I’ve gotten a sneak peek at Lifechurch.tv‘s new Bible resource called YouVersion. (To see full-sized screenshots, click on the images) Just in my initial look at their alpha test there are some features that are absolutely going to revolutionize how some people read/use the Bible online. As a Web 2.0 junkie… let me highlight what I mean.
It’s a Bible homepage, not just a place to look stuff up like on Biblegateway.com. (Which is an amazing Web 1.0 site) 
- Obviously, you log in and have an account.
- One panel is the Bible with a search feature, multiple versions, etc
- The other panel is what makes the whole thing cool.
- When you click on a verse, the community tab shows you public comments, audio, sermon texts, videos, and other stuff.
- When you click on "my version" you get a list of all the stuff you’ve posted publicly and privately.
- When you click Journal (not ready yet) you can obviously blog/journal about passages or whatever.
- The top menu bar isn’t active yet, but there are tons of cool things coming.
- The dashboard seems to be your one-page look at everything you’ve ever done on the site. All your tags, starred verses, etc.
- Favorites for stuff you really like
- Contacts for having friends, etc in a Facebook kind of way
- History for seeing what you’ve looked at over time
- Groups… not 100% how that goes.
The thing I kept thinking as I gave this a first look… (I’ll be back to do more testing over the next few weeks too) is that a church is doing this. Not a major media player or even Gospel Communications… a local church. Granted, Lifechurch.tv isn’t your average ordinary church. But still, this is like taking on the Gutenberg Bible project as a local church only to give it away. Yeah… this seems like it’s going to be 100% free.
What’s missing?
Well, loads and loads of content will make this an unreal resource for small group leaders, pastors, and people interested in knowing what others think about certain passages of Scripture. All-in-all, I think this is going to be a web addiction for a lot of people for a long time to come. Bravo Lifechurch.tv. I can’t wait to see the beta test, and of course the production version.
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