There’s no shortage of Christian leaders thinking about what the intersection of faith and technology should be. Some charge ahead embracing the latest tech trends to create the next era of church technology and ministry tools. And others cautiously wait and consider what might be lost by so boldly embracing the unknown. But one thing is certain -people are increasingly asking questions at the intersection of ministry & tech.

• What is the best church management software?
• What is the best Bible app?
• Should I get a church app?
• Is church online biblical?
• How can I do internet evangelism?

We aren’t out to answer these questions or rank who’s the best. But we have curated a list of what we believe to be the most notable and a few novel uses of technology in Christian ministry. Please use this list not to compete but to be inspired by how technology can be used for the good of God’s Kingdom.

Bible Apps

At the core of the Christian faith is Scripture. In a sense, the Bible is a commodity that goes beyond the borders of denominations and ministry models. And this dynamic is what drives Bible technology to be the most versatile category on this list.

Scriptive

Free via web & iOS
Scriptive asks how you feel and why and then recommends Bible verses that apply to your unique circumstances. But what makes Scriptive so cool is that the verses it recommends are those with the highest probability of spiritual impact. Building upon millions of data points shared by YouVersion and OpenBible.info, Scriptive recommends verses based on how they’ve previously moved people in similar circumstances. And Scriptive’s recommendation engine is constantly improving as it makes it easy for users to report back which recommended verses were most relevant. It’s a thoughtful approach that even applies insights from neuroscience to create a user experience that helps people be more receptive to Scripture by removing emotional or cognitive barriers.

NeuBible by Quiet Pupil

Free via iOS
Two designers – Aaron Martin  of Yahoo! and Kory Westerhold of Twitter – wanted a Bible app that purely focuses on beauty, simplicity, and a better reading experience. So they built it. It is beautiful and focuses on quick loading, intuitive navigation, and quality search capabilities. It comes preloaded with 4 translations with additional translations available as in-app purchases, which vary in cost depending on the royalty fees required by each Bible translation owner.

YouVersion by Life.Church

Free via web, iOS, Android, Windows & Blackberry
The original Bible app. YouVersion has grown to over 196 million downloads. With over 1,115 translations and 799 languages offered, it is unquestionably the most robust and versatile Bible app in providing God’s Word to the world. Their Bible reading plans have effectively helped millions read Scripture more often. And they’re exploring multiple ways to nurture community around Scripture via social media, events, and within the app.

The Bible Simply Put by Matthew Ziehr

Free via web & iOS
This is a fun tool to better learn and understand the themes and stories behind the Bible. They use one sentence to describe the Bible as a whole and then use one sentence to describe each of the 2 testaments, 8 sections, 66 books, 1,189 chapters, and an assortment of characters and places.

Deaf Bible App by Deaf Bible Society

Free via iOS & Android
Offering numerous sign language translations, the Deaf Bible App offers the only Bible app user interface custom tailored for deaf users. The JESUS Film is also available in a translations.

Bible Study & Memorization

Verses by Zach Whelchel + Brock Klein

Free via iOS
Frustrated by a lack of quality Bible memorization apps, Verses was created to blend good design and UX into memorizing God’s Word. It offers an assortment of memory games and let’s you track your progress over time. The app comes preloaded with the KJV translation with additional translations available as in-app purchases, which vary in cost depending on the royalty fees required by each Bible translation owner.

Bible Web App by Digital Bible Society

Free via web browser
Built with help from John Dyer and Michael Johnson, the Bible Web App is one of the most agile yet powerful browser-based Bibles available. It’s an incredible simple and clean design that let’s you add parallel translations, keyword searches, maps, commentaries, and media. In a sense, it’s like the free Google Docs version of Logos Bible Software.

Logos Bible Software by Faithlife

Base packages ranging from $295 to $10,800
Logos is arguably the best Bible software that money can buy. The software capabilities are impressive and so is their library of additional content available for purchase. Their sheer size allows them to bundle ebooks into some unbeatable prices, and the software let’s users engage the content in ways that many other Bible software cannot.

Fighter Verses by Children Desiring God

$3 via iOS & Android
Designed for children and adults, Fighter Verses offers 7 translations each with over 520 Bible verses to memorize. It includes several memorization games and even the ability to sing verses in the ESV translation.

Kids Bible Apps

SharefaithKids – Sunday School Resources and Curriculum In The Cloud

Free via iOS & Android
SharefaithKids is an award-winning Sunday School curriculum and resource providing amazing Bible video lessons, activities and application for Sunday School teachers. It’s the first cloud-based Sunday School curriculum and packs the entire Sunday School lesson from start to finish.

