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Using iOS Devices in Worship – YouVersion

April 20, 2012 in Contest, Faith, God, iPad, iPhone, Ministry, Prayer, Technology, Worship with 5 Comments


Today I want to look at a very obvious, but very practical application for use in worship.

I don’t know about you, but I know that, as embarrassing as it is to admit, I sometimes arrive at church without my bible. My Sunday mornings are so hectic, and there is so much to load into my car, that its very easy to forget things, in fact, I’ve even had times when I’ve forgotten my guitar, and had to go back home after arriving at church.

When I got my first iPhone, I can honestly say one of the first applications I searched for, was a good bible. At that time, there really weren’t any good ones. There were great concepts, but they didn’t execute very well. If it was an NIV bible, you had to be online to view it (due to copyright issues).. and with our church meetig in a highschool gym, data connection was always an issue. Bibles that worked “offline” were never the translations I wanted.. it was usually a paraphrase, which, when sharing the word with a congregation, I don’t think a paraphrase is the way to do it.

Cue YouVersion. YouVersion is an amazing bible application that far exceeds the expectation of any bible application on your iOS Device. YouVersion carries (according to their description) 80+ translations of the bible, and many of these are available for offline reading. Even the NIV can be viewed offline. From time to time YouVersion does a 2-3 day promo where you can download the full NIV bible, for offline reading.

The thing I love about YouVersion is the fact that they have hundreds of reading plans and devotions. I don’t know about you, but I SUCK at reading my bible, but when I have a plan in front of me, I am much more inclined to read. Along with reading plans they have commentaries, some by major contributors, but also people are allowed to add their own comments as well, which causes for some great discussion.

The added bonus as a worship leader is search functions. Many times when I’m planning a service, I try to find bible verses to share during the worship time, but (again sadly) I don’t know my bible as well as I should, and I can’t just think of a bible verse to go with our theme. With YouVersion, I’m able to search for themes and topics, and will get great bible verses to go along with it.

A feature I haven’t used, but want to try out, is the Live function. You can create events and people can log into those events and share verses and notes during that event.

All in all, if you have an iPhone, or really any smartphone, and you have a need for a bible app (which any Christian should really) YouVersion should be the app you are using! Oh.. and the best part about YouVersion.. it’s totally FREE!

As an added bonus of this series, PageFlip has given me a bluetooth pedal to give away! There are a number of ways to enter, and you can enter daily. Scroll down and check out the rafflecopter box for ways to enter. If you are looking to start using an iOS device (be it an iPad, and iPod Touch or an iPhone) you are going to want a foot pedal, so why not get one for free! If you use an Android tablet, or a laptop for your worship setting, it will work too!

Today is the final day for this contest, it will be over at midnight tonight, and I will then go through to verify all the entries in the morning, and then will announce the winner tomorrow!

Continue Reading…

Using iOS Devices in Worship – OnSong

April 16, 2012 in Apple, Contest, iPad, Ministry, Music, Technology with 25 Comments


I’ve always been a techie. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been taking things apart, seeing how they work, and then trying to make them better. I started playing music at a very young age, though I didn’t really start to take it seriously until I was maybe 9. At that time, my love for tech was still very much in play. As I would play music, I would play around with amps, take them apart and try to make the built in effects better.

Cue the year 1995. I was 11, my family got our first computer. For a kid who loves to take apart and tweak electronics, this was awesome! I was always taking apart the computer, looking at the insides, and adding things to make it work better. At that time, we didn’t have USB audio interfaces to plug our guitars into computers, heck, we didn’t even have USB! So I remember devising different tactics to allow me to plug my guitars into the computer, so I could play with the sounds. I remember in the early 2000′s playing in a celtic band, and finding a way to plug my guitar through a laptop, and then manipulate the sounds, as they were better than the cheap effects pedals I had at that time.

Tech has always been important to me, and anytime I’ve done a task, I’ve often tried to find a way to have tech involved in some way. Any time I am at a conference, I’m always the tech guy, be it running sound, running the presentations, or both. Back when I was in college, I couldn’t walk through the mall without some store clerk approaching me, and asking me to come fix their computer system.

My love for tech naturally moved into my love of worship and leading people in worship. Over the last 7 years as a worship leader, I’ve tried lots of weird things so I could involved my love of tech into worship services. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it blew up (literally). Continue Reading…

iPad on Stage Setup w/ OnSong

February 3, 2012 in Apple, iPad, iPhone, Ministry, Music, Technology, Worship with 8 Comments

I wrote a while back about using OnSong on my iPad for is playing sheet music.. Well here is my latest update to the setup.. Watch the video to see the iPad mic stand mount that I made for $20!

