Thinking Christian Bible Study Platform
Formation that goes deeper than information.
A spiritual formation ecosystem built on James Spencer’s Thinking Christian framework. Diagnostic. Bible study. Recalibration. For individuals and groups who are serious about mature, uncompromising faith.
The Problem
The church’s problem isn’t misinformation. It’s misformation.
Are you reading, listening, showing up — attending church, sitting in a small group — and still feeling like something is missing?
That feeling is telling you something true. We serve a God who can do abundantly more than we could ask or think, but we have absorbed stories that deny or diminish him. Those stories narrow our understanding of God, his creation, and what it means to live as residents of earth and citizens of heaven. Gradually, other commitments bracket Scripture out — not through rebellion, but through drift — until the Bible no longer has room to do what it does.
The result is stunted growth that feels like stagnation. Not because God isn’t at work, but because we have stopped letting his word challenge and transform us.
The Thinking Christian Bible Study Platform puts you back in serious contact with that word — and presses you to identify exactly where you have been settling for less than what Scripture offers.
The Platform
Reading Scripture expecting to change instead of staying the same.
The Thinking Christian Bible Study Platform is not a content library. It is a structured encounter with the text — one that asks not only what the Bible says but what it requires of you in the circumstances of your life.
Assessment
Where are you?
The assessment doesn’t simply ask what you believe. It asks you to think about who you are right now. Do your Christian convictions show up in your work, your relationships, your finances, your ambitions, and other aspects of your daily life? A guided self-reflection helps you identify the commitments and patterns of life that have been hindering you reflecting God and consider ways of removing those hindrances as you pursue Christ.
Targeted Learning
What does the text require?
Having completed the assessment, you will get recommendations about where to begin your study to shore up weak spots and reinforce your strengths. Through various AI interactions, downloadable guides, and audio/video content, you will be prompted to study God’s word ‘against yourself’ so that God’s word may challenge you to test God by trusting God.
Recalibration
What has changed?
Two additional assessment sessions per year that allow you to reconsider who you are at that moment compared to where you were previously. What has changed? What hasn’t? Where has Scripture been allowed to speak? Where are you still holding it at arm’s length?
The Thinking Christian assessments are self-reflection tools, not psychological evaluations or clinical assessments. All sessions are AI-guided. Nothing generated by the platform constitutes professional theological, pastoral, or psychological counsel.
Who It’s For
For Christians who know something is missing and are ready to find it.
You don’t have to be in crisis to use this platform. You have to be honest.
Honest that the distance between what you believe and how you live is larger than you’d like. Honest that the Bible has been occupying less space in how you see the world than it should. Honest that you are capable of more than the version of the Christian life you have settled into.
This platform is for the everyday Christian who is tired of stagnation and willing to be challenged. It is not for people looking for encouragement to stay the same.
The platform will work best for those who reflect on the questions being asked and answer as honestly as possible. The formation assessment will help guide your ongoing study of Scripture and point you to resources available from Thinking Christian and affiliated partners.
The Assessments
Choose where to begin.
Reflecting God’s Order
Where do your convictions actually live?
Christian formation is not primarily a knowledge problem. Most Christians know more than they live. Reflecting God’s Order is a guided conversation that surfaces the gap — where the commitments that should be governing your life have been displaced by rival patterns in how you use your time, your money, your work, and your relationships. It does not ask what you believe in theory. It asks what your actual life reveals about what you believe. The result is a permanent baseline report that identifies where God’s word needs room to speak and what formation looks like from where you are.
$9.99 · 30-day access
Begin Reflecting God’s OrderBiblical & Theological Literacy Assessment
Do you have the categories Scripture requires?
A Christian can be genuinely devout and still lack the conceptual architecture that makes Scripture intelligible in its full scope. The Biblical and Theological Literacy Assessment is not a theology exam. It is a diagnostic of how you read — whether you approach the text propositionally, devotionally, or theologically; whether you hold the load-bearing categories like covenant, kingdom, and the nature of the church; and whether those categories are operative in how you actually reason about your life. The result is a narrative report that names what is present, what is thin, and what the Spirit’s work appears to be pressing you toward.
$9.99 · 30-day access
Begin the Literacy AssessmentUseful to God
Are you positioned where God works?
D. L. Moody reached more people with the gospel than perhaps any Christian of his generation. R. A. Torrey, who knew him well, argued that Moody’s effectiveness had less to do with his gifts than with his posture — that he had positioned himself at the right angle to reflect God rather than to project himself. The Useful to God Assessment works through eight characteristics evident in Moody’s life — surrendered, studious, prayerful, humble, free from the love of money, passionate for the lost, undistracted, empowered by the Spirit — not as a checklist to complete but as a mirror. The report identifies where those characteristics are forming in you and where they are being blocked by the rival order you have absorbed.
