Minnesota Pastor Encourages Daily Bible Reading With Text Prompts

“A Bible that’s falling apart often belongs to someone who isn’t.” That’s a piece of wisdom Chad Werkhoven, now pastor of Worthington (Minn.) Christian Reformed Church, remembers hearing from an elderly Christian woman in Boumont, Texas, when he traveled there from Sunnyslope, Wash., with the youth group he was leading as a commissioned pastor. Challenged and encouraged that “we’ve got to be reading our Bibles more,” Werkhoven returned from that trip and started UnfadingTruth.com to post daily reading guides for the youth group. “We then had the whole congregation doing it,” Werkhoven recalls. Later as an ordained minister, when he accepted the call to Worthington CRC, he brought the habit with him.

“We’re doing this Bible reading plan together—all the same passage on the same day,” Werkhoven said. Doing it as a community has not only focused participants on a specific passage at a time but “helped to plan (Sunday) services too,” where a Scripture selection from the week might be used as a Call to Worship or in the time of Confession or Assurance of Pardon.

For the past three years Werkhoven has used one of the Christian Reformed Church’s three confessions—Heidelberg Catechism, Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort—as a road map to selecting the Scripture passages for each day. Each passage, with the corresponding doctrinal summary from the confession and a pastoral reflection, is posted as a blog post and as a six- to eight-minute recording. Werkhoven said he records them—five days-worth at a time—at his desk in his church office.

The plan for 2026 is to read through the narrative of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, with key passages, but not the entirety of Scripture. To accomplish that one would have to read four to five chapters a day, something most people can’t absorb, Werkhoven said. It’s “not every chapter and verse of the Bible in 2026 but through the whole Bible in quantities that people can absorb well,” Werkhoven said. He’s hoping more churches and pastors might join—even contributing by writing reflections on the passages or recording a week’s worth of readings.

Werkhoven said UnfadingTruth had about 500 subscribers at the end of July, more than double the 180 to 200 members and adherents of Worthington CRC, about 60% of whom subscribe, Werkhoven guessed. Participants can select daily reminders by email or either a morning or afternoon text message.

There are subscribers from Georgia and Oklahoma, a state without a lot of CRC congregations, Werkhoven noted, and still a concentration of weekly listeners from Sunnyslope, Wash., where UnfadingTruth started.