Jeff Cavins Devoted His Life to Culture of Scripture: His Great Adventure Catholic Bible is Now №1

Author of top book, podcast: We must build a ‘Culture of Scripture’ for our children, grandchildren

The №1 Bible begat the №1 podcast. Both began because a 25-year-old wanted to turn the world’s most complex book into something simple.

Jeff Cavins, now 63, was raised Catholic and spent 12 years as an evangelical Protestant pastor before returning to the Catholic Church. He remembers the turning point in his lifelong quest.

It was the 1980s, and he was sitting in his car listening to a cassette tape in a University of Minnesota parking lot. The answer to Cavins’ biggest Bible question came from a totally unexpected source: archaeology.

Bible college taught details — but not the overarching story

“It was in my first year as a senior pastor, at 25, after Bible School and years of studying, I realized that I knew the individual stories of the Bible, but I didn’t know the over-arching story of the Bible,” Cavins said. “In other words, I couldn’t walk you through the entire thing.”

He could tell specific stories like David and Goliath, Abraham and Isaac, or Peter and Paul, but how do you explain the overall story of the Bible?

That’s when Cavins heard the tape of an archaeologist explaining the entire history of archaeology, including the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, and other vast periods of history and pre-history.

“I was amazed at how he could do that, tell the story of archaeology,” Cavins recalls. “Suddenly, I just got this idea of creating a chart that would go from Genesis to Revelation and lay down a story on paper like a timeline. I got really excited.”

A giant sheet of butcher’s paper and markers color-coded the story

Cavins recalls, “I got a piece of paper from a meat market, I got some markers from an art store, and I went home for two days straight and laid it out on this big sheet of paper to chart it in my mind. It was about 97 percent the same then as it is now.”

Over those two days, he divided more than 4,000 years of stories into 12 periods. He then chose the books in the Bible that tell each story (the narrative), attaching different colors to each period “to help me remember.” For example:

• The first period, “Early World” (creation to 2200 BC), is turquoise, the color of the Earth from space.
• “Patriarchs” (2200 to 1800 BC) is colored burgundy to represent God’s blood covenant with Abraham.
• “Egypt and Exodus” (1800 to 1446 BC) is a red period to remember the importance of the Red Sea in that era.
• “Desert Wanderings (1446 to 1406 BC) is tan, the color of the desert.

“I followed the genealogy of Jesus from Adam to Jesus, and it was done,” he recalls. “It was about three feet high and about six feet long, this big chart. I loved it. Now, I could see the whole story and how it all fits together. I did that because I’m visual.”

The different colors he originally associated with food and sometimes songs were designed to help him remember how all the puzzle pieces fit together.

At first, he didn’t even plan to share it, mainly wanting the chart so he could understand and explain the Bible better. But then he took the giant chart to a printer, asking if they could shrink it down into two 11 by 17 sheets of paper he carried around for years.

“I basically studied my way back into the Catholic Church...”

But over time, he began using his chart to teach, grow the faith, and help him study Scripture. Whenever he shared the chart, people loved it.

Within five years, he was a pastor in Dayton, Ohio, “where I started really studying the early church fathers, seeing the weakness of independent non-denominational churches. So I basically studied my way back into the Catholic Church.”

From Scott Hahn to EWTN to the largest Catholic Bible Studies

Around age 35, he met Scott Hahn. Cavins enrolled in the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio because Bishop Paul Dudley (a Minnesota native-like Cavins) urged Cavins to get a master’s degree in theology.

Hahn, the great Catholic theologian, author, and speaker, said, “Whoa!’’ Soon, Cavins was teaching scripture at Steubenville while completing his graduate studies.

About 18 months later, he got a call from EWTN, which led to an interview with Mother Angelica and his own EWTN show (that included Scott Hahn) called “Our Father’s Plan.” The show went through and explained the timeline over 13 weeks.

Then Ascension founder Matt Pinto asked Cavins to develop a 24 week-walk through the Bible Cavins started calling “the Great Adventure,” and the idea quickly grew into the largest Catholic Bible Study in the world.

Cavins came up with the “Great Adventure” name, inspired by a Steven Curtis Chapman song with the same name: “It epitomized what I was doing with my life, making the Bible a great adventure.”

The Great Adventure Bible Study led to developing The Great Adventure Catholic Bible. Cavins assembled top Bible scholars to help, including:

• Mary Healy, a professor of Sacred Scripture at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Michigan.
• Peter S. Williamson, the Adam Cardinal Maida Chair in Sacred Scripture at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Michigan.
• Andrew Swafford, an associate professor at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. He teaches Sacred Scripture.
• Rev. Sebastian Carnazzo, who teaches Sacred Scripture for Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, Nebraska, St. Patrick’s Seminary in San Francisco, California, and Christendom College in Front Royal, Virginia.

90 percent of it is that God is raising His word in this darkness

Soon after being released in 2018, the new Bible became the top-selling Bible of any type. Then last year, Cavins got a call from his friend and fellow Minnesotan, Father Mike Schmitz (Schmitz is in Duluth while Cavins is in Minneapolis).

“What if we could take something like The Great Adventure Bible and make a podcast out of it?” Schmitz asked.

Schmitz, who had used the Great Adventure Bible and timeline for years, had an idea for using it in a Bible in a Year Podcast. Soon after debuting on January 1, the podcast hit №1 in the nation (of all podcasts). It’s remained in the top 20 ever since.

“There’s only one way to explain it, and that’s that it was a good product, guys who are pretty well-known are doing it, but that only explains about 10 percent of it,” Cavins said. “I think about 90 percent of it is that God was raising up His word in this darkness and offering it to people and people signed up in record numbers.”

What’s next? GPS means God’s Plan in Scripture

After more than 40 years of trying to explain the Bible to others, Cavins remains focused on new ways to help people “get a Bible you can live in.”

They’ve developed a children’s Bible series called God’s Plan in Scripture (GPS). He is interested in developing more for the children’s market, seminarians, and finding ways to help senior citizens.

Cavins treasures his grandfather’s Bible, being able to see exactly what passages moved him by opening the book, and he suggests the “ultimate gift” a grandparent could buy a grandchild:

• Buy a Bible as a gift “for them” when they are babies and use that book to pray for them, underlining passages that make you think of that child.
• When they turn 18, give them “their Bible,” showing all the ways you prayed for them.

“During the pandemic, we met with our three grandchildren weekly knowing Papa always has a Bible and talks about Jesus — it’s great to read them the Bible,” Cavins said in a recent podcast interview. “We Need to Build a Culture of Scripture for Our Children and Grandchildren.”