YouVersion Bible Reading Plans

YouVersion Reading Plans

Want to make the Bible a part of your daily life? Reading plans can help you out. You pick the plan (YouVersion has 20+ to choose from) and each day a special selection will be ready and waiting for you.

Overview

God’s Word brings power, healing, direction, and freedom. Most people who have a great relationship with God read the Bible consistently. Spending time in Scripture each day gives you the opportunity to hear from Him in a unique way. Following a reading plan helps you stay on track with your Bible reading goals. Pick one (or several) and then fine tune it to match your schedule.

Lots of Choices

Take your pick of 20+ different reading plans, with options like reading the Bible in a year, or chronologically, or in 90 days, or reading the New Testament in 30 days, and more. You can choose and start as many reading plans as you’d like.

If it’s helpful to you, you’ll have the option of subscribing to your reading plan in an RSS reader or downloading a calendar file.

Progress at Your Own Pace

Now you can adjust the length of any plan to match your schedule. If reading the Bible in a year sounds like too much, how about trying it in two? Want more intensity? How about six months?

Each day, you’ll be able to check off the section of the plan you’ve read so it’s easy to keep track of where you are. And for each reading plan you follow, we’ll show you how far along you are with a percentage of completion.

Support System

Share your reading goal with a friend for added accountability. We’ll help you both stay on track with friendly reminder emails about where you are with your plan.

Reading plans can also be tied to a group, so you can read together with your church, small group, Bible study class, or any group you choose.

Your Info, In Sync

Now your online YouVersion account will synchronize with your mobile account if you’re on iPhone, BlackBerry, or Android. This means your reading plans, along with any customization, and your progress will be with you no matter how you’re using YouVersion.

Take a Video Walkthrough

See how you can keep up with your reading plan no matter where you are.

Christmas Video

For those of you who couldn’t make it to the Christmas services, here is the original LifeChurch.tv production video. I hope LC puts more of these together as it has a great message. Enjoy!

Learning more about the Holy Spirit

Over the past four weeks, there has been incredible response all throughout LifeChurch.tv to The Ghost series. LifeGroups all over the church are digging deeper into the scriptures with a desire to learn more about the Holy Spirit and how they can live the “Spirit-filled” life that Pastor Craig talked about. I think we can all see how our church is coming together and is getting more “in tune” with the Holy Spirit.

There have been several LifeGroup leaders who have expressed an interest in continuing to learn more about the Holy Spirit in their LifeGroups, so I want to share a great resource that would allow your group to dig deeper into the subject of the Holy Spirit. Francis Chan has written a brand new book entitled “Forgotten God: Reversing Our Tragic Neglect of the Holy Spirit” that offers a very in-depth look at the Holy Spirit. In the book, Francis discusses some of the topic that Craig covered in The Ghost series, while at the same time going much deeper into the topic.

I highly recommend leaders read this book and discuss it in their LifeGroups. The study guide for this book will not be available until February 15, 2010, but don’t let that stop you from studying this book while The Ghost series is still fresh in all our minds.

You can buy the book at most local bookstores and online by clicking here.

I have also posted a video below that features Francis discussing what you can expect to learn by reading the book.

LifeGroups and Spiritual Gifts

If there is any group at LifeChurch.tv that should engage deeper into the discussion about spiritual gifts it should be LifeGroup leaders. By stepping up to lead a LifeGroup, leaders are already demonstrating spiritual gifts given to them by the Holy Spirit; however, I think that leaders should really take to heart Pastor Craig’s message about spiritual gifts from this past weekend and attempt to dig even deeper and learn all they can about their gifts.

Knowing what your gifts are and how to use them properly will ultimately make you better leaders in your LifeGroups. All leaders have different gifts and having this knowledge will allow you to focus on strengthening your gifts.

Take time to not only learn more about your own spiritual gifts this week, but I want to encourage you to work with each member of your LifeGroup in helping them discover their gifts if they have not done so already. Not only will your group members be able to grow in their relationship with Christ by knowing their gifts, but it will also help your group grow together and be more effective ministers for Christ.

Knowing the spiritual gifts of your group will also help you in discovering what roles in the group are best suited for everyone. Those that have the gift of compassion would probably make the best people to help plan your own micromissions and efforts to help others in need, while those that are gifted with teaching would make great co-leaders who could assist you in teaching the group.

