By Jeff Finley
Each January, many Christians resolve to read the Bible more. Some even vow to read the entire Bible in a year, but as they begin their journey, they find the task seems as difficult as climbing Mount Everest.
Free Methodist Elder Peyton Jones understands. That’s why he helped launch and continues to serve as a Bible teacher for Through the Word, a popular mobile app that helps people read and understand Scripture.
“We wanted a tool that would help people — who didn’t have a lot of understanding and didn’t have a lot of time — develop a Bible habit,” Jones said in a “Light + Life Podcast” conversation with Brett Heintzman. “So when you go to the app, you can pick any book of the Bible, and in 10 minutes a day, you’ll get not only the reading of that passage, but you’ll also get a guide, kind of like a sherpa, because sometimes the Bible can seem like this unscalable mountain.”
Jones and co-founder Kris Langham originally had a young audience in mind when they launched the app.
“It originally started with youth. … We were both youth pastors actually of the same youth group,” said Jones, who baptized Langham and later collaborated with him in multiple ministries. “When [Langham] built this app, he said, ‘Peyton, would you come on here and teach?’”
Jones said he was especially drawn to Through the Word because he had the theory “that if you could preach to teens, you could capture anybody. If you lose teens, you’ll probably lose adults because you’re boring.”
The app soon found a wider audience.
“It started as something aimed at youth, and I think we still keep that where we might use some humor. We’ll definitely use relevant topics today — tie it into everyday life, definitely provide application — but our demographic is not teens. In fact, over the course of Through the Word’s existence, it’s had 8 million planned subscriptions and growing,” Jones said. “In just the last 30 days, we picked up 2,000 more listeners, and we just keep growing like crazy.”
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“It is truly just the agenda to help you understand the Bible books.” – Peyton Jones
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YouVersion Partnership
As the Through the Word app attracts a wide age range of users around the world, Through the World also has a partnership with the YouVersion Bible app that makes 60 of its plans available on YouVersion. These plans have attracted more than 3 million subscriptions from YouVersion users.
“We’re usually ranked about three or four on there, and you’ll see the book of the Bible, like Nehemiah, and then the word Explained. That’s how you know us on there. It doesn’t advertise as Through the Word, because when people come into YouVersion, we know it’s not the Through the Word show,” Jones said. “We know that people are just there to connect with God’s Word.”
A quick visit to the YouVersion app reveals Through the Word’s “Daniel Explained” and “Revelation Explained” plans are currently in the top 10 of YouVersion’s “Partial Bible” plans, and both plans receive 5-star ratings.
Kingdom Perspective
Jones told Heintzman, the Free Methodist Church USA’s communications director, “if you came on to that teaching, you would feel like, ‘This is home. This sounds like the Free Methodist’” perspective although the app’s teachers and users come from various denominational backgrounds.
“When you get into the app, you’re going to find that we’re very respectful at the same time with different views. We realize we have people from all over Christianity, so it is a kingdom app,” Jones said. “It is truly just the agenda to help you understand the Bible books.”
The Through the Word app offers the options of “Bible Books” or “Bible Journeys.”
“What we had in mind was somebody with zero Bible knowledge who wants to start out, be it a brand-new believer or even a person that’s been in church for years and heard sermons but never read the Bible for themselves,” Jones said. “Journey 1 starts with Mark, because the first thing we wanted people to know was Jesus, so we didn’t pick a long book. Mark is the shortest. … Then we immediately followed on with Colossians, because Colossians exalts Christ in His ascended state and tells you not who He was as He was walking the dusty roads during His incarnation, but who He is now to us as believers.”
Heintzman asked how the no-cost, ad-free app is funded. “It is funded miraculously,” Jones replied. “From day one, we didn’t want to gate the Word of God behind a paywall. That just seemed anathema to us.”
He added that he is not judging other people who charge for Christian apps because a need for funding exists. Through the Word has been able to operate completely through donor support. Jones said some app users reach out and donate with the message: “Hey, you changed my life.”
Together
Through the Word isn’t only for people reading and studying the Bible on their own.
“I’m so excited about one of the tools that we added to Through the Word, and that is called the Together function,” Jones said. “Obviously, as Free Methodists, our roots go back to [John] Wesley, and we know the power of a small group … the bands, the classes, societies — this idea that you can’t do this alone.”
The Together function can be reached by hitting the “Start Together” button when a user accesses a Through the Word plan. Users can invite other people from their contacts. The app sends the contacts a link that allows them to join the plan.
“In our Free Methodist church plant called The Abbey, this is how we disciple all of the new believers,” Jones said. “We actually can move through it as a church.”
Click here for the full conversation on “The Light + Life Podcast.”
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Jeff Finley is this magazine’s executive editor. He joined the Light + Life team in 2011 after a dozen years of reporting and editing for Sun-Times Media. He is a member of John Wesley Free Methodist Church in Indianapolis. He and his wife, Wabash and New South Conference Superintendent Jen Finley, are the parents of a teen son. Jeff has a bachelor’s degree in English from Greenville University and a master’s degree in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois with additional graduate studies in journalism at Southern Illinois University. He serves on the boards of the Greenville University Alumni Association, Friends of Immanuel and Gene R. Alston Memorial Foundation.
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