Bible Society has launched a new platform called Lumino to support churches as they share the Gospel within their communities. 

The charity's chief executive Paul Williams shares more about the resource here and the need in the UK Church that it is responding to. 

What is Lumino and what does it do?

Paul: Well, at Bible Society we really want to relate to the Church as a mission partner. So, we have created a website that we've called Lumino, that will give church leaders and Bible communicators lots of information about how different types of people relate to the Bible: what their attitudes are, what barriers they see in relating to the Bible and reading it and opening it and providing intelligence that will help us actually engage with these audiences.

What underpins Lumino?

Paul: So all of this is underpinned by a huge piece of research. We've interviewed 20,000 people in partnership with YouGov to understand the attitudes not only about the Bible, about Christianity more broadly, and that's been connected to all kinds of other information about their lifestyle and habits, their demographics, which gives us enormous insight, and we've distilled all of that insight down from 20,000 people to eight broad types, we call them personas.

What are the personas and what do they mean?

Paul: So those eight personas range from, on the one hand, Bible Loving people, who regularly go to church, regularly, perhaps daily, read the Bible, all the way to the other end of the spectrum, to people who are Bible Dismissive, who really don't think the Bible has any value for them, and there's a lot of people in between those extremes. And that's the thing that's exciting about this research, because one of the things that it opens up for us, is the fact that there are an enormous number of people, 20 per cent of the population, we estimate, who are open to the Bible, open to faith and interested in knowing more. And that's a great opportunity and that's the kind of opportunity and intelligence that we want to help church leaders and Bible communicators understand and be able to do something with.

Who is Lumino for?

Paul: So, if you're a church leader leading a denomination in your mission agency, you're a Bible communicator and you have an interest in learning more about groups of people that you want to communicate the Bible and Christianity to, this is a fantastic resource for you. Because it's possible to interrogate the data, to get a perspective on the data: by age, by geography, by gender and in a number of ways. So, for example, you can put your postcode into the database and get a map of the spiritual attitudes to faith in the Bible for your parliamentary constituency area. And you can also interrogate the data in other ways that will help you reach the audiences that you want to reach.

What resources do you have available?

Paul: So, what you'll find on the website are a number of resources to help this data come to life for you there are video resources to explain the different personas and the approach that we've taken in this research, there's written resources. There are all kinds of social listening dimensions to the website which give an insight into how people are reacting right now in different forums on social media to the Bible. And there are pointers to how this information can actually be applied. And we're going to be adding more information to this website over time.

Why is Bible Society doing this?

Paul: So, all of this is part of Bible Society's deliberate change of stance in this country, to partner very directly on mission with the British Church, and we set this website up to be a resource and a missional tool for church leaders, and you can access all of it at Lumino.org.uk