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Bible.com joins the YouVersion family!

The YouVersion family is growing! Today we’re thrilled to share with you the addition of Bible.com. Starting this month, visiting Bible.com will bring you directly to YouVersion’s free online Bible.

Now everybody can find the same simple, ad-free experience already loved by millions—at the Internet’s best domain for the Bible! We’re happy to welcome everyone who’s already part of the Bible.com community, as well as the many people searching for God’s Word online.

Bible.com now provides the same rich Bible experience as YouVersion.com and the Bible App:

  • Read the Bible: Instantly select from nearly 300 versions (including audio!), compare versions side by side, and choose the font and display size.
  • Study the Bible: Easily add notes, bookmarks, and highlights to personalize and learn from your interaction with Scripture.
  • Subscribe to Reading Plans: Cover the whole Bible, focus on a specific topic you’re interested in, or read a rich devotional from a gifted teacher. Choose your favorite plan, and each day, a fresh Bible selection will be ready and waiting for you.
  • Sync with the Bible App: All of your bookmarks, notes, plans, and progress now sync between the Bible App, YouVersion.com, and Bible.com.
  • Enjoy the Bible in many languages: Not only can you select a Bible in any of 140 languages, you can even choose to display the site’s menus and buttons in your choice of 30 languages.

Together, Bible.com and YouVersion now offer a simple, unified Bible experience that keeps Scripture always within easy reach. Whether you searching for “Bible” in an app store or, now, online, you’re always just one short click away from engaging with God’s Word.

Best of all, welcoming Bible.com into our worldwide YouVersion community introduces even more opportunities for you to help people find their way around and enjoy a meaningful Bible experience. Won’t you join us?

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Categories Help Bible Readers Discover Exciting New YouVersion Plans

We’re pleased today to announce two new categories that can help you discover your next favorite plan. Our “Featured” category lists popular and relevant plans you might not have discovered yet, while our “New” category displays plans we’ve recently added. And besides these new categories, we’ve also added several new Reading Plans for you:

From Pastor Mark Jeske and Time of Grace:

Money Matters. Gain insights and wisdom from Scripture about God’s view of money in this daily devotional. 30 days

Happily Ever After. Whether you’re married, or you want to be, or even if you’ve been married before, you’ll enjoy listening to God’s words about this sacred institution. 31 days

Here I Am. Learn how you can use the Psalms daily to express your needs, pains, and thanks to the Lord. 31 days

Teach Pray Plan. Find inspiration every day with meaningful help from the Bible for a deeper, richer prayer life. 32 days

There Is Hope. Direct from the source, read God’s words of comfort and love especially for you. 35 days

Fathers and Mothers Devotion. Discover encouragement and hope for how you can lead—and love—your family the way that God intended. 31 days

From Pastor Jack Hayford:

Praise In the Presence of God. Learn how the power of praise can positively shape your life by continually pointing you to God and His promises. 1 year

Celebrate! These daily devotionals help you grow in power and wisdom as you discover the life of the Holy Spirit through God’s Word. 1 year

From The American Bible Challenge:

The American Bible Challenge – Week 1. Daily Bible study designed to correspond with the new TV show “The American Bible Challenge” on GSN. 7 days

The American Bible Challenge – Week 2. Daily Bible study designed to correspond with the new TV show “The American Bible Challenge” on GSN. 7 days

That’s a lot, but it’s still not everything! If you or someone you know reads Korean, we’ve added four great new devotionals for them. And we also added our 70th Spanish plan! Be sure you let your friends know what YouVersion has for them.

Plans are one of the best ways we know of to engage with the Bible. Just pick a category and sign up for a plan that interests you, and the Bible App will bring you something to read, watch, or listen to each day. Plans are great at helping you learn what God’s Word has to say about specific topics. We even offer plans that cover portions of the Bible (like the New Testament or Paul’s letters to churches), or even to read through the entire thing!

