The Church of God – South Texas (COG-ST) some time ago put up a page on their website for the Current Bible Reading program that Jack Hendren is promoting for Bible study.
There aren’t any guidelines or commentary that I am aware of, but some people on Facebook often discuss the various readings for the day when they feel the desire to do so. It is also my understanding that some local groups have chosen to go through the readings together as well, but I don’t know any specifics. If you are part of such a group, please feel free to comment here about your experience.
If you don’t recall, COG-ST was one of the first groups to break away from UCG in recent months and is now considered to be a part of the larger Church of God, a Worldwide Association (COGWA).
How sad it's been to see what happened to UCG's Bible Reading Program.
Launched in February 2002 as a three-year study of the Bible, it's been suspended for years — and still one book short (Ecclesiastes) of finishing the Old Testament. NOTHING yet on the New Testament!
Open question: what does this say about UCG as a whole?
"Open question: what does this say about UCG as a whole?"
I don't think it says anything about UCG as a whole. Perhaps it says something about the people who suspended it, but even that is dependent on what projects they took on in lieu of finishing the bible reading program and where you rate the importance of those projects.
As a side note, while I also think that it's sad, I personally haven't even made use of what they have for the OT.
At the time of the rollout of the Bible Reading Program, there was a lot of fanfare about the church studying the same thing at the same time. It sounded like a great idea to me. There was the complication, though, that the program originally started at CGCF. So, in reality, there were 2 tiers of readers.
However, I was still enthusiastic about the idea. As time went on, I really was somewhat dismayed at the fact that some people did not seem to have time for it at all, yet they could talk about articles in the Good News Magazine or United News. I'll admit I didn't keep up on it all, but I did stay up on the BRP and let the other slip. Why? Because the Bible is the most important book we can read.
Granted, for all I know, they were busy looking up every Scripture in the Good News as they read it. If that's the case, then good for them. However, it seems to me that many of the people who went along with the changes in WCG in the 1990s did so because they were busy reading booklets and magazines instead of their Bibles!
HWA told people to blow the dust of their Bibles. That's a piece of timeless advice.
I personally know the individual who did the majority of the work on the BRP. He's been put on a lot of other writing projects (such as the literature updates) and the BRP did get sidelined until those were finished. There was nothing malicious intended on that, it was just a matter of their staffing situation and what projects they wanted to give a priority. It has not been forgotten about.
I also know that the BRP, when it was actively running, was given a huge amount of attention and thought. A great deal of research went into it, which did cause some delays at times. If I remember correctly, Ecclesiastes was going to be a massive undertaking in writing and research (to the same extent Song of Solomon, if I remember correctly, was more than they had expected it to be)
As an aside, I discovered just a couple weeks ago that they've taken the material from the BRP and edited in a way to have a manageable Bible Commentary. As far as I am aware, UCG did not publicize this fact widely, but if you do any searches in the side bar for a verse, you will find Bible Commentary results for OT books (NT is still in the works). Though still nothing for Ecclesiastes on that one yet.
Everyone should beware of ONLY reading articles wrote by humans even if they do look up the verses quoted, the person writing the article is giving their slant on it, and it is only pure laziness and getting one's priorities straight that one does that.
God did not mean for the Bible to be only understood by a few people, he speaks through those words without having a group of humans telling us their slant.