Forty percent of American adults didn’t read a single book in 2021. Among young men, the numbers are even more dire—leisure reading has plummeted 40% over the past two decades, with many spending hours daily on TikTok but unable to finish a paragraph without reaching for their phones.
This isn’t just a cultural curiosity. It’s a discipleship emergency.
The church is watching a generation of young men drift into what psychologists call “modern malaise”—a condition marked by shortened attention spans, emotional dysregulation, and a profound lack of purpose. The proposed solution gaining traction outside the church? The “reading as repair” movement, which suggests replacing algorithm-driven content with Homer, Dostoevsky, and sustained engagement with complex texts.
But as one pastor wisely noted: “Good literature can steady unmoored men—but for true renewal, they need to read Scripture.”
The Discipleship Gap Nobody’s Talking About
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: The American church has spent decades optimizing for attendance and entertainment while biblical literacy has collapsed. A 2022 Barna study found that only 37% of self-identified Christians read their Bible weekly. Another 40% say they read it occasionally—meaning less than once a month, if at all.
We’re discipling consumers, not readers. Spectators, not students. And the results are showing up in every corner of church life.
The same young men struggling to maintain attention spans long enough for meaningful work or relationships are the ones we’ve taught to expect 22-minute sermons with three bullet points and a closing story. We’ve trained them to consume Christian content like Netflix—passively, sporadically, on their terms. Is it any surprise they can’t sit with a text that demands sustained engagement?
“The Holy Scriptures are our letters from home.”
The early church fathers understood what we’ve forgotten: Scripture isn’t merely information to consume—it’s nourishment to receive, a conversation to enter, a relationship to cultivate. Augustine called the Bible “our letters from home” because he recognized that in its pages, God speaks directly to his people. This isn’t passive consumption. This is communion.
Why Reading Matters for Multiplication
2 Timothy 2:2 remains our operating verse: “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” Four generations of discipleship. But here’s what we often miss: Paul expected Timothy to be a reader.
In Paul’s day, discipleship happened through extended engagement with texts—letters read aloud in community, Torah studied in synagogues, the apostolic teaching preserved and passed on through written word. The expectation was clear: disciples would be people who handled the word with skill, who could “rightly divide” Scripture, who could teach others because they themselves had been taught.
This is why biblical literacy isn’t optional for multiplication. You cannot disciple what you do not know. You cannot teach what you have not studied. And you cannot model a life shaped by Scripture if you aren’t regularly shaped by Scripture yourself.
The Practical Path Forward
John Piper recently offered five practices to escape “dry devotions”—but the first step is acknowledging that many of our young men don’t have devotions at all. They have Instagram. They have fantasy football. They have endless scrolling that leaves them simultaneously overstimulated and spiritually empty.
The church must become a place that forms readers. Not just consumers of Christian content, but disciplined students of the Word. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
1. Reading communities that prioritize Scripture
Instead of yet another book club reading the latest Christian bestseller, what if we formed reading groups that worked through whole books of the Bible together? Not study groups with fill-in-the-blank workbooks—reading groups where men learn to sit with extended passages, ask questions of the text, and wrestle with meaning.
2. Modeling sustained engagement
Older men, this is on us. When was the last time a younger man saw you with an open Bible? Not a Bible app on your phone—an actual Bible, marked up, worn, clearly used? We teach what we model. If we want readers, we must be readers.
“The Bible is the vessel wherein the waters of salvation are contained.”
3. Expecting biblical literacy
Spurgeon called Scripture “the vessel wherein the waters of salvation are contained.” Yet we’ve treated it like a reference book to consult rather than a life to inhabit. What would change if we simply expected believers to know their Bibles? If our small groups assumed basic biblical literacy and built from there?
4. Connecting reading to mission
The persecuted church has something to teach us here. In places where Christianity is dangerous, believers treasure Scripture because they know their survival—spiritual and sometimes physical—depends on it. The Iranian church experiencing revival right now? They’re reading. The Syrian pastors staying amid violence? They’re reading. They don’t need apps with daily verse notifications because the Word is their life.
The Multiplication Imperative
Here’s the bottom line: You cannot multiply what you do not have. If we want disciple-making movements, we need disciples who know their Bibles. If we want four generations of faithful men teaching others, we need first-generation men who have been taught.
The reading crisis among young men isn’t just a cultural problem to bemoan. It’s a discipleship opportunity to seize. While the world offers Homer and Dostoevsky as solutions to modern malaise, we have something better—the living Word that transforms not just attention spans but eternal destinies.
But it starts with us. With our own reading habits. With our willingness to prioritize Scripture over scroll. With our commitment to model, expect, and cultivate biblical literacy in the men we’re called to disciple.
The question isn’t whether reading can fix young men. The question is whether we’ll take seriously the discipleship crisis biblical illiteracy has created—and whether we’ll do something about it this week.
This article references research from Christianity Today on reading and young men, Barna’s State of the Bible 2022, and John Piper’s counsel on devotions.
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