A Cartoonist’s Guide to the Bible is a library of visual resources to study, teach and preach the Bible.

It is the lifelong project of Rev. Dr. Steve Thomason, Ph.D. It is one node in the infinite network of God’s creation.

Visit stevethomason.net to learn more about Steve’s background and his fusion of Art and Theology.

A Cartoonist’s Guide to the Bible illustrates Scripture in a Graphic Novel Style. The illustrations are whimsical, but not childish. Each passage of scripture is covered in canonical order. This allows the preacher or teacher to quickly tell the story of the text through compelling images panel-by-panel, word balloon-by-word balloon.

Each download contains a ready-to-use PowerPoint and a .zip file containing every slide as a .jpg image. These images can be used in any presentation software. The PowerPoint files are editable, so they can be used as the starting point for your sermon or lesson presentation. Use the slides you want, delete the ones you don’t. You have control of how quickly you want to tell the story to help communicate the text in a fresh and compelling way.

The Back Story

ACG2B is an ever-expanding library of cartoon illustrations, animations, graphic novels, visual and written commentary, and links to other online resources to study every book of the Bible.

I’ve been using cartooning as a way to both study and teach the Bible since the early 90s. This collection of illustrations began in 2002 when we planted a network of house churches in Las Vegas, NV called Hart Haus. Each week our Hart Haus community committed to reading a chunk of scripture each day. We read through the entire Bible the first year, then slowed down and worked through the New Testament. I would create a cartoon illustration to summarize each section and write a daily “Food for Thought” commentary and email it to everyone in a PDF each week. Five years later I had the contents of the Hart Haus Bible study series that is available in print.

The contents of these studies were also posted on our website. I called it simply The Bible BOOKshelf back then.

I left the ministry in 2007 due to severe burnout, but I never lost my passion for studying the Bible through cartooning and growing in digital media. At one point I had a dream to create vibblespace.com (Visual Interactive Bible Based Learning Experience). This would be a fully animated interactive online experience. It was an ambitious dream with no backing.

The VibbleSpace dream died, but my use of cartooning and teaching continued. The Bible BOOKshelf grew and grew.

I eventually came back to ministry, this time in the ELCA, and got a PhD in Missional Leadership from Luther Seminary. The new ministry context allowed me to preach regularly and expand my skills in using cartoons to teach Bible and Theology. I even illustrated my way through the PhD dissertation.

I decided to rebrand the BOOKshelf to A Cartoonist’s Guide to the Bible and started making my PowerPoints available on the Gumroad store to download.

The content lived on my personal website for years. Eventually, it just got so big that it needed its own space with a clear focus on the Bible. And now it is here at cartoonistbible.com

Please share with your friends.

 

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