By Joash Bermejo
With the tremendous changes in technology, new media continuously moves in an unprecedented growth. The presence of new media and its wide audience resulted in the convergence of the new media and the three traditional media platforms – the Television, Radio and Print. Who can ever think that they can now watch their favorite TV shows in the internet, listen to their favorite radio station and read newspaper articles via online?
But it doesn’t stop there; the available advancement in technology also helps in the different church works, most importantly in the propagation of God’s words and gives light among the various races in the world.
Bobby Gruenewald, founder of YouVersion believes that with the past generations, access of the people have on the bible continuously becoming limited and fewer people are engaging in reading the scriptures.
This inspired Bobby and his team called “Digerati” to introduce the YouVersion, a technological development that take the available technology, particularly the mobile technology to help the people be engage in the bible and make the bible part of their daily lives.
“The real emphasis that we have is really focus on simply trying to make it very easy to people to read and engage the bible”, Bobby said.
First introduced as merely as a website on 2007, YouVersion.com’s result were good but not that great. And with the birth of the Smartphones, this inspired Bobby and his team to shift on YouVersion’s mobile version and got into the App Store with app title “The Bible” on 2008.
Three days after it got into the App Store, “The Bible” app have gained almost 83,000 downloads, and now 72 million people installed the app on their smartphones on its four years since it was first introduced.
Bible app users encompass different races and ages. With the large number of people installed the Bible app on their Smartphones, for Bobby this signifies that God is really moving on this “Digital mission”.
The Bible App mainly aims to provide people free access to scriptures that is available in almost 213 languages including our own Filipino language, and in almost 412 bible versions. This further helps people to have on-going and daily engagement with the bible.
Using the mobile device installed with the Bible App people can now use the bible anytime and anywhere they are, something that could help each to read the bible more.
Bible App is just not merely featuring the different books of the scriptures, it also contains features like of reading plans that could help someone keep track on his/her spiritual progress. Also using the Bible App it will be easy for its users to share scriptures and bible passages to other people using the Social Networking Sites like of Twitter and Facebook.
“…it makes easy for your friends to discover scriptures and began to discover the Bible App and make it part of their life as well”, he added.
Bobby Gruenewald and his friends from LifeChurch.tv visited the Philippines last December 2012 to meet with various Christian churches in the country, and one of it is the Jesus Is Lord Church Worldwide, the country’s biggest Christian Church.
With their visit in the country, Bobby Gruenewald and his team sealed a partnership with JIL through providing a bible reading plan in 2013 which will be called Bro. Eddie Ministries Bible – Reading Plan.
As we faced the New Year, JIL Church Worldwide offered to you the Bro. Eddie Ministries Bible – Reading Plan, a great way to start our year right. Everyone can now access the Bro. Eddie Ministries Bible – Reading Plan through YouVersion.com’s Bible App.
Having Bro. Eddie Ministries Bible – Reading Plan in your Smartphones was just easy, it only take for a few steps. First, install the application Bible app in your phone, select “Plans”, then on Language select “Filipino”. Then on Categories select “Bago” or “New”, and go to Bro. Eddie Ministries Bible – Reading Plan.
From there, you can now start your daily devotional plans using the Bro. Eddie Ministries Bible – Reading Plan.
