It’s a new year, and many people have started a Bible-in-a-year reading plan. However, podcaster and apologist Alisa Childers advises her followers, especially new Christians, not to make “an unrealistic goal that you’re going to end up giving up on.”
“I know that many of you have reported that in the wake of Charlie Kirk‘s death, you have had people ask you like, ‘Hey, I am a new Christian. Where do I start?…What Bible do I get? What do I need to know?’” said Childers in a brief video on her YouTube channel Jan. 9.
Childers said she “wanted to do an episode that would be the episode you would send to a brand new Christian because I have a couple of people like that in my life. And I thought, ‘Man, what would I really want them to know?’”
Alisa Childers: ‘Just Keep Going’
Alisa Childers is a Christian apologist, author, podcast host, and a founding member of the Christian girl group ZOEgirl, which was formed in 1999. Her father, who passed away in August 2025, was contemporary Christian music pioneer Chuck Girard.
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Childers mentioned that she had her friend Greg Koukl on her show. Koukl is the founder and president of apologetics ministry Stand to Reason and the author of such book as “Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions” and “Story of Reality: How the World Began, How It Ends, and Everything Important That Happens in Between.”
“We’ve actually talked about [‘Story of Reality’] on the show before because it is such a good book that gives you sort of this overarching biblical worldview, but he does it through story,” Childers said. “And so, it’s very engaging….and it’s a really good book to send to somebody. But even just this podcast, I think, would be a good podcast to send to somebody.”
At the end of their recent episode, “Greg gave some amazing advice about reading the Bible,” which Childers said she has already started to implement. “I don’t know what it is about my personality, but every time I’ve tried, I’ve never successfully read the Bible in a year,” she said. “Now, I’ve read the whole Bible a few times. I’ve just never successfully done it in a year.”
Instead of reading the Bible in a year, Koukl’s advice was to get a printout of a Bible reading plan “and then just, however long it takes you, start crossing off what you’ve read, and don’t try to do it in a year,” said Childers.
She is using a printout from The Bible Recap (TBR)—which is actually a resource to help people read the whole Bible in a year—because TBR uses a chronological reading plan. Koukl said by using this method, he gets through the Bible in about three years.
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“And I thought, ‘This is life-changing,’” said Childers. “Because what happens to me is I start out really solid in January, and then somewhere around March or April, I get behind, and then I give up.”