To uncover the spiritual gifts of your group, you might consider having them take an online spiritual gifts test this week. There are two great tests which you can find at www.gregwiens.com/gifts and www.churchgrowth.org/analysis/index.html.

“A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.” 1 Corinthians 12:7 (NLT) Strive to uncover your group’s spiritual gifts so that you can better help each other and, more importantly, grow together.

• What are your spiritual gifts?
• How have you used your spiritual gifts to more effective lead and grow your LifeGroup?

Present Risenness

It absolutely amazes me how Gods timing is so perfect. Craigs message this weekend hit a chord within me that resonated all night Saturday and all day Sunday. On top of that, our LifeGroup is studying the book “Abba’s Child” by Brennan Manning. As I prepared for our group, I read the chapter titled “Present Risenness”. Brennan refers to The Spirit as the present risenness of Christ. After reading the chapter twice, that chord built to a crescendo. I can’t shake it and I feel compelled to share. The following is an excerpt of the chapter:

Treating life as a series of disconnected episodes is a habit deeply rooted in many of us. We discern no pattern in the experiences and events coming from outside ourselves. Life seems as disjointed as the morning news informing us of a drop in the stock market, a foiled terrorist plot in New York, the latest way to cut cancer risk, Miss America’s wardrobe, and on and on. The panoply of information, events, emotions, and experiences stuns us into passivity. We seem content to live life as a series of uncoordinated happenings. Visitors drop by, feelings and ideas come and go, birthdays and anniversaries are observed, sickness and loss arrive unannounced, and nothing seems interrelated.

This is particularly true as the years roll by. In what Shakespeare called “the heyday of the blood” life seemed to be more vivid, events seemed to have more meaning, and the crazy quilt pattern of each day seemed to weave a design. Now we are less affected, more “philosophical”, we like to tell ourselves. We pride ourselves on having learned in the hard school of life to “cut or losses” and we look back on the past with a certain indulgent pity. How simple things seemed back then, how easy the solution to the riddle of life. Now we are wiser, more mature; we have finally begun to see things as they really are.

Without the deliberate awareness of the present risenness of Jesus, life is nonsense, all activity useless, all relationships in vain. Apart from the risen Christ we live in a world of impenetrable mystery and utter obscurity – a world without meaning, a world of shifting phenomena, a world of death, danger and darkness. A world of inexplicable futility. Nothing is interconnected. Nothing is worth doing, for nothing endures. Nothing is seen beyond appearances. Nothing is heard but echos dying on the wind. No love can outlast the emotion that produced it. It is all sound and fury with no ultimate significance.

The dark riddle of life is illuminated in Jesus; the meaning, purpose, and goal of everything that happens to us, and the way to make it all count can be learned only from the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Living in the awareness of the risen Jesus is not a trivial pursuit for the bored and lonely or a defense mechanism enabling us to cope with the stress and sorrow of life. It is the key that unlocks the door to grasping the meaning of existence. All day and every day we are being reshaped into the image of Christ. Everything that happens to us is designed to this end. Nothing that exists can exist beyond the pale of His presence (”all things were created through him and for him” – Colossians 1:16), nothing is irrelevant to it, nothing is without significance in it.

Everything that is comes alive in the risen Christ – who as Chesterton reminded, is standing behind us. Everything – great, small, important, unimportant, distant and near – has its place, its meaning and its value Through union with Him (as Augustine said, He is more intimate with us than we are with ourselves), nothing is wasted, nothing is missing. There is never a moment that does not carry eternal significance – no action that is sterile, no love that lacks fruition, and no prayer that is unheard. “We know that by turning everything to their good God cooperates with all those who love him” (Romans 8:28, emphasis added).

The apparent frustrations of circumstances, seen or unforeseen, of illness, of misunderstandings, even of our own sins, do not thwart the final fulfillment of our lives hidden with Christ Jesus.

The awareness of present risenness effects the integration of intuition and will, emotion and reason. Less preoccupied with appearances, we are less inclined to change costumes to win approval with each shift of company and circumstance. We are not one person at home, another at the office; one person at church, another in traffic. We do not pass rudderless from one episode to another, idly seeking some distraction to pass the time, remaining stoic to each new emotion, enduring with a shrug of our shoulders when something irks or irritates. Now circumstances feed us, not we them; we use them, not they us. Gradually we become whole and mature persons whose faculties and energies are harmonized and integrated.

