A custom Bible Reading Plan is a great way to engage your congregation each day while fostering community through a shared reading schedule. You can create your own custom Bible Reading Plan from scratch or adapt an existing plan with modifications to fit your congregation's needs.
Supplementary content or guided notes cannot be added to any reading plan but can be added elsewhere in the app.
Creating Your Plan
Use the Bible Reading Plan Builder linked below to create your custom Bible Reading Plan XML file.
How to Use the Bible Reading Plan Builder
Plan Configuration
Before entering the readings for your plan, you'll need to set it up. This determines the title, length, and passages per day. Follow the steps below to configure your plan:
Add a Plan title.
Select the total length of your plan (up to 365 days).
Next, choose the number of passages per day. We recommend setting this to the maximum number of passages that will appear on any single day. Days with fewer passages can simply be left blank. Empty fields will automatically be removed. For example, if one day contains 10 passages but most days contain only 2–3, select 10 as your maximum and leave the unused fields empty.
Add Your Readings
Once you configure your reading plan, you can begin adding scripture passages to it. The Bible Reading Plan Builder provides three flexible ways to build out your plan, helping you find the perfect workflow for your ministry team!
Manual entry
You can type your desired book and chapter to add passages manually. As you type, the system automatically suggests possible passages for subsequent readings to save you time. Press Tab on your keyboard to accept a suggestion, or simply keep typing to enter a different passage. You can also pin the book list on the left-hand side of your screen to quickly reference and copy book names.
Split a passage range
Use the Split feature to automatically divide a larger book or passage into smaller, daily readings. For example, if you are creating a 100-day plan, you can enter Psalms 1–100 and split them into one psalm per day across the plan. This is a fantastic tool for keeping your community engaged over the long term!
Paste a list
You can paste a list of passages to automatically populate your entire reading plan at once. After you paste your list, you can easily review the schedule and make any necessary changes. To avoid formatting errors, ensure you separate your chapter references with commas within your text before pasting.
Accepted Passage Formats
Individual Passages
Single chapter: Genesis 1
Single verse: Genesis 1:1
Single-chapter books: Jude 1
Consecutive Passages
Each passage field supports up to three consecutive chapters.
Consecutive chapters: Genesis 1-3
Section of verses: Genesis 1:1-10
If a reading spans multiple books, enter each book in a separate passage field. For example:
Genesis 50
Exodus 1
Days Without Readings
If you have fewer readings than passage fields available (set by your passages per day), leave unused passage fields blank. If there is no reading for that day, make sure to toggle the Check for no reading checkbox.
Download & host your reading plan
Once you finish entering your readings, you are ready to make the plan live for your community! This process involves downloading your plan, hosting the file online, and linking it to your Subsplash Dashboard.
Download your plan
To make your reading plan accessible to your mobile app, you must first export it as an XML file and upload it to a public hosting space. First, download your plan by clicking Download Plan to generate and save your custom XML file to your computer.
Choose a hosting method
Upload the generated XML file to your server or hosting provider. The file must be publicly accessible so your app can read the data. You can use any of the following methods.
SnapPages (Recommended)
Navigate to the Storage section of your SnapPages site and upload your file. Even if you do not use SnapPages as your primary website builder, you can still use this space to store files for public use.
Dropbox
If you choose to use Dropbox to host your XML file, copy your file's sharing link and change the 0 at the very end of the URL to a 1. This ensures the file is fully compatible with your mobile app.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Upload the XML file into a new or existing Amazon S3 bucket. Double-check your bucket permissions to ensure the file is set to public.
Add your custom reading plan to your App
Once your plan is hosted and you have your publicly accessible URL, go to your Bible tab in the Mobile App editor, select Custom Bible Reading Plan from the dropdown menu, and add your URL to the Custom Plan field.
When setting a start date for your reading plan, consider the plan length to make sure it shows within your desired time frame.
FAQs
How do I edit my plan and XML?
How do I edit my plan and XML?
Once you download your XML from the Bible plan builder there may come a time when you need to make changes, feel free to update the XML file directly instead of putting together a new spreadsheet!
XML uses tags in a particular order and with particular spaces or line breaks. Make sure you follow these instructions exactly.
Make sure not to change the <plan> or <title> tags as they are needed to properly display the Reading Plan.
Add these exact tags for each day of the reading:
<reading>
<day></day>
<passage></passage>
</reading>
Fill in the day. 1-365 based on the day of the year. Month is not used. For example, December 1st is day 335.
For Leap Years, make sure you account for Feb. 29th in your plan.
Fill in the passage. If a day needs to have more than one passage, just add a new passage on the line below the first passage using the passage tags.
If you have a day that doesn't have a reading, put 'No Reading Today' in the passage tag to alert readers that there will be no reading that day.
Example of a day with 1 passage:
<reading>
<day>1</day>
<passage>Matthew 1</passage>
</reading>
Example of a day with 2 passages:
<reading>
<day>1</day>
<passage>Genesis 1:1-24</passage>
<passage>Matthew 1:1-2:14</passage>
</reading>
Make sure you use the full name of the book and insure that there are no extra spaces before or after the entry.
Updating your Custom Bible Reading Plan
Open your copy of the XML reading plan that is saved to your computer. You can open this with your favorite text editor, such as Sublime Text (download here) or TextEdit.
Scroll to the bottom of the XML document and add your new content above the closing </plan> tag.
Save the document and re-upload it to your host (e.g. SnapPages, Dropbox, AWS, your own hosting) to overwrite the previous document.
The best way to name the document is with no spaces and just letters, numbers, dashes ( - ) or underscores ( _ ). Example: daily_devotion.xml or DailyDevotion.xml
And that’s all there is to it! Once you overwrite the old XML doc, the plan will be updated in the app.