Pretending you’re looking up Bible verses on your iPhone during church.
May 25th by JonOh stop, you’re embarrassing both of us.
Let’s be honest, we both know you’re not using your iPhone strictly to look up Bible verses during the sermon. It might have started that way, but it never stays that way.
You started by taking a few quick notes during the “margin moments” of church. You know those, the few minutes while men and women in black are magically changing whatever is on stage or they’re preparing for baptism or giving the ushers the offering plates.
Those are perfect little chunks of time to do some “worship multitasking,” because the truth is that the easiest place to write a to-do list is church. Something about prayer makes us all think of a million things we need to do. So you begin to make a few notes.
But you have to look up one of them online, so you open Safari and next thing you know, you’re searching the Internet in the middle of church. Pull it back together. Get your head in the game.
OK, I’m only going to look at Youversion, the Bible app or Biblegateway.com, this is serious business. This is church. But I wish iPhone Bibles had a little jingle that let people around you know that you’re looking up a Bible verse. I wish they quietly whispered when you opened the online Bible and would say, “Reading the Bible, we’re reading the Bible.” It’s bad enough these punks don’t know I direct deposit my tithe and think I stiff arm the offering bucket each Sunday.
But that’s me, you? You’re playing Angry Birds right now on your iPhone. Or maybe Sally’s Spa or Cooking Dash or HarborMaster. Ridiculous! And if I hear the sound of Bejeweled 2, I might come over the aisles at you.
Did you really just shazam a hymn? Did that happen? That’s when you know you’re a sweaty heathen, when you have to try to use a service that can identify and name of a song. (87% of songs sung at church are “Blessed Be the Name” by Matt Redmon, there’s really no need to look them up.) Plus, you should know by now, only about 17 Christian songs are loaded into the shazam service. I swear, I could play a Lady Gaga song on a washboard and it would identify it, but it never knows Christian songs.
Put your iPhone away, no one, and I mean no one, has the moral fortitude to only look up Bible verses on an iPhone during church. That’s what Paul was talking about when he said “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” That was about using the iPhone at church. Seriously, google it. Just not right now. Wait until church is over.
Comments
I think the song is Blessed Be YOUR Name by Matt RedmAn…C+ for effort.
yea, the direct deposit thing was a joke, right? If not I need this for sure
Not to sound the paragon of virtue, but I do 2 things on my iPhone in church.
Look at the Wave Bible,
and use Evernote to take notes.
Seriously.
Maybe because I was stuck with a lowly Palm phone for so many years.
Maybe because I carry enough PK guilt from ignoring my own dad throughout high school.
Maybe because I can't afford the whole plan right now, so my iPhone is just a glorified mp3 player for now.
Probably that last one.
My Kindle is also a culprit of this! It's really does have a Bible on it, but I am also guilty of looking for books when the sermon gets, shall we say, "Slow"!? I try to only look for books that have a "God" focus, but that New York Times Best Seller List is just so sneaky!!!
I shazam bible verses all day…aaaall day.
haha, 87% percent of songs are Blessed Be Your Name…
Get over it…if I want to look up something on my Blackberry ….I'l look up something. But for the most part I am using my YouVersion and writing sermon notes on it.
Ok, I'll admit using the Droid for more than YouVersion, especially if there's a full blown Woot Off in swing.
Oh my gosh, this is one of your funniest posts ever. Especially about the Shazam app. I caught my stepmom trying it at a Jeremy Camp concert. I wanted to tell her it wouldn't work, but I just quietly sat there and giggled.
Back in the day, I used to take three Bibles with me to Church: NIV, Greek-Interlinear and Amplified. Now I use my iPhone when I preach or I take notes with it. I've recorded, photographed and even sent out a tweet or two if so inspired. I've even sent a couple of text messages to someone instead of passing a written note. If a Church has a "no use of electronic devices durning service" sign, I simply look for the exit sign.
Ouch, Acuff… you really know how to cut to the core of me.
