Reading the same words, on the same day, as one church

Hundreds of years ago, most villages had a belltower. When it rang, everyone stopped and prayed — the baker, the farmer, the children in the field. It was a shared rhythm that held a whole community together. Eventually the belltower became a clock, and the clock became something that ruled over us rather than gathered us.

Seeing Jesus Together is our attempt at a belltower.

It's a congregational Bible reading plan. Every day, the whole church reads the same passages. We journal through them, we pray them, and we bring what we've seen back to each other — over dinner tables, in community groups, on Sunday mornings. Not sixty people reading sixty different things in sixty separate corners, but one church under one word.

Why read together?

In Acts 2, Luke describes the earliest Christians devoting themselves to the apostles' teaching, to fellowship, to breaking bread, and to prayer — together. The picture isn't of believers siloed off from one another, each managing their own private spiritual life. They were bound together under God's word.

We also need to preach the gospel to ourselves daily. Not once, at conversion, but every morning — putting our gospel lenses on before the day puts its own lenses on us. SJT is a tool for that.

Ted Sinn, who created these journals, puts it this way: we become what we behold. Or to say it another way — you are what you love. So the question worth asking is: what are we giving our hearts to every day? Whatever it is, it's shaping us.

Start here

Get a journal.

We keep copies at church, available for a suggested donation of $10. If $10 is a stretch right now, take one anyway. We'd rather you have it.

A journal typically lasts somewhere between four months and a year, depending on how consistently you use it.

And get the app.

The SJT app is free and holds the daily readings, so you always know where the church is. It's built to support the journal rather than replace it — the writing itself happens on paper, by design. There's a good case for leaving the phone behind once you know what you're reading.

Download for iPhone  ·  Download for Android

Before you begin

Make a time. Pick a part of the day when you can actually be alone. It's hard to focus on Jesus in the busiest hour of your schedule, so this will probably mean giving something up. That's the cost, and it's worth naming honestly.

Make a place. We're creatures of habit, and we assign meaning to places. So choose a spot that belongs to this and nothing else — not the kitchen table, which means food, and not your bed, which means sleep. A stairwell. The garage. A room nobody uses. Somewhere that, when you walk into it, feels like Jesus is already waiting for you.

Bible reading is not Bible study

This distinction matters more than any other on this page.

In Bible study, you examine the text. You're shining a light on the word, working out what it means, preparing to teach it.

In Bible reading, the text examines you. You sit under it rather than over it. You let it search you.

You will feel the pull toward study mode — it's more comfortable, because it keeps you in charge. This is exactly why we begin by asking the Spirit's help to receive the word rather than master it.

The Pharisees consumed Scripture daily and never saw Jesus in it. Daily reading is no guarantee of anything on its own.

Using the journal

Six steps. The first two are the ones people skip, and they're the ones that make the rest work — they prepare the soil to receive the seed.

1. Connect with your heart

Ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand what you're feeling.

Start here because God cares what's happening in your heart, so it's worth caring about too. For a lot of us this is genuinely hard. Ask most people how they're feeling and the answer is "fine." Fine isn't an emotion.

The emotions wheel in the journal (p. 308) helps you find language for it. Start at the center and work outward until something fits. Think back over the last 24 hours, and write I feel ___ because ___.

Then consider the health of that emotion — the journal's guidance on p. 309 walks through this. Jesus felt anger, grief, and sorrow, and felt all of them rightly. If something in you feels disordered, ask the Lord for help with it rather than pushing past it.

2. Surrender

Open yourself up. Ask God to open the eyes of your heart, and to plant whatever truth he has for you today.

If you notice parts of yourself that don't want to surrender, don't paper over it. Name it and ask for help there specifically.

3. Listen to the word

Read the day's chapters through a couple of times. Don't stop to solve every difficulty — if a section is confusing, let it go and keep reading. Let the Spirit draw your attention where he wants it.

This is the step to skip if you're new. Come back to it once the habit is established.

For the harder books, we've put together overview guides — see Resources below.

4. Meditate on a passage

Let the Spirit press you toward a particular passage. If nothing surfaces, use the suggested passage for the day. Write down the reference, then ask:

• What does this passage teach us about God?
• What does it show us about a godly life, or a sinful one?
• How does it surface our need for Jesus and his saving work?
• How does it point to Christ and God's saving purpose across all of Scripture?

5. Pray through the gospel

Pray the passage back to God using ACTS:

• Adoration — praise the Father for who he is and what he's done
• Confession — acknowledge sin, folly, and limitation
• Thanksgiving — thank Jesus for his saving work in your life
• Supplication — ask the Spirit to transform you in specific ways

Prayer often defaults to asking for things. Praying this way keeps God first and keeps the reading gospel-focused. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:21, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

6. Prepare for gospel community

Before you close the journal, ask: was there a part of this that made Jesus more beautiful to me? What could I share? Distill it to something small enough to say out loud.

Then look for the opportunity. Over dinner. In your community group. In a text to someone who needs it. Pay attention through the day to where God might be opening a door.

What if I fall behind?

Resources

Book overview guides — A short guide for each book of the Bible, with background on who wrote it, who first heard it, and what to listen for as you read. We add guides as we reach each book.

Browse the book guides →

From Seeing Jesus Together — Ted Sinn's team offers free training resources, intro videos, and additional journal formats, including Solitude and Student editions, at seeingjesustogether.com.

Questions?

Ben Ewen, our Associate Pastor of Discipleship and Formation, would love to hear from you — ben@trinitypresoc.org. Whether you're wondering how to start, you're stuck in a hard book, or you just want to talk about what you're finding, reach out.