Option to check daily bible reading assignments as complete

[Mark Dubis]

I use YouVersion's Bible app to do daily Bible reading. It currently is more robust that Accordance's functionality for this activity, especially in that it offers a way to mark a reading assignment as complete and choose various reading plans that are tied to the actual calendar. It also offers a way to "catch up" if one gets behind on the plan. Daily Bible reading would seem to be a basic activity that cuts across all Accordance user levels and markets and thus would be worthwhile to devote some development time to this. I encourage the development team to consider this request.

[William T. McVay]

Marking progress is important to faithful Bible reading for me, too. While I do not disagree that more management features in Accordance devotions and reading plans would be welcome, I have found an effective method for using the the current form of them. I have kept up with Bible reading in Accordance for the first 153 days of 2018.

 

The ESV SB reading plan is what I am using currently, though several plans work the same way in Accordance. It detects the current date and presents that date and four readings for it. If I happen to get behind or wish to go ahead a day, there is a set of arrows for going back or ahead.

 

For reminding myself to read and tracking the time of my accomplishment, I simply assign myself a daily repeating task in Daylite, my chosen CRM system. I also link it to a project for the year’s reading. Each day at a time I specify it notifies me to “Read Bible.” No further details are needed, since the reading plan shows me what passages to read. When I mark the task done, a new one for the following day appears, and I get a reminder for it.

[Douglas Fyfe]

Yep. I use devotional readings and am about 10 days behind - which means I have to go back with the arrows to the last day I was reading. 

So I would say: it works very well if you keep up to date, and started on 1 January.  But there are limitations if you aren't and didn't.

[William T. McVay]

Yeah, getting behind in daily reading is always painful when your system is inflexible. I have gotten about four or five days behind at various times this year, myself, so catching up took effort. After ten days, I am sure the arrow-pressing would get old.

 

Also, some folks don't want to wait until New Year's Day to start at the beginning of a reading plan, as you pointed out. Maybe there is another feature request for people who want to begin on other dates: have Accordance remember a selected start date. I suppose it would have to be stored in a user preference.

 

Then again, why do we have to begin in Genesis 1, Psalm 1, 1 Chronicles 1, and Luke 1 (ESV SB Reading Plan for January 1)? We could just pick up wherever the plan puts us on the day we start and be content to do the first half next year.

 

My first attempt to read through the Bible with a plan was when I was a grade schooler, and I used a printed plan in the front matter of The Way (The Living Bible in a format for teens) that I had just received as a Christmas gift from my stepfather's mother. It had a list of chapters with checkboxes by them in all the books of the Bible, as I recall. Probably it still has! I just marked my progress with a pen. If I missed a day, no big deal. The next empty checkbox was waiting for me when I came back to it. The reading was in no way connected to any date.

 

I use the following tracking and reminding method when reading books (print, Kindle, Accordance module, etc.) whose completion date I care about: I make a Daylite task for every chapter in the book (which has its own project) and assign a presumptive due date and reminder policy to the task. If I get behind and don't care to stay on the original schedule, I just select all the open tasks for that book (linked to its project) and do a bulk edit to change all their due dates together, adding the same amount of time to all of them, to push out the whole project schedule.

 

If I don't care about my pace but want to read some amount daily, I just make a repeating task exactly like the one I use with my Bible reading plan, but I title it something like "Read Mastering macOS Programming".

 

Would there be any advantage to integrating an Accordance devotion or reading plan with an external scheduling tool like Calendar, Daylite, etc.? I am satisfied keeping the reading plan and my reading schedule separate, but using reading plan descriptive info that is in Accordance to set up a reading schedule in the other app and then mark progress in it from within Accordance might be an interesting feature.

[Mark Dubis]

The workarounds that William describes demonstrate the opportunity for Accordance to improve on this topic. Most users will not go to those lengths. If Accordance programmers are not familiar with the YouVersion Bible app, I encourage them to experiment with it to be inspired with possibilities for Accordance.