The Bible Plugin: Revolutionizing Bible Access for Churches and Ministries Worldwide

Putting the Word in Wordpress. Get a free Bible to embed onto your Wordpress website.

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TL;DR

• “Peek Behind the Curtain” is now renamed to “Behind the Scenes”

• Learn about the story behind The Bible Plugin, who puts the “Word in Wordpress”

• AJ has a special request for you (yes you!) towards the end of this post

• Share your story for the next Behind the Scenes post

Today we connect with AJ to dig deeper into the story of The Bible Plugin, a tool enabling you to add a powerful Bible reader experience to your church website built on Wordpress or any Wordpress site.

"The top mission of The Bible Plugin is to get God's Word into people's hands with no barriers."

1. What is the story of The Bible Plugin?

How did it come to be?

By God's grace we've been doing church planting for the past 35 years, the last 24 have been in East and Southeast Asia. Throughout we have seen God's faithfulness over and over and seen countless times how He works in and through His Word to change people's lives.

The Bible Plugin has come as a vision and felt need for several years in the midst of our ministry. I love the mainstream Bible apps and still use them some. But for many new Believers and definitely for spiritual seekers they can be a bit overwhelming. Since the mainstream apps tend to originate from the Western world, even though they have translations available they can often be less intuitive for many.

Also, as we have been doing digital engagement / media to movements focused strategy for some time we found that as we drew in spiritual seekers through advertising campaigns if we wanted to send them to Scripture the only options we had was to send them to other websites which made it difficult to continue in our interaction with these seekers.

So from all of this we knew we want a simple way to put the Biblical text on our own websites, with the absolute minimal administrative or technical load to do so. We wanted to be able to have the Scripture presentation completely localized to minimize cultural or language distractions. We work with hundreds of churches and mission teams in many countries and the majority have WordPress websites but there was not a plugin for them to put the Bible on their sites. So we began working on The Bible Plugin to meet these needs.

— AJ

AJ, your heart for ministry and the people of East and Southeast Asia is so sweet. Making Bible access as frictionless as possible and easy to distribute is one way to bring the Word of God to every tribe, nation, and tongue.

I am encouraged when I read this quote, "I love the mainstream Bible apps and still use them some. But for many new Believers and definitely for spiritual seekers they can be a bit overwhelming." This shows me there's room for multiple Bible apps to exist and thrive in different cultures. One app may be able to reach a community that another app can't, and that's why we need one another.

2. What's one challenge that you overcame when working on The Bible Plugin?

Or, when it felt like quitting, what helped you stay the course?

Simply being committed to the vision and disciplined to make this a priority amidst a lot of other great ministry was a big step. The funding for the development was also a big hurdle but we've had some great ministry partners to come alongside and support this project.

My personal technical or development skills were in no way sufficient for this project and we looked for developers to join with us for a long time but many simply weren't interested or clearly weren't in line with the vision. But God brought the development team at CodeZone to us through a referral and confirmed again that He was leading us in this.

— AJ

It seemed the odds against you, AJ. You couldn't code it yourself, or if you did it might've taken a long time. I imagine getting "no" and "no, thank you" from developers who had the abilities to make this happen was discouraging.

Trails and hardship does not mean God isn't doing something behind the scenes. It's so cool seeing how God provided not only one person to help, but an entire team!

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything."

James 1:2-4

Commitment, discipline, and faith helped the idea of The Bible Plugin become a reality.

Like you said earlier, "Throughout we have seen God's faithfulness over and over and seen countless times how He works in and through His Word to change people's lives." Remembering the faithfulness of God helps you stay committed and disciplined, even when in the physical realm it seems like things aren't going the way they should.

3. Anywhere you recognize God's hand throughout the journey of creating The Bible Plugin?

It's easy to get discouraged or even question if you are on the right track in the midst of a project like this. But once we started actively developing the plugin and again when we released the Alpha and Beta versions, I have had countless people tell me how much they have been wanting just such a tool for their ministry. God sustained us and blessed us to have those points of encouragement just when needed.

— AJ

"Anxiety weighs down the heart, but a kind word cheers it up."

Proverbs 12:25

You may never know the impact a kind word of encouragement can have on someone, but I can promise you every word makes a difference. I am thankful for the community of people who continue to speak truth and grace into this project.

4. If you could give advice to someone who's wanting to build an app or tool for Christians, what advice would you give?

Prayer. Prayer. Prayer. Seek God's face and confirmation from Him, His Word, and other Believers that this is something God is calling you to do. With that confirmation in hand, nothing can stop it.

— AJ

Amen. Pray to the One who is Lord over everything. If something is hard or impossible, God can do the impossible. He is unshakable and on the strongest of foundations, and that can help make us unshakable.

AJ, this is an exciting project making Bible access more accessible by giving people with Wordpress sites an simple plugin.

5. Shameless plug! What's something cool that's been on your mind that you'd recommend to the faith.tools community?

The Bible Plugin was a need that arose from and meshes directly with my primary focus in digital engagement ministry and particularly the Discover Jesus Initiative that I lead with the vision of seeing the top 50 unreached nations of the world reached with the Gospel. I would jealously ask the faith.tools community to join with us in prayer for these nations with over 4.8 billion lost people living in them.

— AJ

Let's join in prayer the Discover Jesus Initiative that the most unreached nations would be reached with the Gospel.

Recap

• You can easily add a Bible reader to your Wordpress site with The Bible Plugin.

• AJ faced challenges such as securing funding and finding the right development team, but through commitment, discipline, and faith, God made a way.

• You never know the impact a kind word of encouragement can have, so encourage generously.

If you’ve enjoyed learning more about this snapshot into AJ’s journey, please let us know in the comments or with a like on this post.

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Find apps and tools like The Bible Plugin that enrich your faith journey by visiting faith.tools

God bless,