By Laura BennettThursday 19 Dec 2024Hope AfternoonsFaithReading Time: 4 minutes
Where once “reading the Bible” meant pulling out a thick book of various weight and dimensions – depending how spiritual you thought leather-binding and sticky notes made you – since 2008, it’s been as simple as opening the YouVersion Bible app.
Key points
- The YouVersion vision is ‘God’s word to everyone, everywhere, everyday’.
- Now up to 800million downloads and counting, the Bible App remains a free resource for people to read the Bible.
- This year in Australia, use of the prayer feature – where you can share requests and pray for others – jumped by 62 percent.
Developed by Bobby Gruenwald and Life Church in Oklahoma, U.S.A, the Bible App was something Bobby worked on to make his own reading of the Bible easier using newer technologies available.
At the time, Bobby recalled to the Christian Broadcast Network, “Steve Jobs [announced] it was going to be possible to develop apps for the iPhone and create some brand-new thing called an app store”.
Bobby had no idea what an app was, and recruited a 19-year-old on his team to build the Bible App.
“We’re stewarding this on behalf of the global church,” Bobby told Hope 103.2.
“Our vision is: ‘God’s word to everyone, everywhere, everyday’.
“It’s a big vision [which] means we’re not going to stop, we’re going to keep going.”
The YouVersion vision is ‘God’s word to everyone, everywhere, everyday’.
Now up to 800million downloads and counting, the Bible App remains a free resource for people to read the Bible, follow study plans, pray and chat and for churches to share sermon notes, facilitate “life groups” and provide pathways for new Christians.
Lead pastors of Elevation Church Australia, Miles and Bonnie Paludan, have been “utilising YouVersion across the church” and see it as invaluable.
“When I’m bringing the message on Sunday, people can follow along,” Miles said.
“They can see all the notes that I’ve prepared, all the scriptures, all the points [and] we can do our own reading plans as a church.”
“For pastoral care, I will join a plan with somebody that I know will help them going through hard time,” Bonnie said.
Now up to 800million downloads and counting, the Bible App remains a free resource for people to read the Bible.
“We’ve got a ‘New Christians’ plan [and] can say, ‘here’s a Bible’ straight away – we just love that.”
This year in Australia, use of the prayer feature – where you can share requests and pray for others – jumped by 62 percent. The words “love, “prayer” and “peace” were among our top search terms and, following a global trend, Philippians 4:6 was one of our most engaged-with scriptures.
The verse reads: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God”.
“When you look around the world,” Bobby said.
“Where a lot of people are at odds with their neighbour or there’s some polarisation, it’s natural for people to look for peace in those types of circumstances [and] it’s encouraging they’re turning to God’s word to find that.
This year in Australia, use of the prayer feature jumped by 62 percent.
“Prayer is obviously a big feature of that verse as well, so it’s not a surprise that [prayer and peace] are among our top search terms.”
Asked if the increased interest in the Bible and spiritual practises seen within the app aligns with broader social interest in faith, Bobby thinks it indicates the rising value people have for truth and credibility.
“We see this trend-line in our culture [where] we’re seeing all this content generated by A.I.,” Bobby said.
“One of the consequences of that is the development of a natural skepticism about how true the content is that we’re consuming.
“We’re almost bringing up a culture that’s taught to not believe what they see.
“In contrast to that you have the Bible.
“The Bible has been carefully translated and moved form generation to generation for thousands of years.
“You can go back to the earliest source documents that we have available, and look at the Bible text you have today, and realise it’s consistent.
“As a source of truth in a society and culture that’s hungry for truth [the] Bible becomes a key answer to that, and something people can rely on when they’re looking for things that are real.
“I think the Bible’s built for this moment that we’re in.”
Feature image: Photo by CanvaPro