Jonathan Pountney puts the spotlight on two mobile applications – Spurgeon’s Morning & Evening and Christian Hymns
One consistent prayer point that I’ve heard raised over the last few months at our weekly church prayer meeting has been for members to have help reading their Bible. This, I’ve noticed, has been especially true for those on furlough, working from home, or shielding. There is a strong desire – amongst our church family, at least – to make the most of time at home by growing in knowledge and love of God.
As you might expect, this has been a source of real encouragement. But if there is a parallel realisation for those wishing to grow, it is that time – to use the cliché – seems to be slipping through people’s fingers. Despite many feeling the burden of perpetual lockdown, there is a sense in which each day passes at an extraordinary pace.
No sooner do people feel they have hours to spare than the day ends and they realise they haven’t spent the time in God’s word that they initially planned.
Despite our failures, the desire to read God’s word and to grow in our faith is a sign of the Holy Spirit’s work in our life. It is also a sign that we are saved to something greater than this world.
Where is the unbeliever’s hope at this time? Is it not in the resumption of normality: shopping, sport and self-government.
Where do Christians find their hope? In a multitude of places, but not least in the pages of Scripture as we see Christ and glorify in His love towards us on the cross and as we understand God’s will for our lives as it’s revealed in His word.
Morning & Evening
We ought to be grateful, then, for the sheer wealth of resources available to us to help with this. One tool that has proved increasingly useful during this time is the Daily Readings app that has been developed by the Christian Hymns Committee. The app features a modernised version of C. H. Spurgeon’s Morning & Evening, which has been specially curated to include extra meditations, prayer points, Bible readings, and a hymn selection with playable accompaniment.
The features of the app work seamlessly together. The curated meditations that supplement Spurgeon’s text mean that your diet of Bible reading is longer than Spurgeon’s helpful, albeit short, textual reference. And the addition of a complete ESV Bible within the app means that you can read further into Scripture with one tap of your finger.
The app therefore gives Christians a resource on their phone that helps them read Scripture, understand it, pray in relation to it, and sing a hymn to reinforce those truths.
Christian Hymns
A useful partner to the Daily Readings app is the now relatively well-known Christian Hymns app – the full electronic version of the popular hymnbook.
Many of the online reviews that I’ve read reveal that the app is used as much by individuals in their personal devotions as it is for corporate worship. The playable accompaniments for each hymn mean that even those who are not musical are able to easily sing hymns at home.
The sad reality of our moment is that corporate church life is likely to look different to what we might be used to. One problem facing churches that use hymnbooks is managing infection control. For those churches the future may well look like each congregational member bringing their own tablet or phone to sing from. This won’t be the case for every church (and there’s a clear imperative to think about visitors who might be attending) but the app does provide one solution to this problem.
Being ready
Our prayer, now more than ever, ought to be that God would bring many thousands to salvation in our country. We need to be ready, therefore, to respond to visitors both online now and physically in the future.
For better or worse, people – especially those who are younger – are used to living their life through the interface of their phone screen. If we want to reach the next generation with the gospel and mature disciples then the church needs, in some circumstances, to adapt its approach. These apps are a brilliant tool for doing that.
