Craig Groschel, Co-Founder ; Senior Pastor, Life.Church, Oklahoma City shared recently that one of the core missions of his church is to eradicate bible poverty. To accomplish this Groschel’s church initially created YouVersion.com a website designed to give every person the opportunity to explore the Bible, no matter where they live or what language they prefer. Initially, the website had moderate success.
Then one day a colleague came to Groschel suggesting that Apple was coming out with a concept called an App and that perhaps the YouVersion Bible could gain wider distribution if it were reconfigured in the App format. As Groschel tells it, not knowing anything about Apps or the technology around this new concept, he found a 19-year old, part time staff member who offered to help adapt YouVersion.com to this new technology. When the first iPhone was introduced just over 11 years ago, the YouVersion bible app also went live. The first weekend, 83,000 people downloaded the app. Today over 1/3 of a billion people have downloaded the app. Needless to say, the 19-year old staffer quickly found a full-time job for himself. Grab your YouVersion bible app here
A few weeks ago, YouVersion introduced Bible Lens and App that has the capability of viewing a picture and selecting an appropriate, corresponding bible verse. Here are a couple of examples.
If you’re intrigued by this interesting use of technology, the Bible Lens app can be downloaded for free here