For years, conversations about the decline of biblical literacy and waning church attendance have dominated discussions among faith leaders — but Tara-Leigh Cobble’s podcast ”The Bible Recap” has transformed the way people engage with Scripture, proving that hunger for the Word of God is far from dead.
“The Bible Recap” podcast has consistently ranked at the top of Apple’s charts — at times surpassing even cultural juggernaut Joe Rogan’s podcast — drawing millions of listeners each month. Her book series, study guides and children’s materials are consistently among Amazon’s top 100 books. As of December 2024, sales of The Bible Recap books had nearly doubled compared to the previous year.
“It has blown me away,” Cobble told The Christian Post. “This is a tool that has helped individuals, churches, people, come closer to the Lord, and the reason it’s selling well is because those people won’t stop talking about it. They will not stop talking about how God has used it in their lives and in their hearts. Marriages have been transformed. People have turned back from suicide. Children have come to Christ.
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“It’s just incredible what the Lord is doing through this and in individual hearts and lives,” she added. “When our hearts and lives are transformed, we don’t shut up about it. We just keep talking, and we want to tell everybody. And so, the people that are hearing — it’s whetting their appetite. What I see happening is an awakening within the Church that is piquing the curiosity outside the Church.”
The podcaster revealed she recently received an email from a Jewish woman who came to Christ through “The Bible Recap.” “She wanted to start [the podast] and see what I had to say about the Old Testament. She kept going, and she met Jesus. The Lord is using this tool in the Church to spark a fire outside the Church,” she said.
Cobble shared how her own journey with Scripture was far from effortless. Despite growing up in the church, she struggled to read through the Bible until a pastor friend guided her through it, answering questions along the way.
After completing it on her own multiple times, she realized something crucial: people weren’t failing to read the Bible because of a lack of desire or time; it was a comprehension problem.
“I found that when I tried to encourage other people to do it, they would have the same thing happen to them as happened to me,” she explained. “The one time that it worked was the time I helped a girl personally, answering her questions along the way. That’s what sparked ‘The Bible Recap.’ I wanted to help remove barriers for people who wanted to read, understand and love God’s Word.”
“The Bible Recap” launched in January 2019, and just 17 days later, Cobble started receiving emails from publishers eager to turn the content into a book. Though she was working 100-hour weeks to complete the podcast, she recognized the demand and released The Bible Recap book in 2020. The response, she said, was overwhelming.
“We found that people who had done the podcast and then picked up the book wanted more resources,” she said. “They wanted a study guide, a discussion guide — ways to deepen their understanding. Then we started hearing from parents who told us, ‘My kid listens to ‘The Bible Recap’ with me every day.’ That’s when we knew we needed a children’s line.”
Today, Cobble and her team have created Bible study materials covering eight books of the Bible, with plans to publish 40 by 2033. Additionally, The Bible Recap Kids’ Devotional has surged in popularity, ranking just outside Amazon’s top 100.
The success of the Bible-themed materials flies in the face of conventional wisdom that biblical literacy is fading. “I led a Bible study of about 1,200 women, and my prayer was that a quarter of them would do ‘The Bible Recap’ with me,” Cobble recalled. “My prayer was that 300 people would read the Bible with me.”
The demand for “The Bible Recap” suggests a growing interest in Scripture, particularly among younger generations: “Kids are reading through the Bible at age five and will have read it 20-plus times by adulthood if they keep going,” she said.
Cobble said she has also observed a shift in how people consume the Bible. “A lot of the younger viewers prefer YouTube, and so that has been an outlet for them,” she noted.
More significantly, she challenged the notion that reading Scripture must be done with one’s eyes.
“I primarily read the Bible with my ears; I listen to the Bible,” she said. “For the bulk of human history, the way people consumed Scripture was by hearing it. There was one copy of the scrolls in the whole synagogue, not everyone could read. The printing press hadn’t been invented. People were poor, and so, they couldn’t afford books, even when they did exist. So for much of human history, Scripture has been taken in through our ears.”
That shift has had a measurable impact. In 2024 alone, “The Bible Recap” plan on the YouVersion Bible app saw 3.9 million users, many of whom listened to the Bible rather than reading it.
“A lot of us are auditory learners, and this is a really helpful tool now that we have technology like the Bible app, the Dwell Bible app and lots of other places where you can have the Bible read to you instead of reading it with your eyes,” she said.
Another unexpected consequence of “The Bible Recap” has been its role in reconnecting people with the church, she said.
“People who are de-churched, who are struggling in any way with the capital C Church, or their particularly lower case c church, this is a soft place for them to land,” she said. “What better place for them to land than in Scripture? Because if they stick with it, they’re going to see how much God values the Church. They’re going to see what the Church should look like. They’re going to see just God’s vision for that and how the Church has always been really messy.”
“Everybody’s flawed, but it helps give us a little bit of an understanding of how to lean in amidst the broken people of the Church, of which I am one and you are one, and they are one. There is a space where this is being used as a tool to pull people back into the Church.”
While many faith-based initiatives focus on application-based teaching, Cobble said she aims to keep her approach simple.
“‘The Bible Recap’ is not a self-help thing,” she stressed. “The Bible is not self-help. The Bible is, ‘You are helpless and you need a Savior.’ So what we do in ‘The Bible Recap is,’ we don’t end with an application point. We don’t end with, ‘How are you going to go and be a better Christian? How are you going to get your life together and pull yourself up by your bootstraps?’
“We end every day with what we call the ‘God shot,’ the snapshot of God and His character. We’re looking for, ‘What does He love? What does He hate? What motivates Him to do what He does? Every day, we end with pointing to the joy of knowing the person of God.”
For those who find the idea of reading the entire Bible intimidating, Cobble offered encouragement. “It is overwhelming,” she acknowledged, “but it’s on average, about 12 minutes of reading per day. And if you’re a slow reader … or if you can’t read, or if you are dyslexic, or have any other learning challenge, you can have it read to you.”
Most importantly, she emphasized grace. “You’re going to do this imperfectly. … It’s OK to miss a day, just don’t miss two days. Pick up, lean back in and start where you left off. Every day that you’re in God’s Word, you’re right on time.”
As “The Bible Recap” continues to grow, Cobble said she’s focused on her singular mission: helping people know and love God’s Word.
“I’m going to be reading the Word of God every day till I’m in the ground,” she said. “If I already know it all, that’s going to be boring. But if there’s still more for me to learn about God and discover about who He is, it’s going to be a continual treasure hunt for me, and I love it. I love it when I learn something new.
“For me, this has been really humbling and encouraging, and just has drawn me closer to the Lord through it all in ways that bring me more and more joy,” she added. “We end every day with, ‘He’s where the joy is.’ My joy has increased every year, every day that I’m in the Word. Learning, drawing near to Him — you can’t help but be transformed by that.”
Leah M. Klett is a reporter for The Christian Post. She can be reached at: leah.klett@christianpost.com