“Know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time” Matthew 28:20

Many of us hamstring the Spirit by minimizing the resurrection. We envision it as a historical event, or a promise yet to come in our life. It’s so easy for us to lose sight of the nowness of Christ through the Spirit. If we pay heed to Matthew 28, He is with us always …. present tense. Christ is risen! If we take into account that He is with us always, that He (through the Spirit) is transforming us daily, than we have no choice but to dramatically change the way we view our everyday lives!

As you prepare to lead your group through this series, first take a look at your own life. Do you continually look for Christ in daily situations? Are you fully aware of the present risenness of Christ? Once you grasp the importance of the nowness of Christ and the Spirit, it’s easier to transmit it. It’s not something that anyone can do perfectly all the time. We are human after all, but it MUST be a conscious effort to live life with the knowledge that our Savior is with us TODAY through the Spirit.

Blog Feedback

OKCLeaders has been up for a while now and we’d like some feedback regarding the blog. How useful has it been and how can we better serve you?

The LifeGroup and Missions Leaders blog was intended, at first, to provide critical information to leaders instead of using e-mail or bulletins. Since that initial concept, we’ve made attempts to develop a community around the site. Staff, LifeGroup Leaders and ministries working together to further the cause of Christ. To that end, we feel we need to take further steps to facilitate that.

So … either by comments or by the contact sheet, let us know what you think. This site is for you! Your input is needed!

Hillsong Observations, Week Three

Hey Readers!!

Sorry for the delay in this post, I’ve been down with pneumonia. Thanks for all the prayers!!

Let’s take a look at what Craig has to say about “Relational Focus”:

If I heard Brian Houston say it once, he must have said it a dozen times: “Church is about God and people.” In everything Hillsong does, you can sense their genuine hunger for God and love for people.

Even though their church is the largest church in Australia, it seemed small because of their relational emphasis. At each service, they took time to read prayer requests and praise reports. This helped engage the church members in prayer and encouraged them to keep a ministry focus. The campus pastors (or stage leaders) would also highlight when key volunteers got engaged or had a baby.

This relational focus bled over into the conference. Each day, the leaders highlighted a “delegate of the day.” The staff would choose someone from the 20,000 attending and set them up front in a lounge chair, fed them, and highlighted them to the whole crowd. Some how this gesture made the conference seem smaller.

Most of all, I was blessed by the intimacy fostered between the speakers and key leaders. In the U.S., at most conferences, speakers fly in and out and aren’t expected to do much else.
At Hillsong, even though no one requested it, all the speakers and their families attended all the main sessions. Between and after each session, everyone gathered for extended meals. Even though we were exhausted and jet lagged, this wasn’t a burden. It was deeply meaningful and obviously a significant part of the culture.

In a nutshell, LifeGroups are ALL about relationships. Yes, we study the Word, discuss weekly messages, etc. But the real impact is found in developing biblical relationships. Ask yourself this; do you know the names of your members kids? How about their dreams, aspirations … their troubles? Do you know their gifts? If you answered no to any of these questions, you may want to review the approach you take with your group.

Recently in our group, we had a couple headed for divorce. The husband showed up at our door one evening, bags packed, asking for a place to sleep for the night. For the next several hours we talked and prayed. That same night he went home with a new found sense of hope. Since then my wife and I have met with both of them and are mentoring them through their difficulties. That small miracle was made possible by the relationship we had developed with them in our group. They felt comfortable coming to us because we had been open and honest about our struggles in the same areas.

Don’t discount the importance of the relationships within your group. You never know when you may be the only person that stands between a miracle and a victory for the enemy.

• Read Acts 2:42-47. Does your group resemble this model in passion and relationships?
• Does your group pray together? Fast together? Do missions together?
• How well does your group reach out to the newcomer? Are you actively seeking new members?

National Leadership Forum

A free two-day leadership event is coming your way, and you don’t even have to leave your computer to take part. Check out who you’ll hear from during the National Leadership Forum webcast:

This is a fantastic opportunity to invest in leadership training and development for your team—whether staff or volunteers—without investing in conference fees or travel. Ken Blanchard will be moderating the webcast, which takes place on September 10-11. The event will be offered twice each day to accommodate different time zones: first at 7:00am-2:00pm GMT and then at 10:00am-5:00pm EDT. Capacity for the National Leadership Forum is limited, so you’ll want to register soon.

