FIFTY readers from churches across Halstead are came together for an Easter challenge of biblical proportions.

The town’s Churches Together group joined forces for a marathon reading of the Bible.

They read the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in one go as well as two more books of the Bible – Acts and Romans.

The challenge was expected to take between 12 and 14 hours to complete and will involve around 50 readers.

The Churches Together group consists of St Andrew’s Church, The United Reformed Church of Halstead, Halstead Baptist Church, Halstead Methodist Church, Crossways Christian Fellowship and St Francis of Assisi Roman Catholic Church.

Rev Katie de Bourcier, of St Andrew’s, said: “We thought this was a good challenge for the week leading up to Easter – to read out loud the story of Jesus’ life, culminating in the Easter events of his death and resurrection – and also the story of the early church.

“We loved the idea, and decided to start by doing the Gospel Readathon first, then hopefully building up to reading the whole Bible out loud next year.

“To set it in context, the Bible is like a library of books, rather than a single book.

“It contains 66 individual books.

“The Great Gospel Readathon involves us reading out loud six of those books in a day. Reading the whole Bible out loud will probably take about a week.”

The readathon toook place in St Andrew’s Church yesterday morning.

Churches Together in Halstead will also be conducting its usual Walk of Witness on Good Friday, starting shortly after 11am from Halstead Baptist Church.