$9.99 · 30-day access
Begin the Useful to God AssessmentDigital Discernment
Is the digital world forming you faster than the church is?
The church’s formation problem is not primarily misinformation. It is misformation — the shaping of habits, instincts, and ways of seeing that happens below the level of deliberate reflection, at a pace that bypasses the communal practices by which theological instincts are tested and corrected. The Digital Discernment Assessment draws on the framework developed in James Spencer’s forthcoming book (IVP, Fall 2026) to surface how your digital habitat is forming you. It moves through four phases: how you inhabit the digital world, how you exercise discernment using the Quad framework, how your digital practices map onto the seven sacred-social domains, and what the results reveal about the formation work your situation most requires.
$9.99 · 30-day access
Begin the Digital Discernment AssessmentWhat Is Forming You
What is quietly narrowing your vision?
Every life is being formed by something. The What Is Forming You assessment, paired with the primer On Earth as in Heaven, examines the observable facts of your life — what costs you something, what you protect, what you can and cannot see — to surface the forces that narrow vision below the level of doctrine and belief. A short quantitative intake and a guided conversation produce a personal report naming the shape of your narrowing, the conditions sustaining it, and the practices that open vision again.
$16.99 · One-time purchase
Learn moreFormation Library
Formation Guides
Substantive biblical resources organized around the domains that shape how you actually live.
On Earth as in Heaven
A primer on the forces that quietly narrow your vision of God and his creation — and the practices that open it again. Available on its own, or bundled with the What Is Forming You assessment.
$9.99 primer · $16.99 with the What Is Forming You assessment
Living Unmanly: Becoming Male Disciples of Jesus
A formation guide for men on what genuine discipleship requires — not cultural masculinity, but the character of Christ.
Annual subscribers · Included with platform access
Learning to Be Studious
A practical, theologically grounded introduction to reading Scripture with care and discipline. Building the habits that make formation possible.
Annual subscribers · Included with platform access
Surrender: A 31-Day Journey
Thirty-one days of honest examination and daily reorientation — releasing what you hold and practicing dependence on God.
31 days · Annual subscribers · Included with platform access
Pricing
Choose the plan that fits your formation.
Single Assessment
One-time · 30-day access
- —Complete the assessment you choose
- —Permanent baseline report
- —Matched formation guide on completion
- —10% off annual platform
Assessment Bundle
Most PopularOne-time · 60-day access
- —Reflecting God’s Order
- —Biblical & Theological Literacy Assessment
- —Permanent baseline reports for both
- —Matched formation guides on completion
- —10% off annual platform
Annual Platform
$94.00 platform access + $5.99 missional surcharge
The $5.99 missional surcharge funds scholarships and ministry training for those who cannot afford platform access.
- —One assessment: choose above
- —Recalibration (2x per year)
- —Unlimited Bible study sessions
- —Full formation guide library
- —Members-only podcast access
- —Progress tracking and comparison reports
- —Book offer (details coming soon)
Standalone Purchases
On Earth as in Heaven
One-time purchase
- —The primer on attention, formation, and the narrowing of vision
- —Downloadable PDF — yours to keep
What Is Forming You
One-time purchase
- —The primer, On Earth as in Heaven, included
- —The What Is Forming You assessment
- —Guided AI session and personal report
Already have an account? Sign in to access your assessments.
For Churches & Groups
Church Cohort Setup
Set up a shared cohort with 7 included member seats. Choose one assessment for your cohort — that is the assessment your group completes together this year. Includes recalibration, unlimited Bible study, and invite codes for your members. A second assessment requires a separate cohort account.
Additional member seats
Each seat gives access to the cohort’s chosen assessment, recalibration, Bible study, and formation guides. Cohort admins can add seats from the dashboard.
Common Questions
Where do I start?
Start with a single assessment. At $9.99 it gives you a complete diagnostic and a full report. If you want to go deeper, the bundle and annual platform build from there.
What is the difference between a single assessment and the bundle?
A single assessment gives you 30 days to complete one assessment of your choice. The bundle gives you 60 days to complete both the Reflecting God’s Order and the Biblical and Theological Literacy Assessment.
What does the annual platform add?
Annual access covers one assessment of your choice, recalibration twice per year, unlimited Bible study sessions, the full formation guide library, and members-only podcast access. Everything for the year at one price.
Do I get a discount if I start with a single assessment?
Yes. When you complete a purchased assessment, you receive a 10% discount code toward annual platform access.
What is a church cohort?
A cohort lets a pastor or ministry leader set up a shared group with member seats and one assessment chosen for the whole group. Set one up from the church cohort option, then add member seats from your cohort dashboard.
A Final Word
The Bible was never meant to leave you the same.
Scripture is the living word of a God who is present, active, and making claims on your life right now. The Thinking Christian Bible Study Platform exists to help you meet those claims — not by giving you more to know, but by pressing you into what you already know and have not yet lived.
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”