“We are one device away from a digital publishing tsunami,” predicted Michael Hyatt, chairman and chief executive officer of Thomas Nelson Publishers, the largest Christian publishing company in the world, in 2005.
That device appears to have arrived last year in the form of the Apple iPad, the likely tipping point in a digital tidal wave that had been set in motion by the Kindle, iPhone, Android, and other breakthrough phone and computer devices.
“It’s actually a really remarkable acceleration of change and everyone is breathlessly trying to keep up with it,” said John Sawyer, a marketing strategist with the Somersault Group in Grand Rapids, Mich. “It’s an exciting time for all publishers.”
According to Somersault, 15 million iPads were sold in 2010, the first year they became available, and the projection for this year is sales of 45 million and climbing.
Mr. Sawyer, a former vice president of Bible marketing at Christian publishing house Zondervan, said “all the Bible publishers are kind of scrambling to try to take full advantage of all the new technologies that are available to them.”
Leading the way so far is YouVersion, a free Bible app developed by the staff of LifeChurch.tv, a cutting-edge megachurch based in Edmond, Okla.
Bobby Gruenewald, pastor of innovation at LifeChurch.tv and one of the leaders in creating YouVersion, said the goal was “to develop technology that we feel would be a benefit to the global church.”
The church wanted to make the digital Bible application free for its users and to send it into the world as a “missional use of technology.”
“I was asking the question: ‘Could we be at this point in time when technology really could be a multigenerational catalyst for the Bible and Scripture engagement?’ ” Mr. Gruenewald said in an interview. “Was it similar to how the printing press was substantial to the distribution of Scripture? I was asking the big questions, but the results have been far beyond anything we would have imagined.”
Since its release in July, 2008, slightly under 28 million applications have been downloaded onto phones, iPads, and other devices, Mr. Gruenewald said, with 2 million more downloads every month.
With a few touches of the screen on a smart phone or iPad, a user can call up specific chapters and verses of the Bible in 41 translations and 21 languages. The app user can bookmark verses, add notes, and share the Scriptures via Facebook and Twitter. Several thousand churches use YouVersion’s “Live” feature that lets churchgoers follow their pastor’s sermon on a phone or iPad.
A key to the success of YouVersion is the device’s convenience, Mr. Gruenewald said. Most people don’t carry a traditional Bible around with them, but they do have a phone in their pocket or purse which makes it easy to read when time and place allow.
“The phone has become a device that’s really unique in the fact that it’s always present with people,” he said.
Mr. Gruenewald said he has noted a change in the last year in how pastors feel about people in the pews reading the Bible on cell phones.
“Some pastors visibly encourage it and will read the Bible on their phone [during services]. … Almost every pastor I know desires to see people in their congregation be more engaged in the Bible and not just rely on Sunday for Bible time,” he said.
“If we can make the Bible available and easy to use, most pastors are embracing it,” he said.
Paul Franklyn, associate publisher of the new Common English Bible, said technology enabled a team of 700 people to translate the Bible in under four years — record time for the process.
“The previous ones took 10 to 17 years to produce, back in the 1970s and ’80s,” he said. “In the good old days, they used to have to type things and put them on carbon copies and send them out by mail, taking a two to three-week turnaround. With an online project management interface, it happens in 1 to 2 seconds.”
A group of 120 scholars and editors worked with 77 reading groups and more than 500 average readers from around the world in translating the text for the Common English Bible, which is already in its third printing after a July release.
The digital revolution is having an impact on other faiths and holy books as well.
Ehab Nazzal, a 17-year-old Muslim who is a senior at St. John’s Jesuit High School, said he uses digital technology to learn more about the Qur’an and to practice his faith.
He said the Nazzal family uses islamicfinder.org daily to know the direction of Mecca for prayer and to mark each day’s prayer times, which vary according to seasons and time zones.
Rabbi Yossi Shemtov of Chabad House-Lubavitch in Toledo said Jews have been reaching out through Web sites and digital apps to teach and share their faith around the globe.
“God gave us many gifts and it’s up to us to utilize those gifts for the good,” Rabbi Shemtov said. “Through the Web, we could inspire people who we would never be able to reach in the traditional, conventional way of face-to-face.”
He said, for example, that rabbis are available on the askmoses.com Web site “24/6 — not on Shabbat,” or the Sabbath — to answer questions.
“They have saved people from suicide and spiritual alienation from all over the world,” Rabbi Shemtov said.
Contact David Yonke at: dyonke@theblade.comor 419-724-6154.
First Published September 10, 2011, 4:00 a.m.