LifeChurch.tv is thrilled to partner with Southeastern University and 316 Networks to offer a leadership event of this caliber for free. Hope you can take advantage of it!

Hillsong Observations, Week Two

This is part two of a five part series called Hillsong Observations. Craig went to the Hillsong Conference and came back with five key points he’d like to implement at LifeChurch. This week we’ll be discussing “Leadership Development” and what that looks like at the LifeGroup level. Here’s Craigs excerpt from Swerve:

The second thing that struck me about the culture of Hillsong was their passion to develop the next generation of leaders.

Developing a leadership culture is obviously a top priority for Brian and Bobbie Houston. They had “sons and daughters” in the faith everywhere. Amy and I had several of the top leaders host us during our stay. Most of them had been saved and discipled at Hillsong before being hired on staff.

The staff was obviously willing to take risks on all sorts of people at every level. On any given weekend, you can find a first-time speaker, first-time worship leader, first-time camera operator, first-time parking attendant.

They also seemed to create more leadership roles than servant roles. For example, each weekend service had a service captain. Many of these were led by lay people. At the City Campus where I preached three times on Sunday morning, one of the service captains was a doctor who also led the service.

Without notice, any staff member or lay leader could be invited to pray, call for an offering, or make announcements. Everyone was gladly ready for anything at any time.

This culture has been multiplied many times over in the dozens of church plants around the world. I couldn’t keep count of all the people I met who’d been raised up at Hillsong and sent out to start new churches.

In the years I’ve been involved with LifeChurch, one thing I’ve noticed is the willingness of many to do, but few willing to lead. I attribute this phenomenon to two things. One being the enemy, the other being the misunderstanding of where leaders come from.

Have you ever felt led to do something, but didn’t think you “had what it took”? Welcome to the human race. We’ve all battled with fear and doubt, but where does that come from? Well, 2 Timothy says “For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind”. So if God didn’t give us a spirit of fear, where does it come from? That comes from the enemy … the destroyer … the liar. Even Moses battled with fear in Exodus. He argued with God saying he “didn’t have what it took”. In the end, even though God gave Moses all the tools he needed, he still sent Aaron with him as a crutch. The same holds true for leadership. You may not think you “have what it takes”, but The Lord will equip you with what you need … and then some.

When I was young, my parents kept talking about something called a “money tree”. Anytime I wanted something, they told me to go shake the money tree and I could have it. (I never did find that tree) Now that I’m older I know there is no such thing, nor is there a leader tree. Leaders aren’t born, they’re trained. One of LifeChurch’s mottos is to bring in, build up, train and send out. What better place to build up a leader than from within a LifeGroup and who better to train them than the LifeGroup Leader? If for no better reason than for the survival of the group. The #1 LifeGroup killer is leader attrition. The leader moves or is no longer able to lead and the group dies as nobody is equiped to step up to the plate.

In the coming months, I think you’ll see a push in the church for true leadership development. Let’s look at some ways for LifeGroups to start developing those leaders.

Making Prayer a Priority

For where two or three come together in my name, there I am with them. ~Matthew 18:20 NIV

One of the most important things a LifeGroup can do together is to pray. There is something powerful and unifying when a LifeGroup comes together to pray. Over the years, I have seen marriages restored, people healed and addictions destroyed through the prayers of LifeGroups. Additionally, praying together causes your group to grow not just with each other but in your individual relationships with Christ as well.

As LifeGroup leaders, we need to be reminded of the importance of setting aside enough time for prayer in our groups. Unfortunately, there was a period in our LifeGroup where prayer was not a priority. Because we prayed together at the end our group time, we many times had to rush our prayer or not even pray at all because we all had to dash out the door to pick up our children at the campus. We put too much focus on studying our weekly curriculum and did not manage our time well. As a result, our prayer time suffered and it affected our group in a negative way.

After realizing the problem, we moved our prayer time to the beginning of our LifeGroup time and it made a world of difference in our group. Not only did we have plenty of time to pray without being rushed, it calmed all of our hearts and minds and resulted in more engaging conversation during our study time. People seemed to open up more and it has made for an incredible period of growth within our group.

Is prayer a priority for your LifeGroup? If not, consider making some changes like our group did so that you can make the most of your LifeGroup time without sacrificing one of the most import functions of small group ministry.

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