Top 11 Best Bible Reading Plans

Have you ever tried a Bible reading plan and walked away saying that it just didn’t work for you? Most of the reasons that people address why they struggle with Bible reading plans have been dealt with when this plan was created. The Chronological Cross-Reference Bible reading plan is more like doing a daily Bible Study than just reading through the Bible. It put the Old Testament in Chronological order so that you can see how the story of the Old Testament fits with the Psalms and the Prophets. Then it combines parallel New Testament passages with the Old Testament readings while being careful not to break the flow of the Books of the Bible. The result is a beautiful weaving together of Scripture that allows readers to see how the New Testament has fulfilled the Old.

The two-year plan takes less than 10 minutes to read each day, so you have plenty of time to dig deeper into what you read. This Bible reading plan comes in all sorts of forms: App, Online, Booklets, Printable PDFs, and Study Journals. If you are looking for extra study resources to go with your Bible reading, then this plan is for you. The app and study journal have daily open-ended questions and with the app, you will find several hundreds of maps and many videos including the ones from Bible Project. If all this isn’t enough, their app also has a built-in private group social network integrated into and prayer tools that are amazing. This plan comes highly recommended for anyone who wants to read the whole Bible.

If you are looking for Bible reading plans this is one is hard not to come across. M’Cheyne lived in the 1800’s and his reading plan has far outlived his short 29 years on the earth.  It was greatly popularized by D.A. Carson the founder of the Gospel Coalition who has written companion books to go along with this reading plan.  This Bible reading plan has two sets of readings for each day taking people through the New Testament and Psalms twice and the Old Testament once.  Many times, the days reading might be from 4 different spots in the Bible and they often create connects between parallel passages.  The only complaint that people tend to have doing this plan is if their time is tight, they often can’t do all the reading in one sitting and still have time to think about what they read.  If you have time and like to read, this plan will give a good walk back and forth through the Bible each year.

Have you ever tried to read straight through the Bible and ended up stopping because it got hard to read the genealogies for days or prophecies against the nations around Israel?  Well, this plan might be great for you.  It is a one-year plan that breaks the Bible into several different Genres: Epistles, The Law, History, Psalms, Poetry, Prophecy, and Gospels.  Each day of the week you read a different Genre.  The method reading gives a lot of variety each week but it might not be for everyone.  Since you are only reading a particular book of the Bible 1 day a week it takes 8 weeks to get through 1 Corinthians.  This could make it difficult for some to follow the flow of Paul’s letter.  However, for those who like variety and are good at tracking from week to week where they left off this reading plan could be a perfect fit.

Each year Craig puts together a new thematic Bible reading plan.  His goal is to make as many scriptural associations as possible while keeping individual books of the Bible intact.  The only thing broken up is the Psalms. The result is a masterful weaving together of NT and OT reading that allows you to see the Bible in a whole new way.  Since the books of the Bible are intact it makes it so that not every day can have a cross-reference, however, it is estimated that he still manages to get over 100 connections through the course of a year.  The biggest challenge with this plan is it might be harder to find this year’s version of it.  If you can’t find a link to the current year’s PDF here, then you will need to try to email Craig.  His email address is usually on old versions of his plan.

When you hear Chronological Bible Reading plan you might think at first that they are all the same.  But this is far from the truth.  Some Chronological plans are made based on the order the books were written.  Other plans are ordered based on when events occurred. Still other chronological plans are hybrids that combine multiple different kinds of plans together.  So what is the big deal about chronological and should you try one of these plans.  If you have never read the Bible chronologically, it is worth it.  Few things can help you understand how the Bible all fits together more than reading it chronologically.  Reading prophesies in the context of the history which they are written grants a better understanding into what they are communicating.  Likewise, reading Psalms in the context of who wrote them can give you much more understanding into the experience of the Psalmist while they wrote.  The only real downside to some chronological Bible reading plans is that they can break books of the Bible into such small parts that you might lose flow of a particular book (this varies with different chronological plans).

This one isn’t really a Bible reading plan.  It is more of a Bible reading checklist, but it is one way that you can mark off chapters of the Bible after you read them and keep track of your progress.  The chart was created by Mark Barry, who has created tons of cool visual Bible infographics and charts in several different languages.  Even if you are looking for an actual reading plan, you might enjoy or find some of his Bible charts useful.