Breaking News: Local man defeats Bible-in-a-Year plan after heroic three-year struggle

Sources confirm: the secret weapon was lowering expectations.

My Bible-in-Three-Years plan.

I’ve been a Christian for 37 years, and on Jan. 1 of many (many) of those years, I’ve launched a Bible-in-a-Year reading plan with fresh determination.

And in just about every one of those years, I quietly abandoned it in February or March, usually because I’d fallen so far behind that catching up felt impossible.

Over the past 37 years of small-group studies and personal reading, I’ve worked through most of the Bible in pieces. But I had never read it straight through — Genesis to Revelation — in a single, intentional plan.

Every December, Christian writers begin urging people to try again. The goal is simple and good: to immerse ourselves in all of God’s Word, not just the familiar highlights.

There are dozens of free plans. Most require several chapters a day — about 15 minutes of reading. A typical day might look like this: Genesis 12–13, Job 1–2, Proverbs 1:1–7.

One of the most famous is the M’Cheyne Plan, created by Scottish pastor Robert Murray M’Cheyne in 1842. It’s rigorous — taking you through the New Testament and Psalms twice each year, and the Old Testament once.

Robert Murray M’Cheyne

Sticking with a plan like that takes steady discipline. Mine tends to come and go.

M’Cheyne died of typhus at only 29 years old. Yet over the past 184 years, tens of millions of Christians have walked through Scripture using the plan he left behind — proof that God can multiply the impact of a single faithful life far beyond its length.

Searching for less-demanding plans

I once tried a five-day-a-week plan — a gracious design with built-in catch-up days. Even that proved too demanding for my uneven habits.

So three years ago, I tried something different: I gave myself even more grace. What if I read the Bible in three years instead of one?

That meant just one or two chapters a day — a pace that left room for busy weeks without falling hopelessly behind.

I used a customizable Bible Reading Generator created by John Dyer.

There are about a gazillion ways to use the site to create a personal reading plan. For number of days, I plugged in 1,095 (three years) and it instantaneously created a plan tailored to me. You can see part of the plan at the top of this post.

For the first time in my life, I found a rhythm that fit my personality and my lifestyle.

And for the first time, I read the entire Bible — from Genesis to Revelation.

It just took me three years.

But three years is far better than never finishing at all.

Seeing the whole story without the pressure

Reading the whole Bible matters. It lets you see the full story — the long arc of God’s work, the parts that are familiar and the parts we might otherwise skip. You begin to notice how everything connects, how promises unfold, and how Christ stands at the center of it all.

But finishing doesn’t require heroic discipline. It often requires patience — and a willingness to give yourself grace.

If a one-year plan motivates you, that’s great. But if it leaves you feeling discouraged, guilty or overwhelmed, it may be wiser to slow down like I did.

A slower plan still gets you to the same destination.

After all, the goal isn’t to win a race. The goal is to keep opening God’s Word — day after day — until, eventually, you’ve walked through all of it.