ARLINGTON, Texas — Bob Burckle wants everyone in Eastern Europe to have the chance to read God’s Word.
He also wants everyone in the United States to take time to read God’s Word.
Bob Burckle
Burckle is president and CEO of Eastern European Mission, a nonprofit that provides Bibles and Bible-based materials across the former communist world. He’s one of nearly 500 people — including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, U.S. ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and actress Candace Cameron Bure — who will take turns reading aloud through the entire Bible from April 19-25 at the Museum of the Bible in Washington.
The effort, America Reads the Bible, coincides with the nation’s 250th anniversary and has as its goal “reigniting America’s spiritual foundation,” organizers said.
Burckle spoke with The Christian Chronicle in the Dallas/Fort Worth metro, where he serves as deacon of missions for the Grapevine Church of Christ. He grew up in the pews of the Highland Church of Christ in Louisville, Ky., and used amateur radio to speak with people in foreign countries. He earned master’s degrees in electrical engineering and business. He worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, on stealth and countermeasures projects during the height of the Cold War.
“At the time, Russia was the big bear and we were working on technology to penetrate Soviet airspace for the U.S. Air Force,” Burckle said. But he couldn’t shake a sense of futility, realizing that any attack would end in nuclear annihilation.
“It’s not that I was anti-war or anti-technology,” Burckle said. “I just thought, ‘There’s got to be a better way.’”
At the same time, Eastern European Mission, or EEM, was smuggling tiny New Testaments under the Iron Curtain and into the communist world. Lynn Camp, the ministry’s former president, recalled young church leaders stuffing 80 Hungarian-language Bibles into a spare tire. Reading God’s Word and underground evangelism became forms of nonviolent, ideological protest in the Soviet Bloc, according to researchers and journalists including Barbara Von Der Heydt, author of “Candles Behind the Wall: Heroes of the Peaceful Revolution That Shattered Communism.”
Fliers advertising free literature from Eastern European Mission are prepared for the mail in Serbia.
As communism collapsed, EEM no longer had to produce tiny Bibles that could be mistaken for cigarette packs. The ministry moved its printing operations from Vienna, Austria, to former Soviet countries and produced full-size, hardback Bibles, sometimes in large print for the vision impaired and colorful children’s Bibles. Last year, the nonprofit produced 2.1 million Bibles and Bible-based materials in 32 languages and distributed them free of charge across 36 nations.
“Our books are spoken for before they’re even delivered,” said Burckle, who left a successful career in the private sector to serve as EEM’s president in 2016 — a temporary assignment that’s lasted 10 years. “Our Bibles are asked for and not just put on a shelf or in a drawer.”
Christians in Minsk, Belarus, demonstrate after their country’s contentious presidential election in 2020. They carry Bibles produced by Eastern European Mission.
Despite unprecedented access to the Bible in multiple versions and languages, only about 11 percent of Americans surveyed by the American Bible Society said that they read their Bible daily, the society reported in 2021. But the organization’s 2025 State of the Bible Report showed an upward trend in Bible users — people who read the Bible outside of church services at least three times a year. Much of the growth is among young adults. The number of millennials who said they read the Bible regularly jumped 29 percent from 2024. More than half of respondents said they wished they read the Bible more often.
Christians Engaged, a nonprofit that seeks to increase voter turnout and civic involvement among Christians, launched the America Reads the Bible project to call for nationwide spiritual renewal and to encourage regular reading of Scripture. Burckle is scheduled to read passages from the Old Testament book of Lamentations on April 23 at the Museum of the Bible. Organizers also will livestream the weeklong event.
“Reading the Bible is crucial for everyone, everywhere and in every language to know God and his truth,” Burckle said. “America Reads The Bible aligns with the heartbeat of EEM. It is a privilege to join others in reading aloud the most powerful and transformational book of all time.
“We know the impact that the Word of God can have — we want everyone to get a Bible in their hands and for the Scriptures to be written on their hearts so that they can know and serve Jesus Christ. You may never know the eternal impact of someone getting a Bible.”
Bob Burckle holds a Polish language teen Bible produced by Eastern European Mission as he stands by photos of children looking through other EEM products.
Why read from Lamentations, a collection of poems in which Israel mourns the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, who took them into captivity?
“Lamentations shows us what happens when people become disconnected from God’s Word — everything begins to unravel,” Burckle said. “Whether in Europe, Asia or here in America, putting Scripture into people’s hands is how lives are rebuilt and hope is restored.”