The Bible App for Kids by YouVersion + OneHope

Free via iOS & Android
OneHope uses creative media to teach the Bible to kids in 145 countries, so a partnership with YouVersion to create a Bible App for kids made perfect sense. Using help from OvenBits to create the app, it offers a immersive, story telling experience for kids to hear Bible stories, remember the most important parts, and play fun challenges along the way!

SUPERBOOK Kids Bible App by CBN

Free via iOS & Android
Christian Broadcasting Network has rebooted its SUPERBOOK cartoon and created an app to go with it. It is packed with stories, games, quizzes, and videos.

David vs. Goliath by Righteous Tales

Free via iOS & Android
This is the classic Bible story turned interactive with dozens of story chapters including over 100 achievements and 7 mini-games.

Bible Hardware

Proclaimer by Faith Comes by Hearing

Free for villages without a Proclaimer
The Proclaimer digital player is preloaded with an audio Bible recording usually of the New Testament. The battery can be charged via a built-in solar panel, a hand crank, or an included AC adapter. It is loud enough for a crowd of 300 and will play for 15 hours before needing recharged. The Every Church Every Village program equips church members and ministry teams with a free Proclaimer for mission trips to unreached villages.

Herald Audio Bible by MegaVoice

The Herald is a discrete 1.4 ounce digital player with fixed internal flash memory and a microSD card slot and powered by only 2 AA batteries. You can load over 500 hours of tamper-proof audio content.

Envoy S by MegaVoice

The Envoy S is a lightweight 2.4 ounce, solar-powered digital player designed to take audio Bibles and educational content to rugged environments. It can carry up to 800 hours of audio.

Story Teller by MegaVoice

The Story Teller is a low cost, solar powered digital player for evangelism and Bible stories. It can carry up to 25 hours of tamperproof audio.

Niche Bible Tech

Digital Bible Library by United Bible Societies

The Digital Bible Library  (DBL) was birthed out of Every Tribe Every Nation, an alliance of Bible translation groups working together to translate the Bible into all 6,800 languages. The DBL is managed by the United Bible Societies and exists to preserve and safeguard texts into a standardized format as well as streamline the usage of its translations. Those who are granted a “library card” are able to leapfrog beyond the historically cumbersome process of getting permission to use translations and can even have privileges like storing the Bible text on their own servers.

Digital Bible Platform (API) by Faith Comes by Hearing

The Digital Bible Platform (DBP) is perhaps the easiest path to getting digital Bible texts for your projects. However, it limits you to only accessing the texts via an API every time. Because it lacks the rights to store Bible texts on your own server, it may not be the best fit for more robust Bible applications, but it is an ideal solution for small projects and the majority of Bible technology. Many people don’t realize that almost all Bible translations are bound by significant royalties and restrictions. It can be a slow and painful process to get access to the texts. Faith Comes By Hearing cleverly gets around this by establishing the legal contracts and payments with each translation owner and then lets you piggyback off of their access for free via an API.

Sovee (translation)

Sovee is known for their advances in translation and video streaming used by big brands and corporations around the world. They are also pioneering Bible translation with a new approach that mashes up 3 different translation models into one hyperefficient process. Traditional Bible translations takes 2 years to translate the book of Luke into a new language. Sovee has reported that a team of 2 people working full-time for 6 months can translate the entire Bible into a new language with 98% accuracy. Independent field tests haven’t matched that ideal yet, but it is still fast and an exciting exploration into what could be.

Prayer Technology

Abide by Carpenters Code

Free via iOS & Android
Abide is a team of former Google, Tesla, Ebay, and Microsoft technologists, who have created an app that fosters a daily focus on prayer. Record audio prayers and then share them with friends and family via Facebook, Twitter, email, and more. Follow prayer guides, daily reflections, and even join in prayer through pre-recorded prayers from leaders like Jack Graham, Luis Palau, and Tony Evans.

Ceaseless by TheoTech

Free via iOS
Designed by a former Amazon technologist, Ceaseless is both a prayer journal and a guide to helping you pray for friends, family, and coworkers more often. Sync the app with your contact list and then start praying for 3 friends each day. By focusing beyond bells and whistles and into matters of the heart and spiritual growth, Ceaseless has created a simple user experience fine tuned to doing what it is supposed to do.

