The Shred Reading Plan
Everything You Need To Practically Know To Tackle This Sucker
Alright so here’s the actual reading plan:
And if you’re a YouVersion reading person who likes to read the Bible through an app, here’s the version here.
And for extra points? I wrote a SHORT SHRED JOURNAL last year that you can pick up from Amazon.
The Shred journal is one to two pages a day. That’s it. And it’s designed to give you orientation for the forty chapters you’re about to read. Think of it as seminary in your pocket: the more context you have, the more you’ll actually get out of the text. So I load those entries with big ideas, structural insights, and narrative cues—no elongated Pentecostal prayers, no snow-globe sentences drifting nowhere. I cut to the chase every day because I know how much reading you’re already doing.
My pastor Joe once said to me—perfectly, hilariously—that “devotional” is code for “a sermonette that doesn’t have to be good.” Pastors love asking guest speakers to “just do a devotional” for staff. Joe absolutely nailed it.
Outside of Oswald Chambers, I find most devotionals pretty brutal. And I’m sure that’s because I’m (1) a man, (2) not particularly interested in emotional affirmations, and (3) actually trying to understand what the text is saying. I put a high emotional value on grasping what the Spirit is communicating through Scripture—not on whatever an evangelical therapist is trying to massage into my psyche that morning. I know I’m being a bit cheeky here and I know women love devotionals, God bless you for that.
Of course I have emotions. Of course I want to be affirmed by the voice of God. I just think Scripture does that best when it’s read well, primarily.
That’s why The Shred slaps for me. I feel like I’m actually hearing the story of God as it was meant to be heard because I’m hearing it as a whole story, perhaps the way the first hearers heard it read to them.
Nibbling on isolated passages devotionally often turns into me listening to myself think. Eating a full meal of Scripture contextually takes that option away. Suddenly I’m not the center of the universe anymore. I’m forced to hear the text the way the first hearers heard it.
Take Joseph. There are massive nuggets in that story. But those nuggets hit way harder when you see the entire arc of his life—the betrayal, the waiting, the reversals, the long obedience. You simply cannot get that reading one chapter of Genesis a day.
Now, I’m not saying all Bible reading needs to be forty chapters a day.
What I am saying is this: once you’ve read the entire Bible in thirty days—once you actually know the narrative arc—when you return to slower, daily reading, everything snaps into focus. The Bible makes more sense. And you become far less narcissistic, staring at your own reflection in the still waters of God’s Word.
Alright. Enough ranting and vain philosophy.
Let’s get practical.
Here’s Five Pieces Of Advice from a guy who has done this twelve years in a row:
