Five iOS Apps That Help Christian Families With Spiritual Formation
The YouVersion Bible app. Photo from Life.Church.
Are you a parent trying to find ways to deepen the spiritual lives of your family members, including your children, during the week (not just at church on Sundays)?
Have you found some great apps on iOS to use for that purpose? We welcome you to share your favorites in our comments section and on our ReligionUnplugged.com social platforms.
In a world where young people, and all people, spend increasing amounts of time online, parents are eager for apps that offer more intellectual, spiritual and theological substance than TikTok, Minecraft and Roblox. And the number of quality apps for Christian worship, practice and intellectual formation are proliferating. Here are some of the apps our team members have found to enjoy with our own families.
1) The New City Catechism
This app is a super user-friendly way to read, talk and teach basic Christian doctrine with your family over the breakfast or dinner table; on road trips or anywhere really. It was created in 2017 by The Gospel Coalition and Redeemer Presbyterian Church (PCA denomination) and funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation. The app features 52 questions and answers “for our hearts and minds” that are a user-friendly version of classic texts such as the Westminster (1648) and Heidelberg (1563) catechisms. In an introductory post, noted author and pastor Tim Keller explains that catechisms come from the Greek word “katechein, which means ‘to teach orally or to instruct by word of mouth.’“ Keller notes that many modern Bible study, discipleship programs and even church mission statements can become superficial when it comes to doctrine.
Explaining why he wanted to develop a new kind of catechism to be used on digital devices, Keller explained the church has often updated the practice with Anglicans introducing their Book of Common Prayer that included a catechism. Lutheran churches introduced a catechism in 1529. Early Scottish churches introduced several catechisms.
Keller notes that the New City Catechism focuses on 52 questions and answers (shorter than some other catechisms) to fit into the 52 weeks of the calendar year and people’s busy schedules. Each weekly question and answer also features a related Bible verse, a prayer and a commentary from a past preacher and a contemporary preacher.
2) YouVersion Bible App
This Bible App is a free Bible experience on smartphones, tablets and online at Bible.com. It has been downloaded on 480 million unique devices around the world and, according to Business Insider, is one of the top-two ranked Apps in the entire iOS app store with 6.9 million people giving it a 4.9 overall ranking. The non-profit behind the app is LifeChurch, a church based in Edmond, Okla., and says it offers 2,062 versions of the app in 1,372 languages for free. The New York Times reported that LifeChurch aims to be “a kind of I.T. department for churches everywhere. What’s remarkable is the app features many Bible versions including those used by Catholics, Russian Orthodox and Messianic Jews.
Life.Church was founded in 1996 by Pastor Craig Groeschel and a team of former business leaders and Christians who were involved in successful web startups, including the app creator Bobby Gruenewald. It’s affiliated with the Evangelical Covenant Church, which has 850 or so congregations. Gruenewald told Fox News that the app isn’t meant to replace the printed Bible, but rather is the Bible, just published in a new format.
Life.Church says it raised nearly $20 million to develop and publish the app. Some Bible publishers weren’t so happy about the church offering Bibles for free early on, cutting into book sales. Life.Church told ReligionUnplugged.com it does not charge anything for the app and doesn’t require in-app purchases or charge for subscriptions or premium services. It also doesn’t sell users’ data. That’s all rare for an app!
Certainly, the Bible app has entirely changed the church going experience with more people using QR codes to look up passages or read along with a digital device instead of lugging heavy bibles to church or cracking open a bound, printed volume from the pew. Life.Church told The Atlantic that 18% of users read scripture in the bathroom. How did they obtain that statistic? LifeChurch director Brian Russell tells us the company learned it from a survey and hasn’t updated the survey in recent years.
Russell says the organization is focused on developing new features “to help people develop deeper intimacy with God” such as the ability to listen to the Bible being read. He said that last year the company added a prayer feature that allows people to add an unlimited number of personal prayers and either keep them private or share them with friends on the app. “In just over a year, more than 50 million prayers have been added,” he said. The organization has now added a “guided prayer” feature based on the Lord’s Prayer and which offers daily prompts to “help people reflect on Scripture” and pray. Last year, they also added features such as “Verse of the Day Stories” that include questions, a video teaching, a prayer, a devotional and other prompts around a particular verse each day.
