5 Ways To Jumpstart Your Students’ Bible Reading in the New Year

New Year's Resolutions are all about one thing: change. The desire to see improvement in yourself. The hope we have to see healthy habits form where there previously were none. It’s a spirit of growth that is really fun to watch each year.

While many folks make resolutions centered around their finances, health, and relationships, it’s also empowering to see many Christ-followers make resolutions regarding their faith. There is nothing like the turning of the calendar to focus people’s attention on growing closer to Christ as the year gets off to a fresh start. As youth workers, we should encourage this motivation in our students. Nowhere is this more of a priority than when it comes to our students' Bible reading.

Studies show that most teenagers don’t have a meaningful relationship with God’s Word. We know that the Bible is God’s primary way of making Himself known to us. Therefore, it’s huge that our students know the Word and are regularly engaged in it. And yet, we know this is an uphill battle for most of them.

What can we do this New Year to help jumpstart our students’ Bible reading? Here are just a few suggestions.

First, Start with Why.

If you want to make lasting change, you have to know why you’re doing it. This is just as true for weight loss or finances as it is for spiritual issues. Before we can see a change in our students’ spiritual practices, they must understand why it’s important. We cannot live as Christians apart from God’s Word. It’s the main way He has chosen to connect with us, His people. We can’t follow God if we don’t know Him. Being engaged with God through the Bible is the heart of the Christian experience. We have to communicate the vital nature of the Bible to our students before we can expect them to begin to change their habits.

Second, Have a Plan.

It doesn’t matter what your plan is. Just have one. Do you want to read the entire Bible together in a year? Cool. Do you want to read one chapter of Proverbs a day for a month? That will work. Whatever your approach, have a plan, make it clear, and communicate it repeatedly.

There are a TON of resources available for you here. We have many devotional books. Maybe the best one for this particular approach is Wake Up, a book devoted to teaching your students HOW to rediscover the love for the Bible. But there are limitless possibilities online. YouVersion is one of the leading apps/websites for Bible plans. Search their vast library of reading plans for students. Regardless of what you decide, make sure you have a plan that works for your students.

Third, Encourage Interaction.

One of the findings on behavioral change is that change is more likely to happen in groups. Encouraging interaction around your reading plan is one of the most important aspects of any initiative to get students reading the Bible more. You have to figure out ways to build in interaction.

Some people utilize GroupMe to prompt students for responses to the day’s reading. Others have students jot down their reactions and share them on a blog. Whatever you choose to do, make sure you are promoting and expecting interaction.

Fourth, Build in Accountability.

Accountability is related to interaction, but it goes deeper. We are WAY more successful in getting our students to change their spiritual habits if accountability is built in. Loop in their parents.

Empower them to check in on their students and to engage with what their students are reading. Ensure that you are regularly checking in to make sure they are making an effort to stick with the changes you’ve committed to. Giving students a plan and setting them off without accountability rarely proves successful. We have to come alongside them and help encourage and motivate.

Fifth, Go Small for Big Results. 

There is a mantra in marathon running, “Start slow to finish fast.” The same idea applies to trying to get our students motivated to develop the habit of Bible reading. I sometimes wonder how successful the “let’s read the whole Bible in a year” plan is when the people you’re trying to convince to build better habits barely read their Bible’s to begin with. While reading the entirety of Scripture is a noble goal, and one every Christ-follower should strive for (multiple times, actually), it seems to me that choosing such a big commitment is not the best approach for students’ who are struggling to read the Bible even a few days a week. That’s akin to taking someone who doesn’t jog and signing them up for a marathon. It’s best to start small.

Success produces success. What if you started with a one-week reading plan? After you have successfully done that, encourage your students to try a longer plan. Try a ten-day or a two week. (YouVersion has plenty of plans of these kinds.) Then build to a one-month, celebrating wins as you go. This is a much more realistic plan to build Bible reading habits. It’s starting slowly to finish fast.

Whatever approach you choose to take, if you utilize these five points or not, your goal should be to do something. Make it a point to push your students toward real and lasting change. After all, that’s the promise of the New Year.

Andy and Robbie talk about this in more depth in the video below!

Or listen on the go with our podcast!

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