Bible app a good idea? Better: A God idea

Standing in a security line at O’Hare International Airport seven years ago, the Rev. Bobby Gruenewald wished he had a Bible in his pocket to pass the time. Then the tech-savvy pastor raised in central Illinois had a thought: Wouldn’t it be grand if anyone could have their favorite version of the Bible within reach anywhere at any time?

“Could we be at one of these moments in history where technology, if we leverage it correctly, could transform how we engage in the Bible?” Gruenewald, 37, recalls thinking thatday.“Drawingfromthe story of the printing press, for centuries, that reallychangedouraccess to the Bible. It’s probably something todaywe easily take for granted, but it came through invention.”

By the time he reached the gate to board his flight, Gruenewald, now the innovation pastor of an Oklahoma-based megachurch called LifeChurch.tv, had already registered a Web domain name, youversion.com, and hatched a plan that would lead to the world’s most popular Bible app.

That app, YouVersion, recently exceeded100milliondownloadsand offers the holy book in 617 versions and 377 languages.

Represented by the simple icon of a Bible with a bookmark, the app offers audio versions for listeners, navigation tools to look up passages, social media capability to share verses on Facebook and Twitter, and private or public platforms to store or share notes. The app is free and generates no revenue for the church. It simply aims to fulfill the Christian mission of spreading God’sword, Gruenewald said.

But Gruenewald’s idea required more than technical expertise. It has taken nearly $20 million from donors, 30 paid staff and 500 volunteers worldwide to get off the ground.

It also needed cooperation from publishers to grant access to the hundreds of translations of the Christian Bible available on YouVersion’s menu, including ones popular with evangelical Christians, Orthodox Christians, Roman Catholics, andMessianic Jews.

Tyndale House Publishers was one of the first companies to grant access. It took 90 scholars commissionedby theCarolStreamcompany seven years to develop theNewLiving Translation, which is now the world’s third-most popular biblical translation. Company officials said they weren’t eager to give away theirwork.

But when Gruenewald shared his vision of making the Bible more accessible to people on the go, the west suburban publishing house reconsidered. It signed a two-year trial agreement in 2008 to license the translation for free. It has since renewed that agreement twice after discovering that popularity has soared.

Gruenewald was an unlikely dot.com entrepreneur. Growing up in Decatur, Ill. dubbed the “Soybean Capital of theWorld” because of the presence of agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland, he followed his high school sweetheart (now wife) to Oklahoma’s SouthernNazarene University to study finance in 1994.

When an outside company offered to build a website for the car dealership where he worked on the side, Gruenewald proposed doing it for a fraction of the price. He studied the HTML codes during his winter break and designed the site in his dorm room.

Gruenewald created a site that helped the dealer peddle auto parts. Sales eventually grew to $100,000 a month and the dealer offered to invest inGruenewald’s talents. In2001, after a series of successfulWeb ventures, Gruenewald and his wife joined what would later become LifeChurch.tv, in Edmond, Okla., where “the best technology was air conditioning” and where “my passion for the church eclipsedmy passion for business,” he said.

YouVersion didn’t see instant success, he said. Its full potential didn’t emerge until mobile devices began to catch on. In fact, the church was on the brink of shutting down the endeavorwhenApple introduced its App Store for the iPhone in 2008. YouVersion became one of the first 200appsavailable, enablingGruenewald’s concept to take off and help other churches growaswell.

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