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60 Million Installs

October 1, 2024 by Leave a Comment
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!
Filed Under: Mobile

50 Million App Installs

December 22, 2023 by Leave a Comment

    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!

Filed Under: Mobile

Growing Number of Apps

May 4, 2023 by Leave a Comment

    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.
Filed Under: Content, Mobile

Ukrainian Bible App Goes Viral

May 4, 2023 by Leave a Comment
Ukrainian Bible App Icon

   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
Filed Under: Content, Mobile

Scripture Earth App

September 13, 2021 by Leave a Comment

    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
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!

Bill Dyck, a co-worker of Chris’ at JAARS, uses Scriptoria to publish many of the Android apps on ScriptureEarth.
Filed Under: Content, Mobile

You Put Our Texts In The Air!

March 21, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Scripture App Builder

    Many users of Scripture App Builder are working in sensitive areas. We intentionally do not track who is installing and using the software to keep users safe. It is so encouraging when we hear stories of how Scripture App Builder is being used to expand access to God’s Word. Please read this story from Africa.

Drew Maust, a Wycliffe member working in central Africa, had the chance to thank God for the good things that He has done. Drew shares with us his wonderful reason for praise:

Since completing their New Testament over a decade ago, the Z* translators have been hard at work tackling the Old Testament book by book. Two years ago I had the pleasure of working with them on Ezra. After finishing my check of Ezra, I showed them how we could make a custom Bible app using their translation.

So we made an app containing their New Testament along with the Old Testament books that were ready to be published. We loaded it onto the only smartphone they had between the three of them and off they went back to their village.

Now, their village is about two days’ journey, tucked away in the mountains, without electricity or phone signal, in a region which is almost like another country. Love for their language is strong there, but it’s generally very difficult to stay in touch with them.

So I almost completely forgot about this app we made until the Z* translators showed up in the capital last year.

Much to my surprise, they approached me, and the first thing they said was, ‘Our whole village thanks you.’

Taken aback, my response was an embarrassed, ‘OK… why?’
‘You put our texts in the air!’
I had to admit (even more embarrassed) that I didn’t know what they were talking about. ‘I’m really sorry, what do you mean?’
‘My son found the app on my phone and has been sharing it around via Bluetooth. Everyone loves it! But there’s just one problem…’

‘Oh no, what’s that?’

‘It’s missing some books!’ He was lamenting that recently completed books weren’t yet available for their digital readership. ‘People want to read Joshua!’ O, that they could have a whole Bible!

This year I look forward to working with the Z* guys on Old Testament books. We’ll put them ‘in the air’ as soon as we can, giving the Scriptures wings to fly.

Facebook Post: Wycliffe Bible Translators UK and Ireland

    With Scripture App Builder, communities can publish early and often. Their village doesn’t have to wait until the whole Bible is translated and a paper book is printed. Updates can be shared in the app as they become available. Isn’t it wonderful when we can thank God for the good things that he has done?

Thank you for partnering with us. Your participation in this work is being multiplied as we pour into others and allow them to flourish.

Man Praying
Filed Under: Mobile

Making Disciples with the Uzbek Bible App

November 27, 2019 by Leave a Comment
Uzbek Bible App in Cyrillic Text
Uzbek Bible App in Cyrillic Text

    We have heard from many workers in the field who are using Bible apps to help unreached people groups to engage with God’s Word. This term unreached people group refers to an ethnic group among which there is no indigenous community of believing Christians with adequate numbers (less than 2% of the population) and resources to evangelize this people group without outside assistance. Language and culture often cause barriers of understanding and acceptance. The Joshua Project provides information about such groups including the Uzbek people group.
    Please read this article to see how God is using technology to help reach the unreached. The Uzbek Bible app in this article was made using Scripture App Builder, the software that Chris helps support and develop.

