60 Million Installs

60 million app installs
    We now know of 2,500 apps built with Scripture App Builder, and 60 million apps downloaded. This includes hundreds of apps published and promoted by partner organizations such as Faith Comes By Hearing, Biblica, IBT, Bible League, Bibles International, Love Fellowship, Kalaam Media, Wycliffe, and a few Bible Societies.
    This is really encouraging news, for which we thank the Lord… but of course, a downloaded app that hardly gets opened is as useful as a Bible gathering dust on a shelf – so let’s pray for lots of digital Bible engagement!

Progressive Web App … Ready!

    This has been an extremely busy year working on Scripture App Builder. Chris and his team have been working on the new Progressive Web App (PWA) template for two years. They released the new PWA in SAB 11.2 in March of 2024! However, there were still many missing features. This past summer, they had hoped for 1 or 2 interns to help them with the work. God blessed them with 6 interns to work on implementing these features. One of the interns was Mikayla, our daughter, who is studying Coding: App Development. It was such a joy for Chris to work with her this summer. Thank you for your continuing prayers for our team.

Divine Sovereignty: The Fuel of Death Defying Missions

    While recently talking with a potential partner, Chris was asked: “Why did you get involved in missions?” He described the different stepping stones in our journey to missions. One that stuck out this time was a quote from a message by David Platt at Together for the Gospel 2012. In the middle of the message (at 18:09), David Platt said:

God involves us in His mission 
not because He needs us 
but because He loves us and, in His mercy, 
He has invited us to be involved in His sovereign design
for the spread of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. 

    Thank you, Lord, that you love us and invite us to participate in what you are doing to accomplish the spread of the Gospel to the ends of the earth. Thank you, Lord, that technology can be used to speed the translation and distribution of your living Word to the unreached people of the world.

AI Assistant for Scripture Engagement?

   It’s not enough to translate the Bible; it’s not enough to distribute the Bible. Our desire is to see real Scripture Engagementpeople encountering God’s Word in life-changing ways
    Scripture App Builder (SAB) is a tool for Bible translators and language workers to provide Scripture in a format that best meets the needs of the community and helps them engage with the Scripture. One of the challenges for new believers is how can they study the Bible and do that in community?
    We have introduced an EXPERIMENTAL feature in SAB 12.0 which allows the person building the app to enable an AI Assistant by providing some predefined tasks that the end user can perform on a whole chapter or selected verses. Here are some example tasks:

  • “Give me some Bible study questions”
  • “Share some devotional thoughts”
  • “Suggest ways to apply this to my life”
  • “Explain some key Greek or Hebrew words”
  • “Give me an outline of a talk”
  • “Write a poem”
  • “Show me the main points and structure of this passage”
  • “Tell me about the cultural, historical and geographical context”
  • “Show how this passage fits into the message of the book”

     When the user selects one of these tasks, the app will connect to a configured AI provider. It tells the AI the role it should play and the format of the responses it is looking for: “You are a helpful Christian assistant who believes in the reliability of the Bible, the importance of following Jesus as Saviour and Lord…” It then asks the AI service a question such as “Look at Mark chapter 8 in the Bible and write six discovery-style study questions which can be used in a participatory Bible study group.” The app writes the streamed response to the screen with a disclaimer at the end stating that the answer was generated by an AI assistant and to use its responses with discernment.
    What do you think? Would you like to try this out yourself? Contact Chris, and he will get you access to a beta of an app.

Progressive Web App … Almost Ready

    This year, Chris, his colleague David, and a team of students have been busy developing a new output format from Scripture App Builder which will expand the reach of Bible apps. This new format is a Progressive Web App (PWA) which is a website that can be used in a web browser or downloaded to a device and used when not connected to the Internet.
    We mentioned a few posts ago that we would have 3 new interns from Liberty University this summer. They were joined by one of the students from Gordon College who worked on it over the 2022-2023 school year. We made a tremendous amount of progress and it is almost ready to be released. We plan to release it early next year as a preview. We know that there will be features that we missed since every feature in SAB (so many!) had to be re-implemented for the web. We will work with end users to prioritize what is left to be done. Thank you for your prayers for our team this past year.

