STEP travelling to 140 countries

STEP is travelling to 140 countries via the ICETE conference in Turkey for global Bible educators. The 415 delegates are each getting two copies. One to keep and one to multiply. 

One feature of STEPBible that the disadvantaged world loves is the way that it works in a browser even when there is no internet access. You can install it on any PC or Mac and it runs its own webserver, so all the complex database searches work just like on the website. 

The installer, together with 450 Bibles and commentaries fits on a tiny micro SD card, and fills less than 1G. We slot these into USB sticks so they can be used in any computer. And thanks to the generocity of organisations like Crossway and Biblica, these can be legally copied and given away. 

Many of these educators struggle with shortages of books, trustworthy software and often no internet. Students in the same class may have a huge range of skills from almost no Bible knowledge to linguistic genius. 

STEPBible ticks all their boxes, presenting the contents of many books from reliable sources, working offline, and enabling people to delve into the Bible as deep as they wish, or simply read it using software in their own language. 

I've never seen 1000 micro-SDs from a factory, so I decided to video the 'unboxing' - with unexpected consequences:

ICETE (International Council for Evangelical Theological Education), meeting in Nov.6-11 2015, is a truely global conference. It meets each time in different countries - recently in Nairobi, Cape Town, Sopron, Chiang Mai, and this year Antalya in Turkey. This theme this time is the impact of theological education.

Two of us (Simon, our COO and Librarian and myself) will travel there to personally demonstrate the usefulness of STEP. We also want to ask in what further ways Tyndale House could help provide Bible scholarship for the world church. 

Each delegate will get two USBs with a microSD of STEPBible installers and Bibles. The idea is that they keep one, and give one to their tech guy to multiply for their students, pastors and anyone who wants to read the Bible seriously. 

I'm hoping that some of them will find the interface isn't yet available in their language, and do something about it. Clicking on "Help us translate..." goes to a page where they can type the words and phrases from each menu and popup in their mother tongue. This results in a new version of STEPBible specially for their language community. 

If you know someone who can do that for a language we don't have, please point this out. If they need help getting started, put them touch with us.

We are able to present these USBs thanks to small and large donations towards this project, as well as voluntary contributions of time and work. Thank you you so much for generously supporting this mission. 

David Instone-Brewer for the STEP team.