No Longer the Age of Bible Apps, Now the Age of Bible As Applied

12 Replies

A friend and I were talking about a project he and his company were working on and while it was great that they were working on it, I had to be direct and ask him, “why are you building another Bible applicaiton?” According to he and his team, having a Bible application would put them on equal footing with other companies in this space who have applications and have (apparently) made the successful transition from a PC-based product model to a mobile/web-based one.

I shook my head at his flawed logic. “You don’t run to where the puck is, you run to where it would be,” I told him (quoting Wayne Gretzky). The problem with their approach, and many within this mobile ministry (#mobmin) space who are looking for their innovative solution to take the religious world/church/tech world by storm, is that they keep looking to copying current products in order to make a dent or shift in perception. That’s just not how this works.

For this group, I asked why didn’t they go the route that other Bible applicaiton companies haven’t gone, but that very few secular companies would dare go: the Boston Globe/Boston responsive web, subscription web approach (several articles talked about this)? He looked at me with disdain, as he heard some about that project, but didn’t know how far reaching that it went. You see, their team is savy enough to build something like that, but their company isn’t visionary enough to figure out why that works.

Hence the title of this article: the age of bible applications is over; it is now the age of bible as applied in digital spaces.

Am I saying that there is no need for any company to create, recreate, or innovate on top of the paradigm of reading, searching, bookmarking, and collections with Bible apps? No. But, I am saying that if you are a content publisher who bases your content on any of those Bible app paradigms, then you are better off pushing your energies towards developing a product somewhere else besides “let start with a Bible app.”

Antoine: you aren’t even a developer, how can you say such things?

Easy actually. Go have a conversation with someone. Tell me, did you start in the Bible or was the conversation dipping in and out of the Bible at various points with other contexts as the backbone to the conversation? I’ll address a recent conversation from a coffeeshop. The pastor/missionary and I started talking because I asked about his wide-margin NASB that he was carrying. The conversation went into church history quickly from that, then into cultural perspectives of various regions of the USA. Would a Bible app have helped there, or an application that was able to search on topics related to church history which also referenced Bible verses, noted authors, theological paradigms, and denominational statements of faith that added context to the situation. Of course, innovation here would be turning on said app while in the conversation and as it “listened” it would pull a Google/Britiannica/Wikipedia/Wolfgram Alpha and search then display all of the relevant content streams, statistics, and opinions available online or in accessible scholarly collections. If you will a Shazamm for Biblical conversations.

It prbably makes sense why I can say that you can bend beyond Bible applications when I phrase the context like that right? But that’s called research and analysis, specifically, anlaysis of cultural behaviors of communication that rarely go into the development of these kinds of applications (this is how reports like Mobile Lens 2011 were framed). And that’s why we end up with a situation such as what I described with my friend at the start of this article. If you want your product(s) to be of earthly good, then you have to move beyond the age of simply offering just the text. Develop an app that engages the application of Biblical (religious) knowledge first, and then grounds the user in a growing (maturing) understanding of Scripture, church history, and culture as they grow in faith and knowledge.

Anyone want to bet on “Bible as Applied” being the space in which faith-based/religious apps show the most potential for growth in the coming years against simply offering the text in increasingly siloed services?

  • Interesting suggestion! My initial response is cautious, though. Who decides what grounding is “relevant” to the conversation? I suspect we’d find groups producing highly distinctive products with strong boundaries, to pressure users to read the Bible entirely from their one viewpoint. That might be interesting, but it could also be limiting. 

  • Tim Hutchings

    Interesting suggestion! My initial response is cautious, though. Who decides what grounding is “relevant” to the conversation? I suspect we’d find groups producing highly distinctive products with strong boundaries, to pressure users to read the Bible entirely from their one viewpoint. That might be interesting, but it could also be limiting. 

  • I think we already have that happening in spades on the print side (see any Barnes and Noble’s Bibles section for example). I’m not sure that you can have biblical literacy though without some of these bending, twisting, and remixing of content (the core of content) into references that make more sense for the author (initially) than the reader. That said, why not? Shouldn’t biblical literacy produce more activity that’s blblically affirming? If mobile/web ministy is effective, shouldn’t this be one of the key indicators of validity/success?

  • I think we already have that happening in spades on the print side (see any Barnes and Noble’s Bibles section for example). I’m not sure that you can have biblical literacy though without some of these bending, twisting, and remixing of content (the core of content) into references that make more sense for the author (initially) than the reader. That said, why not? Shouldn’t biblical literacy produce more activity that’s blblically affirming? If mobile/web ministy is effective, shouldn’t this be one of the key indicators of validity/success?

  • But who decides what is “biblically affirming”? I’d like to see resources that are open-ended, supporting people as they read the Bible and share what they’ve learned with friends. I currently benefit greatly from Facebook, blogs and Twitter, because they give me the chance to hear new ideas from people I wouldn’t have encountered at the particular churches I’ve been to. I would be reluctant to see apps close in on themselves, trying to generate an entirely controlled, self-contained learning space.

    You’re right, of course, that religious isolationism is nothing new! Perhaps it’s naive to hope for anything else online.

  • Tim Hutchings

    But who decides what is “biblically affirming”? I’d like to see resources that are open-ended, supporting people as they read the Bible and share what they’ve learned with friends. I currently benefit greatly from Facebook, blogs and Twitter, because they give me the chance to hear new ideas from people I wouldn’t have encountered at the particular churches I’ve been to. I would be reluctant to see apps close in on themselves, trying to generate an entirely controlled, self-contained learning space.

    You’re right, of course, that religious isolationism is nothing new! Perhaps it’s naive to hope for anything else online.

  • If everyone reads, everyone understands, and is able to explain their positions (whether or not they are received), then we have a grounding for biblical affirming. In such a case, the “who decides” needs to become “everyone.” And it has to come thru the living of the text in digital as well as non-digital spaces.

    Bible as digitally applied (eventually) = no isolation of faith, though unique in view/application

  • If everyone reads, everyone understands, and is able to explain their positions (whether or not they are received), then we have a grounding for biblical affirming. In such a case, the “who decides” needs to become “everyone.” And it has to come thru the living of the text in digital as well as non-digital spaces.

    Bible as digitally applied (eventually) = no isolation of faith, though unique in view/application

  • wezlo

    The premise is interesting – though I am leery of any tool that creates snippets of information and links it to other data when there isn’t a way to check if the link is appropriate or not.

  • wezlo

    The premise is interesting – though I am leery of any tool that creates snippets of information and links it to other data when there isn’t a way to check if the link is appropriate or not.

  • If pastor gets lery, then how do we teach teachers how to create people who consider their words/media before they come out (James 3 API on the digital world)? That would fall under alleviating fears, and be the kind of ground meant to live this on.

  • If pastor gets lery, then how do we teach teachers how to create people who consider their words/media before they come out (James 3 API on the digital world)? That would fall under alleviating fears, and be the kind of ground meant to live this on.