Tony Evans Is First Sole African American to Produce a Study Bible

Senior Pastor Tony Evans marked a half-century of pastoral ministry at a special event Nov. 8 at his Dallas megachurch, Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship. Although many special guests gathered for Kingdom Legacy Live, presented by The Urban Alternative, Evans may be remembered best in years to come through his study Bible.

Seeking to advance God’s kingdom agenda, Evans partnered with LifeWay Christian Resources to publish The Tony Evans Study Bible and companion product, The Tony Evans Bible Commentary.

Now 70, Evans was the first African-American student to complete the doctoral program at Dallas Theological Seminary, and he is now the first African-American scholar to become sole author of a study Bible. Known to millions through his broadcast, The Alternative With Tony Evans, Evans and his years of diligent study will benefit many believers who use his study Bible.

Eric Mullett, marketing strategist for Bibles and specialty at LifeWay Christian Resources, recently spoke with host Chris Johnson on a special Charisma Connection podcast series about the study Bibles available in the Christian Standard Bible (CSB, csbible.com) translation. One of those is The Tony Evans Study Bible.

“It’s got a huge amount of articles and studies, kingdom agenda articles that show you how to bring that idea to life, to not live by our agenda but to live by the kingdom agenda, God’s agenda in our life, so he really focuses on that,” Mullett said. “And this is, interestingly, the first study Bible done by an African American who has a doctorate.”

Another significant feature of Evans’ study Bible is that it has QR codes that link to more than 150 online videos.

“Some are straight-up him preaching,” Mullett said. “Some are some of the videos he used in his sermons to help illustrate things, but they’re all super helpful. And so you really get a lot of Tony Evans in this Bible when you’re all said and done, not only his notes, not only his articles, not only 50 years of experience of pastoral ministry, but the actual videos to watch him.”

Mullett says LifeWay has “high hopes” for Evans’ study Bible, which released Nov. 1. In his podcast episode, Mullett also highlighted such Bibles as the CSB Study Bible, the Ancient Faith Study Bible and the CSB Study Bible for Women.

Speaking of the women’s version, Mullett said, “this Bible is packed with resources that were put together by women who are academics. So you do have Greek word studies in here. You do have extensive study notes in here. You have articles putting the Scriptures into context and into perspective with historical data.

But then the same women took it another step further and brought into it specific things that were for women like the ‘Biblical Womanhood’ articles. This is about living daily life as a woman and what the Bible has to say about that. They have ‘Written on My Heart’ applications where they take the Scripture and actually talk about how it changed women in the Bible and how it can change us today. They have character profiles of all the women in the Bible and really interesting, in the back, they have a concordance and the concordance features all the women in the Bible.”

Listen to Charisma Connection for our CSB Bible series, “Committed to God’s Word,” on the Charisma Podcast Network.