saved by grace, coder by calling
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!
Scripture App Builder (SAB) was created to allow many people groups to read and listen to God’s Word in a language they know best and in formats that are accessible so that lives are changed through heart transformation. SAB is free software used by many organizations.
One of these organizations is Biblica, best known for the NIV translation. In recent years, they have initiated new digital scripture distribution goals using SAB which include: 1) Building a companion Bible app for every new Bible launch, and 2) Building a Bible app for the rest of their translation portfolio.
This strategy has been transformative in launching the New Ukrainian Translation. Biblica was finishing the process of publishing this translation when Russia invaded Ukraine. They decided to expedite the release and advertising of the SAB-created app.
Here is the timeline:
| Feb 24, 2022 | Russia invades Ukraine |
| Feb 26, 2022 | Started Google ads |
| Mar 17, 2022 | 100k downloads |
| Apr 1, 2022 | 200k downloads |
| Jul 19, 2022 | 500k downloads |
| Feb 26, 2023 | 1,078,321 downloads, 95% inside Ukraine 15,873,899 chapter engagements 5,769,017 minutes spent on app by users |
Scripture App Builder has become a key part of Biblica’s Digital Bible Engagement Strategy. It has proved to be a flexible platform enabling us to both deliver scripture, but also other Bible-engagement resources to our global languages. It is quickly becoming our go-to app development platform. We are also able to serve marginalized language communities with the tool. We have been able to reach over 500% more people in these underserved language communities than with our larger traditional Bible engagement platforms. We are grateful to SIL for their continued development of the platform.
Joshua Seale, Biblica, Director of Digital Products
Chris and his colleagues have been working on Scripture App Builder (SAB) since before its first release in 2015. SAB has been used to create thousands of contextualized Bible apps by many organizations. In 2017, SAB 3.3 added support for building apps on macOS and creating iOS apps. There are many Android apps that have been published to Google Play. However, there have been quite a bit fewer iOS apps published to the Apple App Store created with SAB (some examples: Sylheti, Pertukekem, Dari, Northern Thai, Hindi, and Chin). This is due to Apple rejecting apps if there were too many from the same developer account. As a solution, Apple told publishers to create a single container app that would allow the user to select the content.
This year, with SAB 9.0, we have enabled our partners to create an iOS container app as Apple has recommended. An organization can take their projects for Android, make a few changes for iOS, and build packages of resources that can be downloaded by the iOS container app. When the user runs the app for the first time, they select a language, download a package of resources, and then the container app becomes like a fully contextualized Bible app for that specific language!
We have talked with a few of our partners and they are excited about the opportunity to make their resources available on iOS. One of these partners is ScriptureEarth. They publish a website that hosts and links to Scripture resources in thousands of languages. They currently use Scriptoria (the web service that Chris works on) to publish Android Apps to Google Play and then link to the apps on their website. Scriptoria has been updated to support building the language resource packages used by the iOS container app. They will finally be able to provide an iOS app for all of these language communities.
ScriptureEarth Impact
Bill Dyck, a co-worker of Chris’ at JAARS, uses Scriptoria to publish many of the Android apps on ScriptureEarth.
I had the privilege of watching one of the women I am teaching ESL discussion in Laos come to know the LORD! GOD IS AMAZING! Anyhow, I was able to share with her ScriptureEarth to help her find the Bible in her heart language as well as encourage her to watch the Jesus Film and the Mary Magdela Film. It is SO WONDERFUL to have these resources so easily accessible. She lives in Laos and this resource proves to be so practical and beneficial. I literally use it or share it weekly! LOVE IT!
For a few years, Chris has travelled overseas once a year to participate in EMDC, which is a conference where half of the attendees are workers in the field and the other half are those like him providing services and training. Due to COVID-19, it was cancelled last year and some sessions were done on zoom. EMDC has transitioned to doing year-round online training. Chris will be helping with two separate weeks of training on Scripture App Builder. There are many classes to choose from (and recordings are available). In order to protect people working in sensitive places, attendees have to be approved. If you know of global workers who could take advantage of this type of online training, please let them know: https://emdc.online
Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH) was at EMDC and presented on a new partnership that they have with the LUMO Project. Gospel Films are a ground-breaking, multi-language biblical resource that will transform the way people around the world discover, study, and engage with God’s Word.
For the first time, the complete unabridged text of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have been faithfully brought to life in visual form by the LUMO Project. FCBH is combining this compelling cinematic portrayal of the life of Jesus with their word-for-word audio Scriptures in the languages of the world.
Using the complete recorded audio Scripture greatly simplifies the process compared to the JESUS Film. The latter requires a lot of work to create a script based on the Gospel of Luke and lip-synch the recorded dialog (which often requires re-recording) so that it matches with the video. This is very time consuming and requires expensive audio/video editing software and experienced people. There are adjustments that have to be made due to the length of the audio for a section. The LUMO Project accounted for this and have different lengths of scenes to be able to accommodate.
Both the LUMO Project and FCBH are freely sharing these videos* and allowing them to be distributed in many forms. They can also be embedded in or streamed to Scripture apps created using Scripture App Builder. It is exciting to see how these videos will impact the spread of the Gospel in many language communities where this might be the very first film available in their language. Try out the Gospel Films in the New International Version (1984).
*There are certain limitations on the distribution of some majority language versions in some regions. However, there are virtually no restrictions for minority language versions.