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Italian and Turkish Now Available for Bible App, YouVersion Website

The Bible App™ now in Italian and TurkishItalian and Turkish are the two newest additions to languages you can choose in the Bible App and at YouVersion’s website, YouVersion.com. Now you can use all of YouVersion’s screens, controls, and menus in any of twenty-one languages! Most even have reading plans available. To change your language at YouVersion.com, use the list of languages at the bottom right. From inside the Bible App Settings, simply choose your desired language, or set it as the default language for your device. Please share this exciting news with your friends who speak Italian or Turkish! You can also help us by spreading the word on Facebook and Twitter!

Italian

Italian is now available for the first time on your Android or bada device, Bible App for iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch), and at YouVersion.com. Not only will you find 25 reading plans in Italian, but you’ll find seven different Bible versions! We have popular contemporary versions like Nuova Riveduta 2006 (NR06) and Nuova Riveduta 1994 (NR94) from the Geneva Bible Society, and La Parolaè Vita (LM) from  Biblica (formerly the International Bible Society). We even offer timeless versions like Giovanni Diodati Bibbia (IGD), Italian Riveduta 1927 (ITRIV), Versione Diodati Riveduta (RDV24), and Diodati Bible (DO885).

Turkish

Turkish is another brand new option available immediately on Android, as well as on the Bible App for iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch), and of course, at YouVersion.com. Besides the classic Kutsal Kitap Yeni Ceviri (TCL02), we’ve added 25 reading plans in Turkish!

Volunteers Reach the World

People ask all the time how we manage to offer so many different languages. Of course, we couldn’t do it ourselves. We rely on a worldwide community of passionate volunteers gifted in translation—people just like you. They devote themselves to helping as many people as possible easily connect with God’s Word in their own heart language. But they don’t translate Bibles; they translate tools, screens, and buttons on YouVersion.com and inside the Bible App. And if you’re familiar with the Bible App, you probably know we never stop improving it—so there’s always more translation to do. If you can volunteer to translate into Italian or Turkish (or other languages), please join us. We’d be honored to share our vision with you. We’ll show you how you can forever change the lives of people all over the planet.

Have you ever wondered what it’s like to translate for YouVersion? When we recently asked some of our translation volunteers to share their thoughts with you, here’s how they responded:

 

Italian Language Volunteer Radek C. Johan S.

“I was searching for a Bible app I could use to read the Bible on my Android phone. I work with a Christian student organization whose main purpose is reading the Bible together to learn what God has to tell us and how to apply it today. Because most students have smartphones, I realized good Bible software was as important for them as it was for me. And getting it into Italian was a must! I pray the Bible App will be a blessing for many Italians to find a deep, transforming encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ.”

—Johan S., Florence, Italy

 

Turkish Language Volunteer Radek C. Josh W.

“When I discovered the Bible App, its quality—and the fact that it offered Turkish translations of the Bible—made me want to see it in Turkish. While it’s been a joy to work with the team, picking up my Turkish friends’ smartphones and helping them install the Bible App (in Turkish!) was even better. YouVersion is now one of my primary Bible study and daily devotional tools. I’m excited to see what else God will do in Turkey through the ministry of YouVersion and the Bible App.”
—Josh W., Ankara, Turkey

 

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Bible App for Android Phones Gets a Makeover

Some major enhancements have just arrived in the Bible App™ for Android Phones. While different mobile platforms offer unique approaches for completing all your tasks, we want to give you a consistent experience with YouVersion, no matter what device you’re using. The Bible App for Android Phones is now faster and easier to use, complemented by a whole set of slick new features. You can get this latest update to the Bible App for Android in the Google Play Store. (Of course, we plan to bring all of these great new enhancements to the Bible App for Android Tablets soon.) In the meantime, here’s what’s new to love on the Bible App for Android:

Slide Out Menu. Get instant access to all of the Bible App’s features, now just one tap away. On any Bible App screen on your Android phone, touch the menu icon at the top to see the full Bible App menu: Reader, Plans, Bookmarks, Notes, Share…and more!

Available Actions Popup. Wherever you are, when you tap a verse, a handy context-sensitive menu now pops up, with icons for everything you could do with that verse. Tap the verse, then tap what you want to do. It’s fast and easy.

