Subscribe to feedI’ve been reluctant to mention this and I’m still a little reluctant since the project still has a bit of work to go, but I’ve been working on a new site that will help people put together and track Bible reading plans.
Users will be able to create their own Bible reading plan using highly customizable options. I’ve tried to enable just about any flexibility I can think of. Tell it which books you want to read and then choose the reading frequency (number of days, number of weeks, number of verses/day, chapters/day, give it a date range – you can even tell it which days of the week to read) and it will churn out a reading plan for you. It can divide the reading plan by verses or by chapters. I’ve received permission from the ESV folks to use their section divisions so currently in the works is the ability to divide the reading plan by pericope.
Reading plans will be able to have multiple components: one plan can have one set of rules for the reading Monday-Friday and another set of rules for Saturday and Sunday. Users will be able to print out a PDF formatted version of their plan (I think – I’m still checking into this), generate an iCal version they can subscribe to in a local calendar, or do all their reading online through the ESV Website or Bible Gateway. Users will also be able to track their progress and share their reading plans with others.
I plan for the site to also include a section of articles about the Bible, though I’m not yet sure just how that will work. It will also include a forums section where users can discuss a variety of topics.
The site will be free for anyone to use and will probably not include advertising, though I might add limited ads at some point. If the site gets many users the cost of hosting it could inch up.
So here is my question for anyone that stumbles across this post. How useful would such a site be for you? What would you like to see on it? Would you use it? Do you know anyone that would use it?
This site is a personal project being worked on in my free time. These days I have lots of free time as I continue to look for a job so this gives me something to do but it is still a lot of work for something that may or may not be useful to people. So what do you think?
I think that I know some people who would use this. It sounds great; however, I use an index card and an actual book. Reading from the computer screen is hard for me.
My last time through I read from a printed Bible. This time through I’m reading from Logos. I prefer using a printed Bible but Logos offers a few advantages I wanted to try out. I may not keep it up, we will see.
Part of the idea for the site is people could use it just to print up plans for use elsewhere. I have seen pastors who wanted a way to create plans for their churches, for example. Create it online and manage it online or create it online and print for use elsewhere, either way will work.
This would definitely improve upon the limitations of online plans I have seen so far. In the free Logos version, in order to be right on track, you have to start on a specific date, so when I tried to use it they were already somewhere like the middle of Hosea, and so I dropped that idea.
For a while I tried just printing out the entire year of the M’Cheyne plan and crossing it out with a pen as I went along, because none of the electronic tracking plans had one that would start on whatever day you wanted instead of when their latest update started.
Your idea sounds really useful, so keep it up!
What about maybe including some sermon notes? Or possibly resources for ministers, youth directors, Bible Study leaders to use? Will it include commentaries? Just some thoughts.
There will be some study tools but probably not that extensive.
I like the idea of making your own custom reading plan. I teach some pre-teen boys and they struggle with reading whole chapters every day or other large reading plans. Being able to set up small portions of reading and then a ‘tracking’ system to check of what you have read would be helpful.
Did you ever get your software running and available? Did not see an active link here.
Dan
Dan,
Not yet, unfortunately. A full time job has slowed things down a bit. I’m still fiddling with it some but no idea when it will all be ready.
The final site will be at http://www.enscriptured.com/ there are a few things there to fiddle with but still lots to be done and I’ll almost certainly be changing the way things look. But go there and you can get to the test script and you can do some basic reading plan construction.