YouVersion Live & Mobile Technology in the Church
Mar 09, 2010 
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Our church recently began integrating YouVersion Live into our worship experiences. So far so good. As I said in the promotional video above, it allows users to interact with the service from their mobile device by participating in polls, sending out Twitter invites, following along with points from the message, and more. Read all about it here.
I love this technology and the potential it provides for people to engage in the service like never before. However, I will say that it takes some adjusting to look across the congregation and see many people “playing” on their phones. It makes me wonder, “Are these folks following along or reading up on Facebook. Hmmm…” We’re giving everyone the benefit of the doubt.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on some of the questions below. Share your answers in the comment section.
- Does your church use YouVersion Live? If so, how do you like it? If not, is it something your church will likely adopt in the future as more and more people use smart phones?
- Mobile technology provides many wonderful opportunities for engagement during church. But where is the line between things that enhance our worship experiences and things that are simply more noise and distraction?
- What about tweeting during service?
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My church doesn’t use YouVersion Live, but I have started implementing it at my university’s FCA gatherings. It seems perfect for a college setting, since many people in the audience already have smartphones, or at least phones with internet access. We haven’t thoroughly tested it in our setting yet, but I’m confident it will be a great tool.
I am relatively new to the social media game and, to be frank, had a slight twinge of “I’m not sure about this” when the YouVersion application bacame an option. I absolutely see the benefits that are available with this kind of technology and think we need to use everything at our disposal to spread the good Word. Of course, as with most anything else, used inappropriately, this concept could become more about the next new and great thing than about the ultimate purposes it is supposed to have. As for distractions, the crying kids, the cell phones ringing, and the too heavy perfumes are more distracting to me than this will ever be. Ha! I guess I’m coming around.
Haha. The over applied perfume thing is definitely a major distraction. Those little ol’ ladies go crazy.
We used Twitter for some q&a panels. A ton of our church tweets before services for invites & some during & a lot after sharing encouragement. A lot of Facebook users also.
I tweet in church right before the 11:00 service and also right after I play in the orchestra in the 9:30 service
Your church has an orchestra? I’m jealous.
I tweet during services after leading worship. It’s almost exclusively something related to the service, some little nugget that I get from the pastor. I’ve also got tweets scheduled to go out at 9AM and 10:30AM before our services start to let people know about the live feed.
We have been looking into getting that going in our services. We’re actually trying to see if we can get the “text tithe” going… Anybody hear of that being done?
Never heard of a text tithe. Thats pretty far out there. Add it to your cell bill? AT&T already charges me enough every month
I’m curious. Post links.
i do tweet from church sometimes when i see something wonderful… like the week our english speaking and korean pastors shared the pulpit. i do think that even our senior adults are getting too dependent on the screens.. are we losing the ability to find scripture in an actual bible?
maybe the best worship mixes it all up so we have to think about what we are saying and doing.
my sunday school class giggles when i use my iphone to look up sonething in a different translation.
these are not young women.
daniel… i enjoy your tweets etc. i love the fact
that you love God and your family and you share that with humor and authenticity. just sayin’
Thank you Lauree. What a great compliment. Welcome to the blog.
Having recently stumbled upon YouVersion and lovin the app better than the website (with the app, it’s easy to select the translation one prefers whereas on the site is stuck with the translation of the reading plan), taking the experience a step further by incorporating it into a service sounds sweet. I’m definitely interested in pondering this further.
The Church as a whole is stereotypically weak on the web. Cheesy websites, weekly updates (at best), and not always thinking through features. I’m all for integrating social media but not doing just because “everyone else is” or “it’s the cool thing to do.”
Tweeting wisdom from sermons is a great way to extend worship, however, the danger is when tweeting or texting distracts into engaging in other conversions.
Good points Rick. I did want to clarify that you can change the version on the Bible reading found on YouVersion’s website. The option is there. Look closer.
Here’s another post about the Bible reading plans. http://www.danielmosley.com/youversion-com/
I love using the YouVersion app at church, but my church is very traditional, so people think that I’m playing around on my phone instead of looking through the Bible. Even then, when I explain the benefits I’m getting out of the app (like the daily reading plans), they look at me like I’m from outer space that I need a computer to help me maintain my daily time with God.
In fact, I think a couple of weeks ago, our pastor lectured against texting in church, so you can probably guess what he would think about tweeting. I agree that it can be great for extending wisdom to others, but our church is not at that point yet. I’ve asked about overhauling the web site and trying to take a different look at how we’re leveraging social media to engage people with the church more, but our leadership doesn’t seem to be interested.