Instapray

Free via iOS & Android
Instapray lets people around the world connect with each other through prayer. You can share your prayers in a private small group or with the whole world and then engage with others by commenting on their prayers or via private messages. Instapray has attracted quite a bit of attention because of its financial backing from investor Peter Thiel. However, it’s 59 million prayers from 194 countries is what is keeping it in the limelight.

Echo Prayer Manager by Clover

Free via iOS & Android
From the creators of Clover websites and donation software, Echo is a gorgeous app that helps you list and organize your prayers and then remind you via email or push notifications to keep praying. A “pray now” feature helps jump start and guide your prayer. Choose what you would like to pray for and optionally set a timer for how long you want to pray.

Ora

Free via iOS & Android
Developed by eResources, Ora is a prayer app that collects, organizes, tracks, reminds, connects and securely shares prayer requests and answers with anyone you choose. You can use it intimately with friends and family via the app or mobile platform. Or you can use the OraCOMMUNITY software to unite your existing church community or ministry around prayer.

Evangelism, Teaching & Training Platforms

LinguaDMS by TWR

Developed by The A Group, LinguaDMS is a media management and distribution platform that lets ministries organize and ship their message to websites, mobile apps, internet radio, and terrestrial broadcast outlets.

Kolo World App by Kolo Group

Free via iOS & Android
Designed to help both oral and literate cultures easily find content in their language, the Kolo World App offers audio Bible, the JESUS Film, and more in over 1,000 languages.

5fish by Global Recordings Network

Free via iOS, Android, FILEDIR, & Opera Mobile
It’s nothing fancy, but it proclaims the gospel in over 5,600 languages with Bible stories and YouTube videos! 5fish is a great example of how very basic technology can still be used for significant Kingdom impact.

iDisciple by Family Christian

iDisciple has aggregated over 250 popular Christian voices into a robust digital hub of sermons, music, devotionals, articles, radio, prayer requests, and small groups. It is a sizeable library with an equally large audience of 700,000 users.

RightNow Media 

The Netflix of Christianity. RightNow Media has aggregated over 10,000 Bible study videos from 150 ministries and publishers. Churches can subscribe and get access for their entire congregation. And pricing is based on the church member size.

MinistryGrid by LifeWay Christian Resources

Featuring over 3,000 training videos, MinistryGrid is a very cool way to teach church staff and volunteers new skills. The topical scope is broad and offers something for each area from parking lot to the pulpit.

Content with Community Platforms

Table by Gateway Church

Available via iOS & Android
Table’s development team has spent years in research to explore how to make discipleship technology that actually produces disciples. That isn’t to say they have the perfect platform, but they do have a budget that lets them take their time. This affords them the luxury to grow the platform slowly through controlled batches of new users, which offer insights into improvements. So new users, test, revise, repeat. It’s an approach that has grown Table into a pretty cool platform. Calling it the only app your church will ever need, Table offers community tools for small groups, prayer requests, volunteer mobilization, sermons, discussion, giving, a member directory, and classifieds all organized into a dynamic content stream for each user.

Incredible Islands by OneHope & My Healthy Church

Incredible Islands is children’s ministry reimagined. What if the Sunday School lesson lasted the whole week instead of just an hour on Sunday. Incredible Islands lets children’s ministers plan and create their weekly lessons both for the classroom and as online games to engage their students throughout the week. The admin panel makes it easy to coordinate and manage lessons with each student. The Incredible Islands app lets children read a weekly interactive Bible story and then engage via quizzes, memory verses, prayer, and daily quests to complete.

Gloo by Tango Group

Build your own digital platform. Gloo let’s you quickly create and publish content into a custom application and then track and analyze your audience behavior.

Disciplr by David C Cook

Disciplr makes it easy to find, purchase, and manage curriculum. It streamlines the process into one central hub making it easy to equip the teachers within your church.

StudySpace by Acton Institute

StudySpace is designed for both group and individual study around books and media. For small groups that regularly use books, it’s a nice platform for community around content.

Church.io by Tim Morgan

Free
This is a simple, clean, open source community platform for churches. Church.io offers profiles, groups, a church directory, attendance tracking,media sharing, and prayer requests as features. It’s a good option for churches wanting their own private social network or community platform.

Church Apps & Web Presence

UNIFY Church App by REBL Ventures

The UNIFY Church App offers on the go broadcasting and media streaming, events, and giving as well as basic information like about, blog, and contact.

SmartChurch

Free via iOS & Android
Offering both free and premium editions, SmartChurch offers a free church directory, custom branding, events, church info pages, and a church-wide communication thread. The premium edition adds features like a giving page, media management, and a leader dashboard.

