WANTING TO GROW — AND NOT KNOWING WHERE TO START

A friend of mine, someone I’ve come to know through his support of this ministry, recently shared his story with me. He had grown up in the church, knew his way around a Bible, and then lost both the habit and much of the life that surrounded it through a long and painful season. When the Lord finally got his attention and he began rebuilding, one of the first things he reached for was Scripture. He didn’t always feel like doing it, but he knew, somewhere beneath the wreckage, that it was the thing that had once held him together and could again.

What moved me most was a quieter detail inside that larger story. Even after he found his footing, the habit required a daily decision. He showed up to God’s Word on mornings when he had no desire to, armed, as he put it, with a black coffee, a mechanical pencil, and a small Moleskine journal. He kept the rhythm when nothing in him felt like it. And over time, that consistency did not just stabilize him. It began to spill outward into other people’s lives in ways he never anticipated, including a young man named Caleb, whose story you’ve already read in these pages.

I’ve spent more than two decades studying why people engage Scripture and why they don’t. And the more I study it, the more convinced I am that my friend’s experience is not exceptional. It is common. Why? Consider Psalm 1, which describes the person who meditates on God's Word day and night as a tree planted by streams of water — rooted, fruitful, resilient. That image assumes a daily rhythm. It assumes a return. It assumes that formation happens not in a single encounter with Scripture but in the accumulated weight of consistent engagement over time.

THE MOMENT WE’RE LIVING IN

Genuine spiritual hunger has not disappeared. Barna’s 2025 research found that weekly Bible reading has rebounded from a fifteen-year low, with younger adults driving much of the increase. But Gallup tells us that for the first time in surveys dating back to 2007, fewer than half of Americans say religion matters in their daily lives. Both things are true at once: the hunger is real, and the formation is thin. People are reaching for Scripture. Fewer are being shaped by it in lasting ways.

One reason, I believe, is the constant digital noise. We live in a moment when human attention is the most competed-for resource on earth, and the competition is relentless and largely invisible. It simply fills the quiet spaces that once might have held a Bible (e.g., the early morning, the commute, the unhurried hour) with something louder and easier.

THE DISCIPLESHIP GAP

This is the tension our own research has been documenting. The 2025 SALT Index, Back to the Bible’s nationwide study of spiritual formation among more than 6,000 U.S. adults, found something that has stayed with me. Even among the most committed believers (those with strong doctrinal convictions who affirm Scripture’s authority), the habit of daily Bible engagement is far from universal. The average in this group is only 3.1 days of engagement per week. In fact, one in five reports zero days in a typical week. The gap between what people believe about the Bible and how consistently they open it is nearly 27 percentage points.

That is not a small gap. And it is not caused by indifference alone.

What our research consistently shows, and what decades of pastoral ministry have confirmed, is that people who are spiritually inconsistent are not necessarily spiritually indifferent. Often, they want to grow. They know something is missing. Indeed, most committed Christians readily acknowledge what we’ve come to call the discipleship gap: the space between the life they aspire to and the life they're presently living. They are not blind to it. They carry it quietly.

The problem, in most cases, is not desire. It is the absence of a clear, daily pathway into Scripture that fits the life a person is actually living.

CREATING A PRACTICAL, DAILY RHYTHM IN GOD'S WORD

This is the problem Back to the Bible has always existed to address. Eighty years ago, Theodore Epp turned to the radio because he believed people needed a trusted human voice guiding them into God’s Word every day, in the ordinary rhythms of everyday life. And, although our technological medium has changed, our conviction hasn't.

We recently launched Back to the Bible Daily, a short daily podcast hosted by Braden Pedersen, one of the most gifted Bible teachers I know. Each episode gives listeners a clear, practical, daily rhythm in Scripture. It provides a trusted voice walking alongside you, helping you receive God’s Word, reflect on what it means, respond in obedience, and carry it into the lives of the people around you.

That is exactly the kind of daily structure my friend found during his own rebuilding. It kept him tethered to God on the mornings he had no desire to show up. And eventually it spilled into Caleb's life, and from Caleb’s life into others.

That's what daily Scripture engagement actually does. It's a ripple effect that starts with the person who shows up faithfully, and expands to everyone they touch.