“Green Team, mobilize!”

A message just hit the portal from Team Leader Hazel, announcing five new missions for any team member up for the challenge. Who will volunteer for an assignment?

Your task, should you choose to accept it, might require you to leap over perilous punctuation pitfalls, capture capitalization flaws, and navigate undulating terrain pockmarked with usage errors.

Strap on your boots, soldiers. It’s time to proofread plans for YouVersion, aka the “Bible App.”

Have you seen it before? You might have installed it on your phone, and it might have become your preferred way to read the Bible. 

If you catch your preacher or small group leader side-eyeing you during study time, thinking you’re scrolling reels because you’ve got your face stuck in your phone, all you have to do is hold up your screen and innocently say, “Hey, I’m on the Bible app, and I’m even taking notes!” 

You can use the Bible app to compare translations of the Bible to see how verses might be expressed differently. You might like the “Verse of the Day” feature, along with its devotional content and guided prayer.

But the “Plans” section is where I and the rest of the Green Team come in, along with the members of the Red, White, Blue, and Purple Teams. We are the volunteer proofreaders, the ones to give the plans a last good going-over before sending them out into the world.

The plans are composed of daily devotional content, scriptural references, and sometimes audio and video files. The plan I chose for my last assignment had glorious audio files: ahhh, how satisfying! I can listen and follow along with the text as if I’m a small child and my teacher is reading to me during circle time. 

Oh, but we had a minor error: it is “judgment” and not “judgement.” I missed that word in an eighth grade classroom spelling bee, and the correct spelling is seared into my memory.

The questions with which we wrestle:

Is it Jesus’ or Jesus’s? (Both can be correct, the first per the AP Stylebook and the second per the Microsoft and Chicago Manuals of Style.)

Do we use “Godly” or “godly”? (It is “godly.” You are not committing a sin if you do not capitalize it.)

It is not our job to make edits, nor do we get terribly involved in the theological nuances of plans. If a plan has too many grammatical errors, we send it back to the author. If the theology is “off,” we report it to a Team Leader for a more thorough review.

Most of the plans I’ve reviewed have been pretty tame, but bless the author who wrote, “God is like a friend with benefits.” 

That one got sent back for a major edit.

I’m a former English teacher, and one of my skills, which has only sharpened over time, is seeing flaws in written text; errors stick out like red pinpricks in a sea of black and white shadow. I’ve always enjoyed words and the various ways they can be joined to make meaning, but it’s more than the words: knowing the rules of a language and how to apply them is the difference between merely playing with blocks versus building a skyscraper. Words and ideas don’t hold together unless they’ve got some strong grammar glue.

So how did I get involved with YouVersion? 

In 2023, I read the Bible through for the first time ever using a plan from the Bible app: “BibleProject: One Story That Leads to Jesus.” Honestly, it was the 150 cartoon animations spread throughout the reading that kept me moving along and engaged with the more boring sections of the Bible. 

Anybody out there with a passion for Leviticus and Numbers? Well, one of those cartoons might just light a fire under your tail, thereby creating a new appreciation for the Pentateuch.

When I finished, I reflected on my time spent reading the Bible and learning about the beauty of the entirety of Scripture, made more alive by those animations. I began to explore the Bible app, and I found a “Volunteer” link. It wasn’t long before I found a section dedicated to reviewing the thousands of plans that are submitted each year.

Since clear writing equals clear communication, and since I’ve got an official grammar police badge, what better way to help advance God’s kingdom than by pulling out my red pen and using my eagle eye?

But it’s more than the grammar now. Nowhere else have I found a global body of believers committed to spreading the Word of God, sharing the gospel message of Christ, and working together in a like-minded community. While we normally operate independently, we also have opportunities for fellowship through virtual meetings. 

The last one I joined happened at 6:00 pm CST, but there were individuals from all over the world. A young man from Uganda set his alarm for a 2:00 am wakeup, just so he could join the other team members for a time of fellowship and prayer.

When’s the last time you rolled out of bed in the wee hours of the morning to meet up with your brothers and sisters in Christ halfway around the world?

Pretty cool, huh?

But what’s even better is this: the plans I end up reviewing almost always have an immediate relevance to issues I’m facing in my life. It’s like God is saying, “All right, get your grammar fix. You know you like finding those errors. But I’m going to do a little editing on your life in the process.”

God doesn’t just take our lives and highlight the errors, expecting us to do the work on our own. Instead, he transforms the entire piece, creating unity, depth, and purpose. The Master Author is constantly helping us write our stories, making revisions as needed, perfecting our lives for His glory. 

When we’ve fouled up the phrasing, He knows how to set it right. 

And He is far less harsh than an old English teacher with her proverbial red pen.

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While the Green Team is part of the larger “English Plan Review” group, there are Localization Teams dedicated to language translation of YouVersion products. There are Spiritual Support Teams whose primary job is to pray and connect individuals to spiritual resources. There are Technical Support Teams whose members use their patience and expertise to assist with technical issues, information requests, and app support.

If you want to learn more about serving as a volunteer with YouVersion, check out the link here.