3) Book of Common Prayer
You can find an app for almost any tradition within Christendom to assist you in your prayer life. We tested several of the top-rated apps for prayer and really like one called “My Daily Office,” which was created by Jim LaGrone, the lone software developer at Manna Software LLC in Wilmore, Kentucky. We like it because it has a clean interface and includes a daily morning and evening prayer adapted from the Book of Common Prayer’s Daily Office. The prayer section of this app collects some historic prayers you can pray such as those from St. Clement of Rome in the First Century or Saint Augustine; topical prayers on different categories such as peace, healing or for grace at meals; and different prayers of confession from Methodist, Presbyterian and other Christian traditions. We also like that this app is clear and not pushy or annoying about how it charges for premium features.
Runner Up: We found several other exciting apps for prayer such as one for Orthodox Christians titled “Pray Always,” which is listed to Negnet Solutions and Saint Alexis press. “Daily prayer is essential to a healthy Orthodox Christian life,” the App’s “about page” notes. “With today’s busy schedules, not everyone has as much time as they desire for their prayer life. The goal for this app is to allow even the busiest to take time to pray.”
4) Bible Trivia Mania
This app provides a fun way to learn and review facts from the Bible. Our first trial run with it showed it has some trick questions such as, “Was the first murder recorded in the Bible when Abel kills Cain.” Astute users will know the answer is “false” because Cain killed Abel, not the other way around. The incident was the first recorded murder in the Bible, however.
The business model on this app is that you have to pay $0.99 to gain 1,000 more questions in the “expansion pack.” It’s not a bad price for gaining Bible knowledge.
This app, created by Raimond Kuhlman, does not have many other features it seems beyond the basic quiz questions. Yet it does have 8,800 people who gave it a strong rating in the iOS app store, making it one of the highest rated Bible trivia apps we can see there. Way to go, Raimond! We see Raimond also built some Bible apps and kids games such as “Sneaky Giraffe” and “Diamond Craze.” Other contenders in the Bible trivia category include an app called “Bible Trivia Quiz – No Ads,” “Bible Trivia Quiz – Fun Game” and “Bible Challenge Quiz – Scripture Study for all ages.”
Runner Up: For Eastern Orthodox Christians, we recommend checking out “Orthodox Quiz,” which is affiliated with OrthodoxBookstore.com.au.
Runner Up: Another fun Bible game app for kids is “Superbook Kids Bible App,” an app affiliated with the kids program created by Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) that started in 1981 in Japan. CBN claims more than 500 million people have watched the series and its 52 episodes were translated into 43 languages. Now, CBN has the characters from the series like Gizmo featured in games on the app and CBN says it plans to continue updating and improving the app in the future. The app features a host of features including a version of the Bible, several games, quiz games and a Gospel message. It’s an app worth trying and worth watching.
5) Verses - Bible Memory
The iOS app store shows a near dead heat in the Bible memory category between the “Verses – Bible Memory” app, which has a 4.6 rating by 2,300 users versus (pardon the pun) the “The Bible Memory App” from BibleMemory.com, which also has a 4.6 rating from 2,100 users.
We tested both of these apps.
Verses has a lovely user interface and an elegant gamification of Bible memory in a way that reminds us of favorite language learning apps such as DuoLingo and Babbel. If you want to use the King James Version of the Bible, the app is free. If you want to use other versions, it costs $4.99. The app also tries to upsell you on premium versions that cost $4.99 for all Bible translations or $9.99 for a version that includes creeds and catechisms. We tried the app on James 1:1. The memorization tools are useful. We noticed the option to speak the verse into the app is still in beta mode.
Bible Memory offers a “pro” edition that costs $9.99 that includes all editions beyond the free King James Version. When we skip that screen, we find possible sign in via email, Facebook, Apple or Google. This app has a nice feature where you can find verses in certain topics such as “Fellowship” and build a bank of verses you want to memorize on that topic. It allows you to join a memory group. We see dozens of groups with thousands of members in each of them. When it came to testing a memory verse, James 1:1, we found the app a bit clunky to get to the verse. When we did get to the verse, we found the pedagogical method effective. But it was more based on using typing prompts for the verse and not speaking the verse audibly.
These apps are both excellent and worth using. If we had to pick only one, we would choose Verses.
Paul Glader is executive editor of ReligionUnplugged.com and executive director of its parent non-profit, The Media Project. Glader’s received numerous journalism awards, spent a decade as a staff writer at The Wall Street Journal and has written for a host of outlets including The Washington Post, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and Forbes.com. He’s a professor at The King’s College in NYC, where he also directs the McCandlish Phillips Journalism Institute. He’s on Twitter @PaulGlader.