In order to encourage people to "feast" on God's word, our source of spiritual nourishment and a key ingredient of healthy growth, for 20-plus years pastor Doug Dean has offered an annual challenge: read through the Bible from cover to cover to get a broad picture of all that God has communicated to us.
As a light-hearted incentive, Doug hosts a spaghetti dinner every January for all who have completed the challenge sometime during the year. The group varies from year to year, with both first-timers and veterans, young and old, but each year this has been a rewarding time of celebration.
You don't have to do the reading in order — skip around, a book at a time. Take a year to do it if you're ambitious (it works out to about 24 chapters a week), or stretch it out over several years. The point isn't the pace -- or the pot of spaghetti, for that matter -- but the opportunity to become more familiar with God's word and thus to know Him better and to be better equipped to serve Him.
Why not get started today on your reading plan, and start looking for the spaghetti dinner signup list around the Christmas holidays! (You can also sign up online once you're done.)
To track your progress, print this checklist and mark the chapters as you read them.