(Michelle Lesley) First, Michelle explains her criteria for doing research on authors, pastors, and Bible teachers that she receives a lot of questions about asking if she recommends them. Not long ago a number of readers asked about Tara-Leigh Cobble, host of The Bible Recap, a daily podcast, The God Shot, a daily radio show, as well as D Group. Here’s Michelle’s recommendation (scroll down until you see the article).
Tara-Leigh Cobble, or “TLC” as she likes to be called, “began her ministry as a singer-songwriter, performing her own songs and leading worship around the globe. After her first book was published, she added speaking to her repertoire. As a musician, writer and speaker, she spent more than a decade touring internationally before creating D-Groups and finding a home and community for herself in Dallas, Texas.”
More from Tara-Leigh’s bio: “I started D-Group (Discipleship Group) [with] a handful of college students in 2009 and it has grown into 250+ groups around the world…I love to speak to audiences about God and His Word, and I’ve written a few books with an aim to point others toward Him through my story as well as their own. I also write and host a daily podcast called The Bible Recap, which aims to keep people connected to reading the Bible when they’re tempted to quit for lack of understanding, as well as a daily radio show called The God Shot.”
In late 2021 / early 2022, requests started flooding in for me to review Tara-Leigh, mainly due to the fact that many were preparing to begin a “read through the Bible in a year” plan in January. They wanted to know if the suddenly popular program, The Bible Recap (TBR) – Tara-Leigh’s brief daily podcast “recapping” each day’s reading in a one-year chronological reading plan – was doctrinally sound and whether or not they should use it. To that end, I began listening to TBR and researching it, Tara-Leigh, and D-Group.
The Bible Recap (TBR)
I listened to about two dozen of the first 60 episodes of the “year 4” TBR season, making notes along the way. In each 5-10 minute episode, Tara-Leigh briefly summarizes that day’s reading and adds a few comments, ending with a “God Shot” – a point from the reading that stood out most to her, personally.
For the most part, I didn’t hear much that was biblically problematic in the TBR episodes I listened to. But someone spending eight minutes basically reiterating the primary facts from a passage of Scripture and getting it mostly right isn’t an automatic indicator that she’s doctrinally sound. False teachers can do that. Atheists can do that. Perfectly doctrinally sound pastors and teachers can do that. People everywhere on the spectrum between those two extremes can do that.
There were several times I thought that the way Tara-Leigh worded something wasn’t necessarily wrong, but also wasn’t as clear or precise as it should have been, and that people who were new to reading the Bible (a significant portion of her target audience) could have easily misunderstood. I didn’t make any notes on those instances because they didn’t rise to the level of false doctrine, and we’ve all had times when we could have worded something better.
I did make some notes on several other points. Here are just a few:
- Day 002 episode: “We don’t want to scream where Scripture whispers.“ An unfortunate choice of words, or was she echoing the sentiment from J.D. Greear – “We ought to whisper about what the Bible whispers about and we ought to shout about what it shouts about.” – that Southern Baptists in the know are all too familiar with? (TBR does include resources from Greear.)
“God let Noah know that this was only the beginning of their relationship.“ (Referring to Genesis 6:18). This is probably just a poor choice of words meant to indicate that this was the beginning of the Noahic covenant, or that God was reassuring Noah that he wasn’t going to die, but this is technically incorrect. Noah already had a relationship with God. That’s indicated by the fact that God had a conversation with Noah in 6:13-22, and it’s also why God found Noah to be the only righteous person on earth.
- Day 003 episode: After the flood, the earth was not “muddy and gross“ as Tara-Leigh describes it. Genesis 8:13-14 is clear that the land dried up completely. Furthermore, in the flood, God re-created the earth. It may not have had the holy perfection of Eden since this was post-Fall, but the God who deemed His Creation “good” in Genesis 1 didn’t re-create a chaotic and disheveled world that looked like a natural disaster had just hit it, either.
CRN has compiled a list of false teachers and several other professing Christians we’ve warned you about over the years. The list also contains those we must keep an eye on plus movements, organizations and “frauds, phonies and money-grubbing religious quacks” to mark and avoid as per Romans 16:17-18 such as those mentioned in the article.