Verses is an iOS app with a noble mission:
To help us memorize Scripture.
I’ll be honest that I’m not nearly as focussed on memorizing Scripture as I was when I was a kid. Part of that is a natural pendulum swing from being pushed to memorize, but not necessarily understand Scripture, but that’s a post for another time.
When you open the app up, you’re greeted by a list of verses (“My Verses”), a button that takes you to your “Collections,” and then every single book of the Bible!
Clearly, there’s plenty of verses to choose from.
The Good
Verses offers several games and memory enhancing activities that everyone should find useful. However, what’s really neat is that these games are all offered to the user, but some games are recommended at certain moments in order to strategically enhance the users recall. Some of the games offered include:
- Reorder, reordering pieces of the verse
- Work Bank, where you’re given the verse with blank spaces and a word bank that changes with each choice
- Type Out, the user must type the first letter of each word in order.
Unlike some memory or education focused apps, this one doesn’t make the games more fun than they should be. They are engaging just enough to do their job of boosting and testing the user’s memory without being dull.
Another interesting feature of the app, which I have yet to try, is to create sets of verses—stored under “Collections”—and then invite friends to memorize them together. Each set can contain up to twenty passages and can be shared between ten users. This would be a great way to help a small group or a family memorize Scripture together.
If that weren’t enough, the app is beautifully designed, and I have yet to experience a single bug or defect in its use. The whole experience has been very enjoyable.
The Bad
Of course, nothing is perfect, and I wrote a nice little paragraph about how frustrated I was that I couldn’t work on a passage of Scripture as a whole…when I realized that I could do exactly this! Hooray! Just select one verses and then, when prompted to add it to “My Verses” or a collection, select the remaining verses you’d like to add. With that, the only thing I’d change about Verses would be for it to include the NIV, but I’m sure that its absence has more to do with licensing from Zondervan than anything else.
Wrapping Up
With that one slight, almost no-issue in mind, I really like Verses and will be heartily recommending it to my friends. In fact, my wife and I area looking to start a small group soon, and Verses will probably be a featured player in our plan to keep our small group united even when we’re not together physically.
That’s what this current explosion in technology is all about, right?
It’s about time we put it to good use. Verses can be yours—and your family’s through Family Sharing—for $4.99.
– Design (5.0)
– Features (4.0)
– Performance (5.0)
– Value for Money (4.5)
Verses supports iOS.
You can find more information about the app here.
Eric Dye says
This looks very promising!
Phil Schneider says
It’s really pretty darn cool! I’m starting a life group next month, and I think I’ll be using this.
Zach Whelchel says
Heads up to everyone interested in checking Verses out:
This weekend Verses is FREE! -> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/verses-bible-memory/id939461663?mt=8
Phil Schneider says
Thanks for the heads up, Zach!
Eric Dye says
SWEET!!!
(Dang it. Missed it. #sadpanda)
Phil Schneider says
Wahwah.