Sharefaith

Sharefaith has designed a zero coding, 100% drag and drop church website builder with features like media libraries, online giving, blogging, podcasting, communication, and an embedded graphics editor. You also get a custom church app, rivaling other apps costing $1,000 or more. It is more affordable than many solutions without sacrificing the performance most churches need.

The Church App by Subsplash

Subsplash has been a leader in creating custom ministry apps. They’ve rolled what they’ve learned into The Church App, which lets you customize your app’s layout and features in real time. It’s great for video and audio, events, music, congregation engagement, Bible reading, and more

Media Streaming Tools

Church Online Platform by Life.Church

Free
The original church online platform is free to use and well-refined from years of experience and testing. It’s more than a video player. It offers congregation-wide chat, live prayer, and synced video streaming. Features include beautiful front-end designs, section-based editing, online giving, a media player, unlimited storage, photo editing, search engine optimizied, and more.

Media Fusion

Media Fusion helps ministries organize and manage digital libraries and make it easy for users to access content in full HD from any device.

Buzzsprout

Known for their podcast management tools, Buzzsprout has also grown to be a go to solution for church media and sermons.

Church Management Software

Rock RMS by Spark Development Network

Free
Rock RMS is a free church management software designed and funded by several churches. It is so good that including 4 of the top 10 largest U.S. churches use it. It includes person/family management, group management, contributions, check-in (for kids ministry, etc.), reporting, and a website content management system.

The City by ACS Technologies

The City is a private online community for your church where people can join groups, build relationships, give online, and find new ways to connect and do ministry together. It also offers the usual member management and communication tools as well as tools for volunteers, event management, and classifieds. The City was one of the first church management solutions to do community features well, so it’s become a popular choice in the current landscape of church management.

Planning Center by Ministry Centered Technologies

Planning Center began as a tool to organize worship teams, but it was designed so well that other departments throughout churches began using it to organize their ministries. Now Planning Center also offers official solutions for children’s ministry, youth ministry, and church administration. When grouped together, it is a complete solution offering tools for people management, groups, check ins, giving, resources, registrations, church services, screen projection, and worship teams.

Develop.me by Life.Church

Free
Rather than an annual performance review for ministry team members, Develop.me offers a platform for year-round growth and collaboration to promote team leadership development.

Churchix by Face-Six

Churchix is controversial, but it is notable, so we’ve included it on this list. Churchix uses facial recognition software for church attendance. As I’ve said before, “With the concept of facial recognition software is an underlying subconscious hunch that this is wrong because it’s an inauthentic substitute for one-on-one relationships. Imagine, ‘And then the apostles walked into the assembly, and their faces were scanned.’ It seems like it misses the authenticity. However what once seemed shocking will gradually seem normal. Ultimately, we’re going to see this type of technology become far more prominent.”

Analytics

Church Metrics by Life.Church

Free via iOS, Android & browser
Track church attendance, giving, salvations, baptisms, volunteers, and custom fields. Church Metrics is a clean way to track the ebbs and flow of your ministry.

4k World Map by YWAM

With the help of a leading cartographer, YWAM divided the world into 4,000 Omega Zones, which are like zip codes with geopolitcal boundaries that make sense. The goal is to track the spiritual needs, percent evangelized, and number of Christian workers in each region. It is a work in progress but is a significant step towards using big data for global missions.

Giving Technology

Lepton

Free via iOS & browser
Lepton is designed to foster a culture of generosity. For churches and nonprofits, Lepton provides a streamlined way to reach donors as well as donation analytics. It has launched in the UK and will be coming to the United States in the near future.

Church of (Lexington) by Zach Whelchel

Zach Whelchel spent a year creating open-source software that can be used to help Christians collaborate around needs and mission. Using his hometown of Lexington, KY, Zach built out a list of key churches and ministries throughout the metro as well as their needs. For example, Nathaniel Mission needed 4 computers. One family needed help paying their utilities. A refugee family needed a table. Church-of.com is fantastic execution on an idea that many have dreamed to create. Now you can use his code for free via GitHub and launch a need sharing network for your own city.

Kindrid by LifeChurch.tv + OneHope

Let people donate via text, in-app, and online giving and then track it with analytics. Many churches using Kindrid have reported increased donations and even new donors once that began offering text donations.

Tithe.ly

Tithe.ly is another popular church giving solution offering mobile app giving, a website widget, automated giving, downloadable data, text message giving, streamlined admin giving, and church database integration.