St. John the Evangelist - Ancient Faith, Modern Relevance

We are very pleased to be able to offer several helps for personal devotions and family religion. There are two primary tools:

• Abbreviated Morning and Evening Prayer for Busy Families in PDF format. Note that this has been updated with some small corrections as of 2/6/2010.
• Bible Reading Plan with Propers - For the weeks of June 6th through September 26th in PDF format.

In order to download the above tools, right-click on the link and select 'Download' or 'Save' in the context menu. These tools will also be printed out and available at church for those who wish to pick them up.

Other Options

Below, you'll find a variety of other suggestions for Bible reading plans. A couple of comments about these sites.

1. First, we won't recommend any plan that does not somehow include all of Scripture. However, some of the sites to which this page refers may list plans that are not "66 books complete".
2. We also recommend that you don’t try to catch up if you get too far behind in your Bible reading plan. Experience shows that this can just create frustration. But whatever you do - READ THE BIBLE!

Miscellaneous sites:

• Bible Reading.com
• Bible Reading Plans
• Some advice from Zondervan Publishing
• A review of 5 bible reading plans

Online Site:

This site offers a variety of devotional options, including an online one year Bible reading program that you can read directly from your web browser.

One Year Plans:

• This site also offers a variety of devotional options, including this one year plan.
• This is an intriguing one year plan, designed to prevent boredom and keep one's familiarity with the whole of the Bible at one time. It's designed around sections of Scripture spread across the week.
• Bible Gateway.com
• A review of the Victory Bible Reading Plan. This is not a free plan, you must buy a book.
• Perhaps the most famous of all one year plans, by Robert Murray M’Cheyne - also available is a stand-alone HTML file that you can download to your hard drive.

Two Year Plan:

This plan was downloaded from Perimeter Church, in Duluth, GA.

Three Year Plan:

This is the plan that is used in the St. John's devotional guides. It is also available as a PDF file for downloading to your hard drive.

The Lectionary:

We are not using the lectionary from the 1928 BCP for family devotions and the astute reader will probably ask: Why not the lectionary?

• The lectionary: whether the older lectionary system found in the 1928 book (a one year system), or the newer, so-called Revised Lectionary (a 3 year system) is designed to give an overview of the themes in the church calendar in the context of public worship. It is not designed to be a complete review of those themes.
• The lectionary - even the Revised Lectionary (the 3 year system) - covers only about 23% of the Bible's texts. That means that conversely, 77% of the Bible remains unread, if the lectionary is the sole source of one's reading regimen.
• For Morning and Evening prayer in the context of public worship, the lectionary satisfies as a general guide to Biblical themes. It does not suffice as a means of becoming familiar with all of Scripture in the course of one's devotional life: family or private.
• Having said these things, if one wishes to follow lectionary readings, one may use the tables in the front of the Book of Common Prayer, or visit such sites as these: A collection of lectionary resources for the Episcopal Church, or this from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.