The Other Side of the Tracks
How a professor's Bible reading plan first filled me with utter dread, then changed my life.
It’s Good Friday, friends, so that means another churchy post! (You know you love it.)
Back in January of 2016, Lana and I headed over the Cascades to stay a night at the Hampton Inn across the river from Bend’s Old Mill District. The hotel had a pool for Lana and I just wanted to get out of town.
This was a couple years after Mindy died, and the wilderness which had been so isolating over those first two years felt navigable by then. I was renting a freelancer desk at Willamette Week to be around co-workers and assimilate back with society.
We had dinner that night at Brad and Kindra Hakala’s house. Brad and Kindra are friends from the early days of Imago Dei, and lead a home community with Mindy and I a decade previous. They also have three daughters Lana could play with, so we had an excellent meal and talked about all sorts of subjects but one of them was the newfound dependence on God I felt as I wandered through the wilderness.
Due to this spiritual renaissance—and also because it was an election year and folks on social media kept claiming Jesus was for and against whatever they were for and against—I felt an insistent urge to read and learn the Bible. I’d always dabbled in Scripture like any Christian should, but this time I felt intent on knowing it more deeply. Unfortunately, my attempts to fulfill this urge were shaky. I’d try some of the Gospels every night, but more often than not I’d fall asleep halfway through. I shared this struggle with Brad and Kindra, and they sympathized.
I agreed to attend a Sunday service with the Hakalas the next morning at Antioch Church, which meets in the Bend High auditorium. Go Lava Bears! Brad was waiting in the foyer when we arrived and ushered us back to check Lana into Sunday school, and as he did, he told me about an insight Kindra had received the night before that she wanted to talk to me about. Mysterious!
We found her in the Sunday school hall, and Kindra explained as we made our way to the auditorium:
“I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t sleep for a bit and then I had the thought, Tell Jordan about your Bible reading plan. Then I fell back asleep.”
Then she handed me a folded printout summarizing something called the Professor Grant Horner Bible Reading Plan. Her tone turned apologetic. “The thing is, it’s ten chapters a day.”
My blood ran cold. I wasn’t sure what to say. I squeaked out a noncommittal, “Okay, yeah, I’ll think about it.”
I need to note here that none of us was particularly pentecostal. We’d all heard warped spiritualized language, and witnessed folks wield the theoretical intentions of God to manipulate others. It was for these exact reasons—and because of the terror I felt all through that service at Antioch, wishing I could somehow escape or forget this challenge—that I knew it was a calling.
Maybe I’ll start next week, I feebly told myself on the drive home that afternoon. Instead, against the will of most of the cells in my being, I started the plan that night.
The Grant Horner Bible Reading Plan works like this: there are ten reading tracks, each with different lengths. The first track are the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—read through in a bit less than three months. The second track covers the Pentateuch in 187 days. These are followed by two tracks spanning the rest of the New Testament, then an intent emphasis on the wisdom books: Job, Songs of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes, with Psalms and Proverbs each with their own track. The longest is Track 9, which stretches from Isaiah to Malachi and lasts 250 days. The shortest track is last, a repeat of the Book of Acts on a 28-day loop. The idea is to read one chapter from each track every day, and restart when they wrap up.
On the printout I received, there were also a few helpful hints for surviving the plunge:
Read the chapters in one or two sittings. I start the day with the first five, and read the last five after Lana’s bedtime.
Reading speed should be somewhere between a quick skim and a careful, moderate pace. There are no deep dives, no cross-referencing, no re-reads. The goal here is to learn the Bible through increasing familiarity and repetition rather than immersive study.
The time commitment is substantial at first as you adjust to the system. After a few weeks, each reading session wraps up in 15-20 minutes.
There are a few handy apps to keep track of the plan, including one in the main Bible app. I use one called Biblemarks.
If you miss a day or two, that’s cool. Just hop back on board the next day.
I picked Eugene Peterson’s The Message as my translation of choice because it’s eminently readable, has a pleasantly-toned reader (Kelly Ryan Dolan) for when I rely on listening, and because I enjoy make purists sputter and squirm, as though a mere Montanan could manage to make the Word untrue by modernizing the language.
After a few weeks, the GH reading plan became a habit. The deeper I read through the tracks, and as they repeated over each other, the more I found the disparate arcs of the Biblical narrative to be intricately interwoven. Themes echo across Scripture’s millennia-old tales—call backs to put Arrested Development to shame—and they ripple out through most of the literature that’s been written since. I’m confident in claiming any true study of stories and words will be heightened by a grasp of God’s. It’s no surprise that Grant Horner has an extensive background in literature.
Five years on, my journey with the plan plows on. I’ve read through the prophets seven times, each Gospel 19 times, and I’ll wrap up my 64th reading of Acts later this week. My Bible app claims I’m on a 608 day streak.
Maybe these numbers sound boastful, but I’m far more inclined toward destructive habits so I’m grateful for forming, with God’s grace, at least one that’s constructive. Growth isn’t always steady. I lean a lot on listening these days, sometimes wandering away to check fantasy sports scores while Deuteronomy drones in the background. I often miss a morning or evening portion when my mind is elsewhere.
Mainly, my sense is my Biblical training has just begun. In Hebrews and Ephesians, the Word of God is described as a double-edge sword. To wield it appropriately requires savvy and obedience and a solid grasp of context. A read-through of Proverbs, for instance, will have me nodding in smug satisfaction one moment (“Indeed, this is a sin others are mired in, but certainly not me!”), then ego-obliterating conviction the next. It’s a good thing there’s a hero at the center of the narrative good and mighty enough to hold all these tensions.
The 10 track plan isn’t for everyone, but it fits my addled and wandering mind. I’ve tried straight read-throughs, all of which invariably fail. Wide swaths of the Old Testament can be a bloody slog or agonizingly specific, and while there’s rich meaning to be mined in those passages, it’s the crosscut of hope and grace provided in Paul’s letters, or the accounts of Jesus’ ministry, which uplift my days. Most of the time, my reading concludes with chapters from Acts, the origin story of Christ’s church, where I marvel at the plucky outsiders whose beliefs are still changing the world 2,000 years later.
I recently saw a commenter mock ancient Scripture in a Facebook post about archaeologists’ discovery of more Dead Sea Scroll fragments, and I know zero credence should be given to Facebook trolls, but I do get skepticism toward the relevance of old texts. It’s not like I’m recommending daily passages from The Iliad or The Epic of Gilgamesh.
Yet, in any given day, as I’m exposed to dozens of articles and blogs and news stories and sometimes even actual books, I am consistently amazed at how words written in the last week pale in contrast to the insight and refreshment and truth of the Bible. I recognize I’m steeped in Christian tradition—possibly even brainwashed?—yet the Bible is active and living in ways no other story or document can even aspire to be. The Word of God fills me, suffuses me, and shapes my understanding of myself and the world around me each new day.
In this, all credit goes to that compelling central character, the God/Man Yehoshua, whose crucifixion we remember today, who’s resurrection we’ll celebrate on Sunday with spiral-sliced ham and chocolate eggs. The Messiah is endlessly compelling, and I could read about a trillion billion heroes and none would surpass the sorrow I feel reading about his body on that cross, and the glory I feel at the victory won three days later when he rose again. What other protagonist could conquer death itself? Who else could build an eternal kingdom in which everyone is invited?! There’s a very good reason the Gospel is called the Greatest Story Ever Told. Fair warning: you may love Jesus so much you give your life to him, and things after that will never be the same.
Love your commitment to this deep, deep Source!