By Anne W. Semmes
For nearly four decades Debbie Reynolds has pursued her passion to introduce women to the Bible in her Greenwich Bible Study (GBS) groups. “So, I fell in love with the Bible,” she tells, and “I wanted other people to fall in love with the Bible and to fall in love with Jesus.” Now retiring, Reynolds is pleased to have seen a handful grow to “a tremendous number of Bible studies that are on fire, in homes, and in good, strong churches.” She now considers Greenwich “a very God-centered place.”
Until three weeks ago, Reynolds could be found teaching her Greenwich Bible Study group on Wednesday mornings at Christ Church Greenwich where she belongs. That first year in 1986, after advertising that GBS was “a non-denominational, ecumenical Christian organization,” its first meeting had filled Christ Church’s sanctuary. “There were no Bible studies in any of the other churches,” Reynolds notes, except for a small one at Stanwich Congregational Church, and another at Harvest Time Church. She thanks the former Rev. Jack Bishop of Christ Church for agreeing to host her Greenwich Bible Study.
Note that the first Greenwich Bible Studies were led by ministers. Reynolds’ Episcopalian experience was, “The Episcopal church was much more inclined to think that only the clergy is capable of teaching. And, of course, this was true in ancient and medieval times because the church kept the Bible to themselves.” But Reynolds wished to convey, “that the Bible was for everyone,” and that a person like herself could teach the Bible.
And the pattern of those GB studies was formed in those first meetings. “So, you had somebody speak on the lesson for maybe 15 to 20 minutes,” she tells, “and then we broke up into four groups.” And key to those GBS sessions was storytelling, and Reynolds is known for her gifts of storytelling with illustrations. “Every single week she could call upon stories she knew well that reinforced our learning of scripture,” shares 30-year GBS alum Penny Winters, “some personal, some related to current events. In addition, she is a bibliophile… a voracious reader always seeking books that will enrich her study of the Bible and her life as a Christian.”
Inspirations and Beginnings
The path that led Reynolds to teaching began she tells when she was attending St. Barnabas Church and became involved with the Greenwich Committee for Carver Center in Port Chester, working with its black population. “And the more I worked there (she would head the Committee),” she tells, “the bigger the problem seemed.” She was seeing, “a better way to do this would be to turn people’s hearts toward God. If I turn people’s hearts toward God, then each individual would be more helpful to these underprivileged and forgotten people.” She was being called to start a Bible study, to have other people see what she saw.
There were other inspirations along the way, such as that pamphlet “Jesus and the Intellectual” she was given by friend Ali Hanley. “I read it and said I’m all in,” says Reynolds. Hanley then invited her to a service at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Darien where Reynolds connected with its minister, Rev. Terry Fulham. “Terry Fulham knew the Bible backwards and forwards. He would say something that I was familiar with in the New Testament, and then he’d turn the pages and quote something out of Joshua or Jeremiah or Isaiah. And it was the first time that I saw that the Old Testament was just as important because it lays the basis for our understanding of the New Testament.”
Rev. Fulham would be amongst the first to address the Greenwich Bible Study at Christ Church. Then came Rev. Nate Adams, former pastor of Stanwich Congregational Church, and later Neely Towe who was then in Yale Divinity School who would succeed Adams. Add Christ Church Reverends Terry Elsberry and Cynthia Knapp. “And at one point,” Reynolds tells, “our highest number of people was almost 100. It was absolutely amazing.”
But it wasn’t until after lay teachers became regulars that Reynolds as instigator and organizer would step up to teach a Bible Study in 2001. Then came that day when GBS student Jill Woolworth approached her with, “I’ve decided to start my own Bible study in the kitchen, just a kitchen neighborhood Bible study.” After a “heart-sinking” moment, Reynolds’ response was, “This is exactly what we want to have happen. You want to start your own, start your own. So, we always encourage that.”
Challenges and Unexpected Consequences
But the challenge was to attract younger women. “We did all kinds of extra things.
We had retreats.” Add the notable annual Greenwich Bible Study Luncheon that kicked off in 1991. “So, Neely Towe had spoken at the Luncheon,” she says, “and we had over 300 people at that luncheon.” And Reynolds saw how the younger women were “fascinated” with what Towe had to say. Would Towe be willing to do a Study series for younger women? “So, for three years, she did a series of talks at the Field Club, and we called it ‘Becoming a Woman of Excellence.’”
Another spinoff from GBS was Bebbie Chickering’s Bible study group held in Belle Haven says Reynolds. Chickering is another GBS alum stretching back to the early 1990’s. She recalls the surprise in those early days of the number of women “coming from every church in town” to attend Greenwich Bible Study. Then came that day when Reynolds asked her, “Would you like to teach?” And now, years later, she is co-teaching a Bible study for younger women. “What a mentor and friend she has been to me and to so many others,” says Chickering. “There are so many of us who have been moved by her well lived deep faith and said ‘yes’ because we liked her and ended up unexpectedly with our lives changed. The legacy of ‘a good and faithful servant.’”
But back to that Greenwich Bible Study Luncheon, held for years at the Greenwich Country Club, and that memorable guest, Father John O’Connor, brought by Julie Ricciardi from St. Mary’s Catholic Church. Astounded seeing the numbers of women studying the Bible, he would tell all the Catholic dioceses that they ought to have this Bible study, shares Reynolds. Theirs would be called “Walking with Purpose.” “And because they had never had Bible study in the Catholic church, this thing grew like an atomic bomb. It is now in every diocese practically in the United States.” She cites that as “one of Greenwich Bible Study’s greatest accomplishments.”
But One More Bible Study!
Reynolds lastly shares she’s not fully retired! Four years ago, she kicked off a new Bible study in Islesboro, Maine where the Reynolds family summers. “I am doing only the Old Testament,” she tells, “because they don’t know anything about the Old Testament.” Last summer it was an overview of Exodus, “which really covers so much of Jewish history.” And this year it will be an overview of Genesis, “which has so many important stories in it.”
She does note that, “There are many places in the Old Testament where God looks pretty bad and that’s upsetting to people, especially if He says it killed everybody in the town including the animals…But what we do want to know is that God brought these Jewish people into understanding who He was. And out of that came Jesus. That was his final thing to bring Jesus, God incarnate, into the world so that Jesus could say who God the Father is.”
“There’s so much that is true in the Bible about how we act and how we can be the best people that we can be,” concludes Reynolds. “And I am passionate about trying to explain to people, you need to forgive because that helps you as a person. It’s not excusing what happened with that person that hurt you. You need to be a forgiving person.”