    A group of grandmothers gather together to study the Bible, pray, sing, and fellowship. They meet once a month to encourage one another and to share the good news of Christ with the new ladies who are brave enough to attend. This is not your typical Bible study. It is special because this particular group consists entirely of Muslim-background followers of Christ. … One of the grandmothers starts to preach. She wants everyone to turn to a certain passage in the Bible. … ‘All of a sudden, these old ladies whipped out their smartphones and quickly navigated to the passage in the Bible. They didn’t miss a beat!’.

(read the full article by Feruza Krason)
Filed Under: Mobile

New Open Doors

March 21, 2017 by Leave a Comment

This article comes from our Newsletter which comes out 3-4 times per year.  Sign up to receive in your inbox!

Partnerships are very important for the spread of the Gospel.  We are grateful that Chris can focus on developing software that accelerates Bible Translation and distribution.  Recently, his organization partnered with Faith Comes by Hearing (FCBH) and Renew Outreach to make changes to Scripture App Builder that will allow them to open new doors to distribute Bible apps with text and audio to minority language communities.
FCBH has Bible recordings in 1,066 languages.  They distribute these recordings using the Bible.is app for Android and iOS devices (and others). This requires that the user install the app from an app store.  Due to licensing restrictions, the audio has to be streamed over the internet.  This is a huge barrier (and in some cases dangerous) to many minority language communities.  Renew Outreach works with FCBH to distribute the audio on lockable Micro SD cards and Wifi hotspots (LightStream) to be used in audio players and feature phones.

With the changes made to Scripture App Builder (we are collecting usage data and transmitting when the user is on-line), now FCBH and Renew Outreach will be able to create apps with the audio and text bundled into the app and distribute the app virally.

“Everyone is VERY excited about using these apps. I met one new friend in particular who runs a ministry in a restricted country. He’s very well networked in his nation, knows approximately 80% of the believers, of whom there are few. Thanks to this app, now they will all be able to get Bibles safely because it’s illegal to distribute Bibles otherwise and easy to get caught with print ones. … These are the kind of folks who will now be able to get Bibles in their language for the first time, unhindered by outside forces.  Praise God and thanks for your hard work on SAB!”
— Brandon Honselek, Vice President/COO, Renew Outreach

Filed Under: Language Software, Mobile

New Software, Come and Get it!

March 21, 2017 by Leave a Comment

This article comes from our Newsletter which comes out 3-4 times per year.  Sign up to receive in your inbox!

Chris has been working with colleagues on porting Scripture App Builder to macOS for the past couple of years. This program allows users to create Bible apps specific to a minority language that include synchronized text and audio that are easy to distribute. Best of all, the user can do this with no programming necessary. Before, users on Windows and Linux computers could only create Android apps. Now users of Mac computers can create both Android and iOS apps. We are very excited to announce the first release of Scripture App Builder for Mac!

“For the past two or three years, Bible translation teams around the world have been enthusiastically building customized Android apps to make the translated Scriptures available in both text and audio. But we kept getting asked, “So, when can we build apps for the iPhone as well so that more people in our region can get access to God’s Word in their language?” Now the waiting is over: Scripture App Builder for Mac has now been released – and translation teams can go ahead and build both Android and iOS apps. Thank you so much to David and Chris for all their hard work to make this possible!” (Richard Margetts, SIL Francophone Africa)

Scripture App Builder 3.3 for Mac / iOS

Filed Under: Language Software, Mobile

Let’s Release!

October 13, 2016 by Leave a Comment

This article comes from our Newsletter which comes out 3-4 times per year.  Sign up to receive in your inbox!

Chris and his team have released the first version of the Scripture App Publishing Service! After many months of design, development, user testing, and refinement, the service is now available to Wycliffe members. This release is a minimum viable product and they plan to enhance the product in short iterations based on user feedback.  There are currently 175 Android Apps in the Wycliffe Bible Translators’ Google Play Store being managed by the Scripture App Publishing Service.

Filed Under: Language Software, Missions, Mobile
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