Challenge 2:
Read the Classic Book Pilgrim’s Progress in Modern English
The second challenge is to spend one hour each week (that's only 8.5 minutes a day) reading John Bunyan's classic book Pilgrim's Progress in modern English.
In Pilgrim’s Progress a man will find a road map that outlines the basic path that every Christian follows from conversion to death. Spurgeon allegedly read this book every year. In fact, he called Pilgrim’s Progress ‘the Bible in another form.’ So it is: the substance of the Bible rewritten as the story of an individual Christian. In writing the book Bunyan did a miracle of cartography. He combined the lived experience of normal Christians with the unchanging truth of God’s word so that an itinerary of faith was published. Every Christian man needs a copy of this road map - not on his shelf - but in his heart.
Week 5
Assignment: Read 8.5 Minutes a Day
Week 6
Assignment: Read 8.5 Minutes a Day
Week 7
Assignment: Read 8.5 Minutes a Day
Louis L'Amour, the famous writer of Western stories, read over 100 books a year during the Great Depression while working odd jobs and having fistfights. How did he do it? He never wasted a spare minute on trivia or boredom. The same was true of Spurgeon (using time, not fistfights). According to Spurgeon's friends, his secret for getting so much done in the brief span of 57 years was that he was never idle. Spare minutes were collected so that they became hours, hours became days, and over a lifetime of work the spare change of time amounted to mammoth feats of service.
Men, I'm not asking you to become a pack-mule that never takes a break. The point is simply that all of us are throwing away at least 10 minutes a day that could be invested in reading a life-changing book.
Additional Coaching
Men Need Clarity about God’s Faithful Provision
Week 8
Assignment: Read 8.5 Minutes a Day
This is the last week of challenge 2. Don’t worry if you do not finish Pilgrim's Progress. Spiritual leaders are not made in months, but years, even decades. A successful outcome of this challenge will be, if at the end, you add reading Bunyan's classic to your list of 'must-dos' and return to finish the book once the decathlon has ended. The aim of the decathlon is not to graduate leaders, but to give men a taste of the kinds of disciplines that condition spiritual maturity over a much longer span of time.