The Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan first appeared in the Discipleship Journal Issue Thirteen 1983 as Your Appointment with God: Read Through the Bible This Year. Readers were encouraged to "feel free to make photocopies and pass them around".

The Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan offers special features that will aid you in your journey through the Bible.

• By reading from four separate places in the Scripture every day, you should be able to better grasp the unity of Scriptures, as well as enjoy the variety of seeing four different viewpoints.
• You can begin at any point of the year.
• To prevent the frustation of falling behind, which most of us tend to do when following a Bible reading plan, each month of this plan gives you only twenty five readings. Since you'll have several "free days" each month, you could set aside Sundays to either not read at all or to catch up on any readings you may have missed in the past week.

  If you finish the month's readings by the 25th, you could use the final days of the month to study the passages that challenged or especially intrigued you.

• If reading through the entire Bible in one year looms as too large a task, you can alter the plan to meet your needs. For example, you could read the gospels and the wisdom books this year, and the other two categories next year.

As you read each day, ask God to speak directly to you from the Scripture portions you read. Be expectant, and let your continual exposure to God's Word reshape your attitudes and behavior as you gain a better understanding of every part of His written testimony to us.

A very nice version of the entire plan, designed to be printed on both sides of a single sheet of paper, is available as a .pdf file here. Even if you don't stick to the plan rigorously, this is a handy tool to keep track as you go along of what you have read.