Bible sales in the United States hit a twenty-year high in 2024. Then they climbed again. More than 19 million Bibles were sold last year, a 12% increase over 2024 and more than triple where sales sat a decade ago, according to Circana. YouVersion logged 150 million installs in 2025, up from 100 million in 2023.

People are buying.

Now hold that next to a different number. The American Bible Society’s 2026 State of the Bible report shows that Scripture-engaged adults are back near 2024 levels, at 17%. The group they call the Movable Middle, curious about the Bible and not deeply engaged with it, has grown by 9 million adults since 2024. That group now sits at 28% of the country.

Bottom Line: When it comes to the Bible, hunger is up, but handling is not.

You likely have people in your church who own three Bibles, subscribe to two reading plans, and could not find Habakkuk with a search party. They were handed a library and no map, and most of them have been quietly embarrassed about it for years. Some of them have been in your church the whole time.

Two Jobs, and Most of Us Only Do One

There are two different assignments hiding inside what we casually call “teaching the Bible.” Most churches are excellent at the first one and have never formally attempted the second.

Teaching people the Bible

This is what happens on Sunday. You take a passage, do the work all week, and hand them the conclusion. Context explained. Application delivered. People walk out understanding Romans 8 better than they did an hour earlier.

That is real work, and it matters. It also has a ceiling because everything they received depended on you handling it for them.

Teaching the Bible to people

This is the practice of handling a passage themselves. How is the book arranged? Why does a narrative work differently than an epistle? What to do when a verse lands strangely and nobody is standing on a stage to explain it.

You can teach the Bible every single Sunday for a decade and still leave a room full of adults unable to open it on a Tuesday.

Why the Gap Keeps Widening

The gap is not an accident, nor is it a commitment problem in your congregation. It is a byproduct of how we design the weekend.

Sermon length rewards coverage. More verses feel like more faithfulness, so we fill the minutes with content, because content is the thing we know how to produce. People receive a finished meal every week and never once watch anyone cook.

Then Tuesday comes. They open the app, bounce off Leviticus, close it, and quietly conclude the problem is them. Nobody reports that to you. It just shows up eleven months later as a person who still cannot find their way around the book they own three copies of.

Some Potential Solutions

Comprehension happens while you talk. Capability happens when they do.

Here are a few things I’m watching churches do to move the biblical needle in their church:

1. Sermon Series

Take one book of the Bible or one biblical character and stay there for six weeks. The book itself, not a topical run with verses attached. Teach the shape of it in week one, who wrote it, to whom, and why it exists, so people have somewhere to stand before you ask them to walk.

I’m a HUGE fan of practical application in preaching. Application, not information, fuels transformation. Yet, spending four weeks on a topic (e.g., relationships) can help people live more biblically. But it does very little to help them self-feed. We can just as effectively teach a book of or a character in the Bible and include as much application as a topical sermon series, while, at the same time, teaching people how to process the Bible.

This year alone I have preached four sermon series and written a few others for church clients on books and characters in the Bible. And the feedback has been clear: People love learning more about the Bible, not just topics.

2. The midweek room

You can take one night for one hour. Short teaching, tables, discussion. This is where the table format actually fits, and the cost is a room and a leader rather than a staff hire.

Practically, host a 4-week gathering on a Wednesday night to cover the book of Acts. Or, teach people how to read the Bible. The advantage of these moments is the combination of teaching and discussion.

3. Groups

Hand your groups the same book your series is walking through, one week behind. Same passage, different environment, different week. Repetition across environments is what turns exposure into capability.

Every one of those environments ends in application. A person who understands the book of Judges and changes nothing was entertained by history. Information is the on-ramp. Obedience is the point.

You could also consider teaching part of a chapter and having groups review and discuss the rest.

The Window Is Open Right Now

Curiosity usually has a shelf life, and this one is already ticking.

The president of the American Bible Society has framed the moment plainly. Churches carry a real responsibility to walk with new Bible readers as interpreters and companions rather than only as educators. There are 9 million more curious adults in this country than there were two years ago, and every one of them will get their questions answered by someone in the next twelve months.

If it is not your church, it will be a search bar. A chatbot. A podcast with excellent audio quality and zero accountability. And when one of those answers confuses them badly enough, most of them stop asking anybody anything.

That is the forcing moment. The people are already holding the book. The only open question is whether they learn to use it inside a community that loves them or alone at 11pm with a phone.

You do not have to become a seminary. You have to close the distance between owning a Bible and being able to open one, and that is a six-week decision rather than a five-year strategy.

They bought the book. Teach them how to open it.

Quotes to Share

• “You can teach the Bible every Sunday and still leave people unable to open it.”
• “People who talk about a passage develop a relationship with the passage. People who only listen develop a relationship with you.”
• “Comprehension happens while you talk. Capability happens when they do.”

Helping You Add More Intention To Your Mission,
Dr. Gavin Adams