What is the best Bible reading plan?

Whether you are just starting out or have been reading for a long time, Bible reading can feel challenging at times. Sometimes it’s knowing where to start, how to keep up the momentum or how to get meaning out of your reading.

One thing that makes the Bible easier to understand is knowing the overall story. It’s a big book and knowing when events happened relative to each other is definitely helpful. But how do you get to know the whole story before you’ve even started? Of course, that all takes time. Simply put, the more you read the Bible, the more familiar you will become with it and the easier it will become to read and understand.

This is where a Bible reading plan can help. A reading plan breaks this big book up into smaller sections and lays out which chapters to read each day. This takes away the question of what to read and helps you progress hopefully through even the less interesting parts. Of course, there are many, many different Bible reading plans around. Some cover just a section of the Bible, a single book or even a single theme. Some are more exhaustive and cover the entire Bible or the whole New Testament.

For those who are just starting out, there are different views about where to start reading. Some recommend beginning in the New Testament with one of the Gospel’s (Matthew, Mark, Luke or John), to get straight into the life of Jesus. While this can be a good starting point, there’s a good reason to also get into the Old Testament early on and it’s in the first verse of the New Testament:

“This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matthew 1:1).

Who is David and who is Abraham – and why are they important? The New Testament is full of references to the Old Testament so to really understand who Jesus is and his purpose, we need to go back and read the rest of the book.

To help ease this process we had a go at creating a Bible reading plan which covers the overall story of the Bible.  In doing this, we discovered something: It’s possible to piece together chapters of the Bible that simply move the story along, but skipping over many of the side narratives really takes away from the power of the word. It is the growth of each person that God is interested in – the real story is not simply that Israel came into the promised land – but how they got there. It is the human ups and downs that are the most interesting parts - both our boys were aghast that we could possibly have skipped over the story of the golden calf!

Every story (and every word) has been included for a reason. And so, the best Bible reading plan really is one that covers the whole Bible. And there are many of these already out there. A favourite one in our community was made by Robert Roberts when he was only 13. He made it to become more familiar with all of the Bible so he could study it better. It’s a good solid plan, covering the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice in a year – you can find it on Youversion, or download a copy below.

However, there is still a place for a shorter, introductory plan – and indeed for all kinds of different plans focusing on different parts of the Bible. Changing things up can be one way to keep up the motivation levels. So if you’d like to try our lengthened introductory plan (which includes the golden calf story) please do! We’d love any feedback so we can refine it further.

Simply download it below – or sign up for our Better Bible reading series to get the full booklet with helpful summaries and background information as well as tips and tools for Bible study.

Tell us, what are your favourite ways to read the Bible? Do you use a plan? If so, which one?