Frequently Asked Questions

How do I use the Bible Study Together program on my phone or tablet?

The Bible Study App is the perfect companion for groups and individual reading the Bible with our program. It features the full Bible text in ESV, NLT, NASB, and KJV. You can read or listen to each days reading and see maps and videos that are keyed to each days contents. In addition, the app has daily Bible questions, prayer tools, and private groups to give you all you need to stay connected with people as you dive into God’s word. You can find out how to get our app here: https://biblestudytogether.com/best-bible-app

How do we turn on group notifications within the app?

We have found that group notifications become overwhelming as a few individuals tend to over message a group and people start turning off the notifications. Our app is designed to create a rhythm of daily Bible reading and prayer. This daily rhythm uses the group features to motivate people to open the app each day to see what their community is doing. When they open the app they are also prompted to read their Bible and pray. This is the best balance we have found in a noisy distracting phone world.

Can I use this plan with my printed Bible?

We have made high quality printed booklets that contain our reading plan and printed/printable study journals to guide you through our study. You can find our printed resources here: https://biblestudytogether.com/printed-chronological-cross-reference-bible-reading-plan

How can I join a group?

We do not currently host public Bible study groups using our tools and resources. Our app is designed to help you or your community start their own group. Then you can join people in your community reading and studying the Bible together. We want to help build local churches and Bible study groups rather than distant online communities.

I don’t have a group code, where can I get one to join a group?

Group codes can be sent to you by your group administrator. Or you can create a group yourself and invite others with your own group code. We do not currently host public Bible study groups using our tools and resources. Our app is designed to help you or your community start their own group. Then you can join people in your community reading and studying the Bible together. We want to help build local churches and Bible study groups rather than distant online communities.

What do I do if I miss a day?

It is easy to miss a day or two now and then…its really okay. You can either just skip the days or go back and read them. Since this plan keeps the daily reading to less than 10 minutes a day, it can be fairly easy for most people to catch up. If you are tight on time and still want to catch up, you can skip the study journal questions and any other resources at the end of the daily reading. If you have no time to catch up, we encourage you to skip what you missed. Staying on your current scheduled days is a good habit because it keeps you in sync with others who are reading with you and it prevents you from getting bogged down because you feel behind. As a result, if you miss some days and can’t catch up, we give you permission to skip those days and keep going.

How should I read through the genealogies?

We have broken up the genealogies so that you will never get stuck only reading genealogies, but even short genealogies can be intimidating. We encourage you to skim through the genealogies and find names that you may have heard or read from the Bible before and take note of them. If more is written about a person than just their name and parent’s names, take special note because this person played some key role in history. Don’t worry about pronouncing the all the names properly. Truth be told, many of the common pronunciations of these names are not even accurate and so chances are that even if someone corrects you, they are probably wrong too. If there is a day that you are reading the same genealogy from different books of the Bible we encourage you to just skim them and see if you notice any differences that stand out. We strongly encourage you not to get stuck in the genealogies, but to scan over them and use them to help you connect together the stories in the scriptures. The genealogies ultimately help us see that the Bible is not a group of fables, but a historical record of God working in real people’s lives.

Can I get a PDF of the Chronological Cross-Reference Bible Reading Plan to print and distribute myself?

We have made the Chronological Cross-Reference Bible Reading Plan available in two digital formats. You can get the plan in our Bible App and PDF study journal. If you would like to use our plan in a printed format we have made this available through our reading plan booklets and study journal books. We do not have any other formats available. Those who would like a printed version of the plan to be placed in their Bible should order our booklets because they were designed to fit inside most Bibles. The plan is long and fills nearly 12 pages of our high-quality booklets. Therefore, trying to print and bind all the pages yourself on a typical home printer is cumbersome to manage while using the plan for two years. The booklets are professionally designed to be durable and compact. We believe this gives people who are studying the Bible together in their community the best experience and adds credibility to leaders who are encouraging others to read through the scriptures. The booklets are available at our cost to print and ship them to you, so there is no barriers to groups of any size who would like to use this plan.

Can I get a digital version of the plan to adapt and redistribute?

