A year ago, around this time, I started thinking to myself that I ought to be more disciplined in reading my Bible. But New Year’s Day came and went, and it wasn’t until the second or third of January that I noticed a Facebook post from my friend Sonja Goold about the Daily Audio Bible.

I started listening every day, and I think it’s been a good experience. I wrote about it in my Times-Gazette tech column a while back, but I thought  it would be timely to mention it here this week, at a time when a lot of people are making resolutions or taking stock.

Spoken-word versions of the Bible have been around for years, of course, on cassette and then on CD. But the Daily Audio Bible (DAB) is a free podcast. You can listen to it online by going to their web site; you can automatically download the podcast by subscribing to it from iTunes or your favorite podcast management software; or you can install iOS or Android apps on your phone or tablet which will take care of retrieving each day’s podcast whenever you want it.

DAB is based in Spring Hill, which is not that far from Shelbyville as the crow flies but due to the way the highways run it’s about an hour’s drive away. One of these days, I’m going to make a field trip to see the Wind Farm Café, a coffeehouse affiliated with the ministry.

The DAB is run by a fellow named Brian Hardin. Many of the Bible-on-CD products rely on narrators with deep, dramatic voices; I think Charlton Heston narrated one successful version. Brian’s is more of a friendly, welcoming voice.

He rotates among different Bible versions from week to week, although that almost changed for the upcoming year (more on that in a second). The readings take you through the entire Bible in a year’s time. There’s an Old Testament reading, a New Testament reading, a reading from Psalms and a reading from Proverbs. Each goes in order; the Old Testament reading starts with Genesis 1 on New Year’s Day and winds up in Malachi on the following New Year’s Eve. The New Testament runs from Matthew through to Revelations in a year’s time, and so on.

If Brian is starting a new book of the Bible, he’ll usually make a couple of brief remarks beforehand about the book’s setting, presumed authorship and theme. After the readings, he will sometimes make a few brief remarks about one of the passages and then will lead a prayer. Then, he’ll usually talk a little bit about something related to the DAB ministry – his own travels to speaking engagements or conferences, the Wind Farm Café or what have you. The podcast usually ends by playing prayer requests recorded from a 24-hour prayer line.

If you wanted to, or were pressed for time, you could stop listening right after the Bible passage, of course.

The web site tries to foster a community around the podcast. There are discussion forums and what have you.

The website also offers a daily Bible podcast for children and several foreign-language versions of DAB.

This year, in particular, the DAB ministry is poised for change and growth. Brian has released a new book, Passages: How Reading the Bible in a Year Will Change Everything for You, along with a companion edition New International Version Bible with readings broken up according to the DAB schedule. A couple of months ago, Brian proposed that in 2012, he use only the NIV, instead of changing versions from week to week, so that those who owned the new companion Bible could read along. I was in favor of this idea, in part because some of the paraphrases in the DAB rotation leave me unimpressed. The NIV, on the other hand, is readable, relatively acceptable to a wide variety of denominational backgrounds, and it’s a translation rather than a paraphrase, meaning it was worked on by a team of scholars and is geared towards accuracy. But Brian put the question to a vote of the listeners, and the listeners voted to keep the current system of rotating from version to version each week.

I think that my first year with DAB has been a good one – although not always an easy one. Some of the early Old Testament passages are challenging, and a regular schedule for listening to them forces you to think hard about what  you believe. What parts of the Bible are meant as prescriptive for our lives today? What parts are meant to be taken literally, and what parts are meant to be taken allegorically? What principles are eternal, and what principles are meant to apply to a given culture or situation? I think forcing yourself to take in all of the Bible, as opposed to just the warm and fuzzy parts, is an important process. In 2012, I’d like to be more disciplined about listening intently to the readings, not getting distracted or letting my mind wander.

I would heartily recommend the DAB to anyone interested in a closer relationship with the Bible.