LifeChurch has just recently published one of the coolest little things for the mobile phones. It’s called YouVersion Live. Basically, it’s going to allow those who have a web-enabled phone to read the bible, answer survey questions, respond to questions, take notes, get the speaker’s notes, and much more all from their phone.

Sounds great but how do you set all that stuff up? How do you run it in a live service? I’ve run into a couple of problems in getting it set up. This post is for those who come after me…allow me to save you a few hours of frustration. (I’ll add some screenshots later. If you have any other suggestions or helps, leave them in the comments.)

How To Start a You Version Live Event
First, go to youversion.com and sign up. The login is located in the upper right hand corner. If you need further instructions on how to sign up…just step away from the computer now and get help.

Second, click on Community tab. It should have this huge “New! YouVersion Live” call out. On the far right, there is a ‘Create a Group’ link. Click on that. My group name was Western Hills Baptist Church. You can make one for your small group, youth group, women’s group, men’s group – whatever.

Fill out all the stuff but there is something to consider. At the end of that form there is a “Keep This Group Private” button. I was tempted to click this because I hate S. P A. M. But if you do this…makes it very hard, ney – impossible for people who might be sitting in your audience to find you and join in. Plus, it will take a couple of days for your stuff to go live if you choose the private option. I chose to keep our group public, something to think about. Congratulations, you’ve created a group.

Next, click back on the community tab. You’ll have the following options as a sub-menu: Feed, Groups, Contributions, Likes, Tags, and Live. To create a Live Event click on the Group tab…NOT the Live tab. (I’m not here to explain the menu choices…just the navigator! ha ha) You should see the group you created in the list. Click on the group name.

It should take you to a screen that has the following choices on it: Manage Group, Create Live Event, Upcoming Events, View Group Members. We’re wanting to create an event so click on that link. The menu is pretty self explanatory but be careful with the time settings. It’s a bit finicky and you can’t just type away a time in there. It’s one of the funkiest drop down menus in the world. It will take a bit to get used to it.

The publish date is when you want people to start being able to find the event online or on their phone. You want to make sure this time is earlier than your start time to give folks a chance to find it. Duh, right? Hold is the opposite of publish. So if you want the even to disappear after you’re done with it, put a date and time here. If you don’t put one, it will stay visible afterwards. The significance is that people will be able to get the info that was shared during the live event but obviously won’t be able to participate.

Now the fun but awkward part. You should be looking at a screen with all these cool items to play with. All the stuff on the right hand column can be dragged/drug/whatever to the left hand column. Once in the left hand column, you can click and edit the settings. Things like Bible verses, questions, polls, you can even put a twitter box in there that people can tweet the event.

Notes are available to put up and the users can take their own notes – although I’m not sure how helpful that is on a phone. I guess if they are sitting at a PC during a conference, they could scream through some notetaking then upload it for the rest to see. Nevertheless, it’s a cool feature and one we’ll be playing with in the future. When you click the “Preview” button, it will show you what your stuff looks like on a mobile phone.

Then there is the DASHBOARD button. Dashboard does NOT do what you think it should do. It is not a dashboard that will allow you to fix and edit your presentation in real time. It’s just a window that shows you the results of your questions and polls. If you are going to use this in an audience to show the results, this would be the window you’d want to show on the projector. But if you want to edit your presentation AND have the results shown at the same time in two different monitors – you’re going to have to do a couple of extra clicks.

How Do I Edit My Live YouVersion Presentation?
Great question…and there isn’t a magic button that allows you to do this. First, notice the web address of your presentation when you clicked the “Dashboard” button. It should say something like – http://www.youversion.com/events/(4 numbers)1136/dashboard. The /dashboard is the key here. Delete it and instead put /edit at the end of address. That should take you right back to the ‘edit’ screen that will allow you to add, delete, and edit the presentation.

To put the Dashboard in one screen and the edit in the other, open another web browser window and put the event address in the presentation window, while leaving the edit address in the other.

Feel free to add any other hints or stuff I missed in the comments. Screenshots are coming.