Church Hopping

I went to church with my parents recently. My mother looked over at me mid-sermon and saw me looking at my cellphone. She slapped my hands (yes I am married and haven’t lived with her for at least seven years) and said stop texting people in church. I smiled and showed her my screen which was displaying the very verse that the pastor was talking about.

That is correct. I have decided to leave my Bible at home in exchange for a digital Bible on my phone. And once I got over the initial embarrassment of being a complete nerd, I really enjoyed it.

There are quite a few ways now for you to get the Bible on the go. The slightly older method is to purchase the software for your smartphone from a company such as Olive Tree. But I would be cheating you if I didn’t share a free way as well that works with most all phones.

The NET Bible offers a wap version (wap is the cellular version of the internet) of their Bible. All you have to do is enter wap.bible.org in your cell phone’s web browser and not only do you have access to the entire Bible, but also the extensive notes that the NET is famous for. The ESV also has a mobile version of their translation at www.esv.org/mobile. The ESV includes a few devotions and a chronological and one-year Bible.

Most cell phone contracts include at least a bare minimum data plan, usually around 1 MB per month. This should be plenty to cover at least the four Sundays. Though if you are a Blackberry or other smartphone user, you know that you can do quite a bit more. Of course the real reason why I switched is because I have just reached the pinnacle of the cell phone world when I purchased an iPhone.

Although you can browse pretty much any site on the iPhone, I prefer to use two iPhone specific sites for my Bible. You can find an iPhone-friendly NET Bible at http://www.enetbible.com and you can find the ESV at http://www.ibiblespace.org/cgi-bin/iphone. So now I can leave my ink and paper Bible at home and read from my iPhone….probably much like the rich young ruler probably would have. Snap!

Links:

• NET Bible: WAP and iPhone
• ESV: Mobile and iPhone
• iPhone Bible App Roundup (for more versions)