Reading Plans

As is pretty common for Christians, they think about reading through the Bible this coming year around January.

My pastor mentioned the best reading plan that he had come across was Robert Murray’s reading plan. I found a copy online included with the reading plan is a warning and encouragement (from 1862), which I had never seen before with a Bible reading plan.

The warning is that by following a reading plan your faith may become stale, you may become self-righteous or self condemning (different outcomes of the same belief), and the Word may lose it’s awe-inspiring nature. I had heard these warnings before or had experience with them generally.

There are five encouragements two of which I have heard many times, it is good that we would read through the entire Bible in a year and it will be easier to open the Bible when you don’t have to decide what to read.

The other encouragements are about reading in community: people will have things besides gossip to discuss, parents will know what their children are reading and can reflect on that with them, the pastor will be able to preach on what the congregation has been reading, and we will think of others who we know are reading the same passages as us and will better be able to pray for them.

At first I thought to myself, “how quaint, thinking that many people in my close community would be reading the same passages continually.” It shows how alone I am, and how alone I suspect others are. This is a reshaped idea of the church calendar. My in-laws go to a liturgical church and have a pretty good idea of what the sermon will be about every single week and have for years.

There are positives and negatives to this. From conversations with them they don’t think that every passage gets attention. But, their pastors also might have a harder time hiding from preaching on uncomfortable sections of the Bible.

The pastors also don’t feel any pressure or waste time making sermon series. Making graphics, three to five alliterative points, or gathering passages from across the Bible to make a point. The topic is set, so to speak.

What would it be like to be reading the same passages on a daily basis as your friends, your family, your pastor.

How much better is:

• “I’ve been thinking about the smoking pot and Abraham, isn’t that so weird.”
• “Why do you think Leviticus is written the way it is?”
• “Why did God ask Abraham why Sarah laughed?”

Than:

• “Did you see the game last night?”
• “How’s work been?”
• “Crazy that the powerball is so high.”
• “It’s awfully warm for January, huh?”