you can cry in the pulpit! Rules! Not Scripture! Rules!”

At East End Baptist Church, January Bible Study is a big event.

“I get more people who start off the year in January Bible Study (JBS) than any other time,” said Mark Croston, senior pastor of the Suffolk, Va., congregation. “I guess they just want to start the year off right.”

Croston taught “The Truth About Grace,” the 2011 JBS based on the New Testament’s Book of Galatians, during Black Church Leadership and Family Conference at LifeWay Ridgecrest Conference Center in North Carolina.

Since the former Baptist Sunday School Board (now LifeWay Christian Resources) inaugurated JBS in 1948, participating churches have spent eight hours of time in in-depth study of God’s Word, focusing on the same book of the Bible or portions of a Bible book. Each year the first full week of January is set aside on the Southern Baptist denominational calendar for JBS; however, many churches move this to a time more suited to their needs.

Croston, in his JBS session during the gathering of black church leaders in mid-July, defined grace as God’s design for reconciling humanity to Himself through Jesus Christ.

“Galatians defends the grace of God,” the pastor said. “The fact is that God couldn’t love you any more and God couldn’t love you any less. It’s about His grace, not your work.”

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