For many people, YouVersion’s Bible App is part of everyday life. And people who aren’t yet Christians download it for all sorts of reasons, perhaps they want a Bible passage for a wedding, are curious about Christianity, or simply want to understand what the Bible says.
“YouVersion has recorded 8.5 million installs in Australia, with a new one every 48 seconds, and Australia now ranks 15th in the world for daily Bible use,” explains Andrew Lingley from YouVersion. “There might be people in your community who are already asking questions, already opening Scripture, and simply haven’t found your church yet.”
So YouVersion offers free Church Pages, and most churches already have one waiting to be claimed, making the church more discoverable to people searching for churches nearby. Pages can include service times and other information that can help people take that first step into the church building. In Australia, YouVersion already works with more than 5,500 churches, ministries and content creators.
The Bible App is what connected Ethan, a young dad in Melbourne, to Scripture and a church. Ethan was a committed atheist, then one day he found an iPhone left on a seat at a restaurant. He took it home and kept it plugged in so whoever was looking for it could find it. For two weeks the phone sat charging on the kitchen bench and every morning a Verse of the Day notification from the Bible App appeared. Ethan found himself going back to that phone every single day to read the Verse of the Day. Eventually, curiosity got the better of him, and he searched for “Bible App” in the App Store, downloaded it, and stayed up all night reading the Gospel of John.
He then used the app’s church finder, which pointed him to a church a kilometre from his house, one he’d driven past hundreds of times. In time, Ethan, his wife and their daughters all committed their lives to Christ and were baptised together.
“I lived 27 years without Jesus. So I decided I’m going to give Jesus a try,” Ethan says. “The Bible App got me to the door of the church… and the pastor got me into the community.”
“Are there people in your community already opening the Bible on their phones?” asks Andrew, “and could your church help them take the next step towards Jesus and into Christian community?”
The Bible App can also help churches engage with the people already in their churches and encourage them to develop a deeper, consistent rhythm of engaging with Scripture. Once a Church Page is set up, people can choose to set the church as ‘My Church’ and stay connected throughout the week. Churches can recommend Bible reading plans, share posts and announcements, create events, and encourage their congregation to engage with Scripture together. Leaders can also see anonymous, aggregated insights about what plans and passages are connecting with their church.
Greenhouse Church at Long Jetty has been using the YouVersion app for four years. They started out exploring communal Bible reading plans, where they would invite their church to a group and do a plan together, reading the same thing at the same time and interacting with each other’s comments. Greenhouse has had seasons where they’ve done longer plans, like reading the whole Bible in a year, and other times where they would do shorter, bite-sized plans.
More recently, Greenhouse Church has started writing their own Bible reading plans.
“We were finding a lot of people come to faith with little church background,” explains Benj Gould, Pastor at Greenhouse, “they do Alpha and get baptised, but then what?”
So, they created a 6-month ‘Modern Catechism’ course, where they explore key church doctrines together, and do a Bible reading plan alongside it. They are currently running their first cohort of 10-11 people, all of whom have been baptised in the past two years.
“We catch up every fortnight, and the discussion rarely goes to the informational pdfs we created on the topic. Instead, the discussion almost always goes to the Bible reading plan,” reflects Benj, “it goes to show, we can write a whole bunch of nice words, but it’s reading the Bible every day that has been the most formative stuff for that group.”
Next, Benj hopes to build out a lectionary that aligns with their church calendar and helps their people have a steady diet of Scripture over the long haul, including seasons of longer, chapter-a-day, readings and seasons that are more meditative with shorter passages. With the assistance of modern technology, Benj finds it straightforward and achievable to take a sermon series and create a Bible reading plan to go alongside it.
“We want to connect as many people into a local church as possible and give pastors and church leaders resources and tools to disciple their people to engage with God’s Word every day and reach their local community,” summarises Andrew.
This November, churches can also join Global Bible Month and its 30-Day Bible Challenge, a simple invitation to spend time in the Bible every day. Last year, Australians earned more badges for daily Bible engagement than any other country during Global Bible Month. Find out more at globalbiblemonth.com
For churches that haven’t explored YouVersion yet, the invitation is to simply claim your Church Page and see what is already happening. If you want help exploring what this could look like for your church, you can connect with Andrew at andrew.lingley@youversion.com or drop in a time to meet with him HERE.
