The most important thing we do.
How a shared rhythm of scripture in covenant community has transformed our ability to raise disciples.
We have a lot of activities happening within our discipleship movement, but if I had to choose to do just one, it would be our community approach to daily devotions.
Every church leader would agree that scripture study is foundational to any fruitful discipleship effort. Even in my discipleship journey, I was hammered into me that quiet time with the Lord was essential for fruitfulness.
However, like many things in church life, there can be a gap between what we say we value and how we actually cultivate that value in our communities. A few years ago, we recognized this very issue in our discipleship movement. While we valued scripture, we faced a real challenge of biblical illiteracy.
No matter how often we preached, taught, or championed "Read your Bible," it just didn’t seem to take root. After much reflection, we realized that our approach to scripture study was highly individualistic: everyone was encouraged to do it on their own. While some thrived in this model, most struggled to prioritize it.
Challenges with Traditional Individual Devotions
We identified several key challenges in the traditional approach to personal devotions:
Lack of accountability. Because there was no shared commitment or expectation regarding scripture study, everyone marched to their own drumbeat—or no beat at all.
Selective scripture study. While all of scripture is God-breathed, people tended to gravitate toward the Psalms or Epistles rather than wrestle with more challenging books like Judges.
Interpretation in isolation. When individuals encountered difficult passages, they had nowhere to turn but the internet—and who knows what they will find there.
Reliance on secondary sources. Many turned to books, podcasts, or other media about scripture instead of engaging directly with the Word as their primary discipleship tool. A book study is not a substitute for proper discipleship.
For mature believers, these drawbacks may seem minor, and they might wonder what could possibly be wrong with individual devotions. But in a discipleship movement, our concern is always to nurture even the most immature believers and provide the most supportive environment for their faith to grow - which means tackling the challenge of getting everyone to read their Bible with urgency.
Our Solution: A Shared Daily Devotions Calendar
To address these challenges, we introduced a shared daily devotions calendar. Every day, our community studies the same passage of scripture together—typically around one chapter per day. This rhythm allows us to cover the entire New Testament every two years and the Old Testament every four years.
We simply supply the scripture to read and a basic framework to accompany the reading. We leave the rest up to the covenant community and the leading of the Holy Spirit. We encourage a simple interpretive framework:
What does this teach me about God?
What does this teach me about myself?
What step of obedience can I take?
Who can I share this with?
Everyone is encouraged to discuss their devotional reflections within their House Church (Simple Church) and to share insights or questions in our community channels. Most of our House Churches use the daily devotions as their primary scripture for the week (or use a tool like Living Sent).
This shift has had a tremendous impact on our church, enhancing biblical literacy, sensitivity to the Spirit, and collective discipleship capacity. So much so that every four months, we dedicate significant resources to printing and distributing blank daily devotion books.
Unexpected Benefits
Beyond solving the initial challenges, we discovered additional benefits - to our surprise and joy:
Deeper biblical understanding. Because we study all of scripture, our church has developed greater theological depth and a constant buzz about what people are learning.
A shared conversation starter. Any two people in our church, regardless of background or location, can immediately connect over what God is revealing through scripture.
Development of preachers. Our Sunday sermons are based on the previous week's devotions. With over 30 preachers on our roster, this shared scripture focus ensures a common hermeneutical approach. Rather than preaching on themes, we preach on scripture—helping new preachers learn to properly "preach a text."
Discipleship coherence. No matter where someone is within our movement, scripture remains the common ground that unites us. Even when people move between cities, this shared rhythm provides stability.
Simplified planning. Whenever we gather, devotions are always part of the schedule, and everyone comes prepared.
The Foundation for Fruitful Discipleship
Our discipleship efforts must be built on a strong foundation. If we raise disciples rooted in scripture, we will bear much healthier fruit. That’s why virtually all of the most effective disciple-making movements across the globe use some form of inductive Bible study as their core multiplication strategy.
When scripture is the foundation for our information, framework, and understanding of truth, it becomes much more difficult to go astray.