Discipleship Journal Bible Reading PlanDeveloped by
CLICK ON MONTH BUTTON BELOW FOR DAILY READINGS:
See [2010 Update] below
The Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan first appeared in the Discipleship Journal, Issue Thirteen, 1983 as Your Appointment with God: Read Through the Bible This Year. Readers were encouraged to "feel free to make photocopies and pass them around". It has been copied here with their gracious permission, and is also featured on the home page of this website.
This Bible Reading Plan offers special features that will aid you in your journey through the Bible.
- By reading from four separate places in the Scripture every day, you should be able to better grasp the unity of the Scriptures, as well as enjoy the variety of seeing four different viewpoints.
- You can begin at any point of the year.
- To prevent the frustration of falling behind, which most of us tend to do when following a daily Bible reading plan, each month of this plan gives you only twenty-five readings. Since you'll have several "free days" each month, you could set aside Sundays to either not read at all or use the end of the month to catch up on any readings you may have missed.
Note: In December 2010, your webmaster is finishing his tenth complete reading of the Bible, but note the emphasis on "finished", since he started and abandoned the project several times in past years. The reason for these failures was the seemingly impossible efforts to catch up when behind. The plan presented here, developed by the Navigators, provides monthly opportunities to catch up when behind, and thus minimize the chance of failure. Also, webmaster and others have observed that when behind it is the natural tendency to read just for the sake of reading: God's Word is too precious to be given so rough a treatment! It should be read slowly, enjoyed, discovered, digested, and applied. And this can't be done whilst at the same time attempting to double-up to meet a schedule!
- If you finish the month's readings by the twenty-fifth, you could use the final days of the month to study the passages that challenged or intrigued you.
- If reading through the entire Bible in one year looms as too large a task, you can alter the plan to meet your needs. For example, you could read the gospels and the wisdom books this year, and the other two categories next year.
In the year ahead, ask God each day to speak directly to you from the Scripture portions you read. Be expectant, and let your continual exposure to God's Word reshape your attitudes and behavior as you gain a better understanding of every part of His written testimony to us.
The scriptures on the web pages associated with this program are all hyperlinks to other web pages. As is the case of all hyperlinks, you just double-click your mouse on the hyperlink word or phrase, and your browser jumps to the new page. In the case of these scripture references, a new browser window is launched and it is connected to a site sponsored by the Gospel Communications Network, where the appropriate passage from the New International Version (NIV) of the Bible is displayed. If you want to know more about the NIV, click here.
Acknowledgements
Centenary's Internet Ministry would like to express its gratitude to two fine ministries that made this project possible: The Navigators, who freely gave us permission to use their 25 day reading plan, and Bible Gateway, to whom we link with the scripture references on the home page..
2010 Update
The Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan provides you with three processes for keeping you on track in reading through the Bible:
- The Acrobat PDF sheet can be downloaded and printed,
- The four verses for each day are at the bottom on the home page ... and you can click on any of these and the passage will pop up in either another window or another tab in your browser (depending on which browser you use). The display defaults to NIV, but you can change the default version, and the scripture will appear in that version.
- A "scheduler" file that can be input into Microsoft Outlook or, if allowed, your "smart phone."
We converted the files to a "comma separated format" version and then divided them into four files: one for each quarter. These can be loaded into Microsoft Outlook (we used the "full" version from Office 2000 and also the full version of Outlook from Office 2007 - we don't think you can do this with Outlook Express). After loading it into Outlook, it was then synched his BlackBerry. Then the whole year's reading is avialable as "tasks" in the BlackBerry "task" application. Everything is arranged in date order. These "CSV" file can also be loaded in other programs with scheduling features, and can likely be loaded into other "smart phones" and "personal digital assistant" devices. After a year's use, we found this to be very convenient using our BlackBerry: the four daily readings are always "at the top" of the task list. To download, click on one of the following links with your right mouse button (in Windows):
[Q1],
[Q2],
[Q3],
[Q4].
5x5x5 Bible Reading Plan
The Navigators have developed an exciting new program, the 5x5x5 Bible Reading Plan. You spend five minutes per day, five days per week, with five ways to dig deeper. This takes you through one chapter each day, and you read the New Testament in one year. Since it has only 260 reading sessions per year (you do the math: 5 days/week x 52 weeks per year), you can catch up; and, when caught up, you have time to go back, reflect, underline, highlight, and let God's word really sink in. And like the other program, you can start at any time of the year!
Bless you in your travels. It's a road worth taking!
Bob Centenary Webmaster
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