Language Technology Webinar

    Some of our staff members in the Language Technology department hosted a webinar recently to share some of the work we are involved with, showcasing some important developments in the Bible translation space. Please watch the recording to learn more about what Chris and his colleagues in Language Technology are doing.

50 Million App Installs

    It is encouraging to see people reading the Bible and many organizations using SAB to create apps. We intentionally do not gather analytics about its use to protect those who are creating resources for communities in sensitive areas. Below, you can see information about those we know about. Thank you for partnering with us to help make this happen!

New Scripture Engagement Features

   It’s not enough to translate the Bible; it’s not enough to distribute the Bible. Our desire is to see real Scripture Engagementpeople encountering God’s Word in life-changing ways
    Scripture App Builder (SAB) is a tool for Bible translators and language workers to provide Scripture in a format that best meets the needs of the community and helps them engage with the Scripture. For many, literacy is challenging or non-existent, so listening to Scripture is very important. Some people in the community primarily watch videos, so the Jesus FilmGospel Films, or their own films can be streamed from the app.
    For several years, reading plans have been a highly requested feature. SAB 11.1 was released last week and allows the person creating the app to add reading plans. They can select from pre-created plans included in SAB (like Proverbs in 31 days or Mark in 16 days), plans shared by the community (e.g. Biblica is sharing a 365-day plan of verses from Old Testament, New Testament, and Psalms/Proverbs every day), or create their own.
    Another new feature allows the person creating the app to include web radio (internet radio) stations in the app. Some of these stations can be found at https://streamurl.link including stations by long time ministry Trans World Radio.

Progressive Web App

    This year, Chris, his colleague David, and a team of students have been busy developing a new output format from Scripture App Builder which will expand the reach of Bible apps. This new format is a Progressive Web App (PWA) which is a website that can be used in a web browser or downloaded to a device and used when not connected to the Internet.
    Currently, users of SAB can create Android and iOS apps. We have been receiving feedback from users that they want to be able to just use the web browser on their phone or their desktop computer without having to install the app. One pastor in Thailand had an iPhone, but it was set up by a family member and they didn’t have the App Store password so they couldn’t install the app. One user didn’t have room on their phone for the app and just wanted to use the web browser to view a few chapters at a time. Other users in sensitive areas have their phones regularly scanned at checkpoints and it isn’t safe to install the app. Another user wanted to display the scripture on a projector using a desktop during a worship service and play the audio and have the text highlighted on the screen while listening.
    We have researched this in the past, but have not found the right set of software tools to make it possible. At the beginning of 2022, we found a library that would handle the Scripture processing. This past summer, we had an intern from Liberty University and Micah Henny, a friend from our sending church, work with us on developing a proof-of-concept to see if it was possible. We were able to create a viable PWA template that could be used with SAB to generate contextualized PWAs.
    In the fall, Chris and David worked with two separate senior capstone teams (from Gordon College and California Baptist University) to continue the work on the PWA template. The goal is to make a beta release available later this month at the EMDC conference.
    Last year’s student from Liberty University suggested that Chris work with Liberty on senior capstone projects as well. When Chris went to visit the school last month, we were able to talk to all the juniors studying Computer Science. From that presentation, three students have accepted unpaid internships for this summer and will be working with Chris and David on finishing the PWA template. Please pray for team to work well together, learn, and complete the work remaining.

Growing Number of Apps

    It is encouraging to see people reading the Bible and many organizations using SAB to create apps. We intentionally do not gather analytics about its use to protect those who are creating resources for communities in sensitive areas. Below, you can see information about those we know about. Thank you for partnering with us to help make this happen!

Android apps published online that we know about.
iOS apps and offline Android apps are in addition to this.