We work with individuals and ministries who are seeking to create mutual synergy in service together. Most of our support to maintain our services comes from those making donations when ordering our products. To maintain synergy with our ministry model, we have outlined the ways that we have allowed others to partner with our resources on our permissions and copyright page. The Chronological Cross-Reference Bible Reading Plan and all its accompanying resources are registered copyright with the USA Library of Congress. Therefore, we ask everyone to kindly respect our permissions and copyright guidelines.

What additional resources accompany each day’s reading?

Each day has journal questions and a challenge to go along with the reading. In addition, on days when a new book is being started, there is a video that gives an overview of the book and explains its key points. We have also included maps on each day where the reading makes geographical references and have included more videos and other content to help people understand deeper topics. Video content also includes holy land tour videos. Every day does not include multimedia content, but when it is relevant we try to make it available to help people of all learning styles.

Is Bible Study Together a non-profit 501c3 organization?

Yes, Bible Study Together is a ministry of Create Disciples Inc. which is a 501c3 non-profit organization and so we can provide you with tax write-offs. If you believe that people need to read and know the word of God, then consider partnering with us because we are converting money into more people reading the Bible (Support this work).

Can I help support Bible Study Together?

Yes, Bible Study Together is a ministry of Create Disciples Inc which is a 501c3 non-profit. You can donate to this ministry online at the non-profit’s website here. The support we receive goes to maintain this website, develop new resources that work with our reading plan, and promotions to get people reading the Bible. We can honestly say that we are converting money directly into more people reading their Bibles. If you want to be a part of this work then we can use your help.

Is Bible Study Together affiliated with a particular denomination or religion?

Bible Study Together is Christian and is not affiliated with any particular denomination. The tools and resources we provide are made so as not to favor any particular denominational beliefs, but rather simply focuses on getting people into the Bible itself and helping people understand core truths that are common to the Christian Faith. If you would like to learn more about what we believe are the core truths of the Christian faith, you can read more here: https://biblestudytogether.com/beliefs

Does every New Testament passage connect to the Old Testament passage in the daily reading?

No, we have gone to great lengths to connect the New and Old Testament together as much as possible (hundreds of connections) but every single day is not connected. Not every chapter in the Bible has a direct parallel New Testament passage. Also, we are unable to connect every cross-reference because we are also maintaining chronology in the Old Testament and in the Gospels. Most of the connections are made through the Psalms, Proverbs, and letters of the New Testament, but when we could, we did connect the stories together. When a specific connection exists it is often brought out through the study journal questions.

Why are the Old Testament books of Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy broken up?

These sections of scripture tend to be the most confusing and monotonous parts of the Bible for people reading through the scripture. In fact, many people trying to read through the whole Bible get to this part and give up or just skip it entirely. This is a massive loss, so we have gone to great lengths to show the deep meaning in these parts of the Bible while breaking up the long sections of repetitive genealogies and numberings that tend to burn people out. Most of the ordering of our plan keys off of the Old Testament chronology, but in this section, we have keyed off of the New Testament letters which draw rich insights from these Old Testament books while still keeping the Old Testament stories intact. The end result is an engaging journey through the law that is New Testament focused. Our plan takes people through Galatians, Romans, and Hebrews giving them the chance to read the Old Testament cross-references in context so they understand the deeper meaning of what was written long ago. Our journey through these Old Testament books has helped tens of thousands of people not get confused and burned out, but to find rich insight into how God has fulfilled the Old Testament.

Do you have an answer guide to the Bible study questions?

The questions were designed to create discussion and often don’t have a specific answer. We consider them journaling questions or group discussion questions. If there is a question that you need help with, we encourage you to ask your pastor, elders, or spiritual mentors as we don’t have any answer guides at this time. We desire the questions to build community and to foster local discipleship.

Where did all the map locations come from that are in the google maps on each day’s reading?

A spreadsheet and kml files of geotagged Bible locations at openbible.info we integral in creating our Bible maps. We created an algorithm to go through their dataset and generated new kml files that matched as close as possible to the locations in each day’s Bible reading. If you want to find this dataset, its available for free here.

Why is my printed booklet different from the reading plan online?

The Bible Study Together 2 year reading plan was a work in progress prior to December 2017. If your booklet does not match the plan, it is out of date and should be replaced with a booklet printed after this date. Though we may make some more minor changes in the future, we do not plan on making any more major changes to our Chronological Cross-Reference Bible Study Plan.

Frequently Asked Questions

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