UPDATE:

Just yesterday we added a second monitor to the mix as well. So now I have my iPad on my stand, using the VGA adapter, its plugged into a VGA splitter/amplifier, and then we have 2 19″ VGA monitors on stage for musicians, then we have 2 singers who use iPads, and with OnCue in OnSong, I can wirelessly send my screen to theirs, and we all have exactly the same music on our screens.

the only member not using digital music now is the piano player.. because she doesnt want to.

Excel Drop Downs on iOS! FINALLY

January 3, 2012 in Apple, iPad, Technology with 0 Comments

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If you are anything like me, you’ve been searching aimlessly for an app forI your iOS device that allows you to use drop down menus created with Excel. THE SEARCH IS OVER!!!!

CloudOn is a new app (currently only available in the US app store) that brings Microsoft Office (in its entirety) to the iPad. It uses Dropbox and allows you to open sync cloudon to your Dropbox and access files from there. The only thing I’ve checked out so far is excel, because it was my main goal with it, and guess what, it allows you to use drop down menus! I can’t tell you how great this is, not just for me, but for a lot of excel users put there!

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This is fantastic news!

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UPDATE: turns out they were only letting a small number of people sign up for testing, so if you didn’t get in, you’ll have to wait.. You can sign up for to be updated on space opening, on their website

Top 11 Posts of 2011

January 3, 2012 in Apple, blogging, Faith, Gear, iPad, iPhone, Jailbreaking, Mac, Ministry, Technology, Worship, Youth with 0 Comments

I’ve been away on vacation for the past 2 weeks, so I didn’t post this on December 31 like everyone else.. but incase you are interested, here are my top 11 posts of 2011.

Use Pandora Radio On Your iPhone in Canada
HotSpot Shield for iPhone DOES Work
Canadian’s Can Access Netflix USA
Get Spotify in Canada
iOS 4+ Compatible Slim Slider Theme
John Mark McMillan Signs with Integrity
My Modded iPod Touch
OnSong iPad App for Worship Leaders
Funny Christian Advertising
Mac ToDo/iPhone.. The Way it Should Be
My Favorite Pod Patches

This past year I’ve really been focusing on the tech posts (as you can see from my Top 11).  This wasn’t my initial purpose with the blog.  Originally I planned on posting a lot of ministry based stuff, and I did some of that, but looking at the stats, that wasn’t the stuff getting the hits this  year.  So my plan (do I dare call it a resolution) for 2012 is first of all to post more, but I’m going to continue to focus on Tech stuff, but I’m planning to specifically post more on Tech in ministry. So the coming months will hopefully provide you with some great tech tools and tips that will help your ministry, whether you are in youth ministry, worship, tech, whatever ministry you may be in.  I will also continue to post random cool hacks I find like Pandora in Canada (it had over 10,000 hits in 2011).

Make Long Distance Phone Calls 100% Free

November 22, 2011 in Culture, Family, iPhone, People, Rogers, Technology with 2 Comments

From time to time I stumble across something on the internet that is just to good and to useful not to share, this is one of those things.

My family all live on the east coast.. New Brunswick and PEI, and during this time of the year, my parents live in the Dominican Republic, so, phone bills are always a pain in the butt. Yes, I know, you’re probably saying “it’s 2011, who uses the phone anymore”.. well sometimes you don’t want to sit in front of a computer and have a chat, sometimes you want to walk around with a phone and get some house work done while you catch up on all the goings on back home.

Last night I was told about freephoneline.ca . This is a site that has a number of services, but one of the services they have is, they give you a 100% free local number, which you can set up to forward to another number. I found this to be really neat, because I can set up a second number and have it forwarded to my cellphone, which then could give me a business line, and a personal line.. share the business number with work people, personal with family and friends, and now you don’t need to carry around 2 cellphones. Now there are a number of other services out there that allow you to have a second number coming to your phone, if you have a smart phone, for example, you could use Line2.. but line 2 costs about $20/month… freephoneline is 100% free.

So how do you make free long distance calls, just because you get a free number.. well, the title may be a little misleading, because its not free calls to anyone at any time.. but, what we have done is pick the few long distance people who we make most of our calls to, and now we can call all of them for free. Heres how…

Set up an account at freephoneline.ca and select a number that is local to you.. then go into the account settings and enable forwarding.. it asks you what number to forward the number to.. you put in the number of the long distance person you want to call… hit save, and NOW when you call the local number you selected, it will automatically forward to the long distance number you set up.

In short, it looks like this ->

My account with a local number for ME -> forwards to my parents number in the Dominican Republic -> I make a local call for me, it rings on their end.. and there are no fees…

They can also set up an account with a number that is local for them, and it forwards to my number.. and when they call their local number, it’ll forward to me!

It’s really quite brilliant.. and I think its another step in the right direction.. I’m a firm believer that phone companies are ripping us off like crazy, and anything I can do (that’s legal) that “sticks it to them” I try to do, because they are charging me an arm and a leg and profitting 100000000% on everything they charge you.

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