I confess before all of you that my iPhone during church sin is… Words with Friends. It started out as an attempt to work a key word from the sermon into the game, but now I'm just trying to figure out how to work that Z into the Triple Word Score.
- A PRAYER FROM JESUS –
This prayer is from Jesus that we may here from Him, that He may meet our needs. It only consist of three simple steps.
1) We need to read one scripture. This will focus us in the word that brings everlasting life.
2) Since this prayer is from Jesus we need to direct our prayer to Him personally. To often Christian focus they're prayer‘s to G_D the father. Scripture proclaims that Jesus should be the focus of our prayer.
3) The simplest part of this Prayer is to ask Jesus one question. Please, all that is required for this question is to make it simple. Let Jesus Himself finish the question when He gives you that understanding through prayer.
The PRAYER
The scripture that is the focus of this prayer is “ACTS 2:38”. It’s not necessary to do any study into this scripture. Jesus Himself willl bestow the understanding that will resonate in your heart.
The most important part of this prayer is that we need to direct our prayer directly to Jesus. If you normally would say Father in your prayer, change your focus from the Father to Christ Jesus by lifting Jesus name up every time you would normally use Father in your prayer.
Maybe the hardest part of this prayer is the question that we need to ask Jesus. For man as we are, always try to understand the question and may add many additional quires. The simplest question is all that is required.
Simply ask Jesus ‘WHY, Jesus why’
I work for a certain cellular phone companies that provides the service for those iPhones being used during church, so I don't care what you're doing with it, as long as you've got that $30/month data package that helps the company pay to keep my butt in a chair.
we encourage gadget use during our services – I am not threatened by their need to be connected…
I have been known to tweet a great quote from the sermon right as it's said. But, that's only because I feel like all my followers need to hear such powerful words. I could wait, but then it wouldn't be fresh in my mind and the effectiveness won't be there later. Or something like that…
I'm glad I use my iPhone in church not to look up Bible Verses but only as a remote for my Keynote Presentations with my sermons. But my wife asks me more than once: "Stop them playing with their phones." So next time I see someone "looking-up", I shall link them to your blog. Nice story!
I use an Ipaq Hx2795 (its a PDA ) it has E-Sword, a wonderful and free bible program for mobile or computer. And one day after church someone accused me of texting in church, she was livid even went to the pastor. I tried to explain to her that it will not send text messages. Sometime I use my Itouch has numerous bible programs I would use it to go online and check things of concern in the sermon but getting on our chuch Wi-Fi is a joke. Anyway the closet I came to using it to play a game is when one day I cut it on ( it always goes to the last thing you were doing when you cut it back on) it went to a game I had been playing . It is a 3rd generation yes that means it has an external speaker , thank the Lord I had already cut it down,lucky me.
[...] read on the issue. – Guilt as charged – using your iPhone as your Bible during charge. SCL humorously chimes in. – “Worship by any other name…” from Collide [...]
I taught an all day Saturday class that had teens and adults in it at my church. Afterwards I had an adult come up and complaign about how distracting the teens were texting on their cell phones and talking during the class. I had noticed them pull out the cell phones a couple of times, but only for a minute or two, and the talking I heard was all asking each other questions about something I said so I didn't stop them. At least texting is silent, about 4 of the adults had their cell phones ring during the class so I felt the adults were in the lead on the distraction scale. I think ringing cell phones in service are much worse than people twittering during church. How hard is it to put the thing on vibrate?
[...] check out the full post HERE. [...]
Ipod Touch… no way am I facebooking, it's all about the Olivetree Biblereader
Why does it have to be an iPhone?! Are we BlackBerry holders not Godly enough? Must we go Mac?
my pastor is constantly making cracks from the pulpit about not knowing if we are checking references or playing solitare during sermon!
Fantastic! wow
[...] YouVersion, which is an amazing tool. That’s pretty much all I use on the go. I’m with Jonathan Acuff on the fact that iPhones need a jingle to let everyone around me in church know that I’m [...]