Today View. At the top of the slide out menu, you’ll find the “Today” view option, brand new to Android phones. Today displays the Verse of the Day (ready to share), along with one-tap access to a list of other common tasks: the last passage you were reading, today’s readings for all your active Plans, and the last passage you bookmarked. Taking you immediately to the things that matter to you the most, in this release of the Bible App for Android, the Today view is the new default home screen. (You can change this in your Settings at any time, of course.)

Cleaner Interface. We’ve tried to make your entire YouVersion experience on your Android phone more pleasant all around, with subtle tweaks that make it not just easier to use, but even nicer to look at. When you tap a verse, it displays with a dotted underline to show what you’ve selected. The icons for switching chapters are cleaner and more simplified, as are the audio player icons. While we’ve long offered settings like font, text size, and brightness adjustment to make your reading easier, now you can get to them directly from the Bible reader.

Of course, the most important thing the Bible App has always offered is free Bibles, thanks to our generous publisher partners. The Bible App now has more Bible versions than ever, with hundreds of Bibles in many languages. To learn how you can get the most of the Bible App on your Android device, be sure to check out our Help website.

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New at YouVersion.com and in the Bible App: Afrikaans and Czech

The Bible App™ now in Afrikaans and CzechWe recently launched two new languages, Afrikaans and Czech, inside the Bible App and at YouVersion.com. Together with British English, that means we’ve now launched nineteen different languages! Besides being able to choose from Bible versions in each of these languages, now you can select one of these languages for all of your menus, controls, and screen text—even find reading plans in each language. All you have to do is set the language on your device to the one you want, or select it from within your Bible App Settings. And at YouVersion.com, just choose from the list of languages at the bottom right. If you have friends who speak Afrikaans or Czech, please share this exciting news with them and on Facebook and Twitter.

Afrikaans

We’re pleased to offer Afrikaans on the Bible App for iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch), BlackBerry, and Java, and of course at YouVersion.com. We now have 14 reading plans in Afrikaans, as well as five different Bible versions. Three of those Bibles, Bybel vir almal (ABD07), the 1933/1953 Translation (AFR53), and Afrikaans 1983 Translation (AFR83) are generously provided by the Bible Society of South Africa. The other two, Die Boodskap (DB) and Nuwe Lewende Vertaling (NLV), are provided by key YouVersion partner Christelike Uitgewersmaatskappy.

Czech

You can now choose Czech for your Bible App for iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch), Android, and Bada, and at our website, YouVersion.com. We offer three Czech Bible versions: the classic Bible Kralická 1613 (CSBKR) and two popular modern versions, Bible 21 (B21) and Slovo na cestu (SNC). We’ve even added 25 reading plans in Czech!

Thanks to You…

YouVersion makes God’s Word available to as many people as we can, no matter what language they prefer. But we don’t have enough people resources to translate the Bible App’s tools and resources into every language. That vision is only made possible by an incredible worldwide community of translation volunteers—people just like you. These amazing YouVersion friends are passionate about using their gifts to see the Bible shared with the world. And of course, we never stop working to make the Bible App even better, so there’s always translation to do. If you can volunteer to translate into Afrikaans or Czech (or other languages), we’d love to hear from you. Please join us. You’ll be helping people all over the planet fall in love with God’s Word.

We asked a couple of our key volunteers in Afrikaans and Czech to tell you what it feels like to share their talents to help YouVersion reach the world. Here’s what they had to say:

Czech Language Volunteer Radek C.

“My dream and motivation is letting the Bible engage as many Czechs as possible, even though our country is called atheistic. I simply love being involved in projects which have a greater mission and impact than we can ever imagine. I have been a YouVersion volunteer for about one and a half years now. Volunteering was a new step into the world of the Bible, and the community simply engaged and connected me with new people. Even more than before, I feel now that God wants to use me in many various ways I can’t imagine now, but I put all of my trust into His hands and look forward to what’s next.”

—Radek Ć., Hradec Králové, Czech Republic

 

Afrikaans Language Volunteer Christo D.“I have been SO blessed through the use of the Bible App that I wanted to join such a great project as YouVersion! Becoming a member of the Afrikaans translation team was the next logical step for me to help further God’s kingdom.”

—Christo D., London, United Kingdom