Bible Plan Basics
What are Bible Plans?
Plans provide daily devotional content rooted in Scripture. They help our global Community study and understand God’s Word, meditate on its promises, and apply biblical truths to their lives.
Bible Plans are available in the Bible App and on Bible.com.
Content Guidelines
At YouVersion, we believe that excellence honors God and inspires people, and we expect Plans to exemplify this. To increase the likelihood of your content getting accepted, please make sure your Plan closely adheres to our quality, mission, and purpose guidelines.
Clear Mission
YouVersion exists to encourage and challenge people to seek intimacy with God every day—not to advance personal platforms, positions, or politics.
Content that is mission-focused will:
Appeal to a global audience. Ask yourself, “Will this Plan resonate with people coming from various backgrounds, cultures, and life experiences?”
Be a helpful friend. As you create your Plan, view yourself as a guide coming alongside a fellow child of God as they explore His Word.
Avoid sharing personal opinions about controversial topics. Our platform is not the place to start a debate or spark an argument, and we reserve the right to reject content we would reasonably expect to stoke controversy.
High Quality
Please keep in mind that any content that does not meet our quality standards will likely not be published on YouVersion.
All content must be:
Ready for publication at the time of submission. Please have a trusted reader review your Plan before submitting it. Due to the number of Plans we receive, we cannot edit submissions.
Free of errors. If you don’t have a trusted proofreader to assist you, you may want to use automated tools like Grammarly to help you fix any spelling and grammar issues.
Encouraging. Try to avoid any language that could be interpreted as condescending, judgmental, offensive, or assumptive.
Aligned with our formatting requirements. You can find more on this in our Essential Elements section.
Shared Purpose
The core purpose of a Bible Plan is to meet people where they are as they explore Scripture while offering insight, context, and encouragement.
Content that shares this purpose will:
Stay grounded in biblical truth. YouVersion is a digital ministry of Life.Church, and adheres to Life.Church’s Essential Beliefs. We expect content from our Partners to also uphold mainstream Christian beliefs.
Avoid promoting or tearing down a person or political platform. To help build our Community up in love, we want to focus on our commonalities, not our differences.
Lead someone to take a step forward in their faith. Your YouVersion Plans should accomplish this through the devotional content you’re sharing within the app—not by linking to other sites or by promoting other unrelated resources. (You can use one Call-to-Action link at the end of your content, but we’ll cover this later.)
Essential Elements
While we welcome Bible Plans on an increasingly wide variety of topics, every Bible Plan needs to cover the same common ground. Your Plan’s Essential Elements help our Community discover your Plan and begin engaging with God’s Word.
Plan Title
In 50 characters or less, create a title that accurately reflects your Plan content and hooks your audience. Please follow the most common title guidelines for your language. For English Plans, titles should be capitalized according to AP Style.
Plan Description
Help our Community understand what your Plan is about by describing it in 70 words or less. Explain what’s in your Plan and how someone can expect to grow by completing it—don’t advertise or include calls to action.
Partner URL
People can learn more about you or your organization by tapping a link to your website. This link will appear in the Publisher section where we thank you for providing the Plan. You must provide this link when you submit your content.
Bible References
Scripture is central to YouVersion’s mission, and it is central to Bible Plans. Every Plan day must be built around at least one Bible verse or passage. Take the time to intentionally pick out several verses that are relevant to your Plan’s topic, and create Plan days centered on those passages.
Main Plan Images
Bible Plan images provide visual appeal and help people decide what content they want to view next. You’ll need to provide two images for your Plan: a 1440x810 pixel banner image and a 320x320 pixel icon.
Because we serve a global Community, we ask that you submit images that a diverse audience could easily understand. While you can use your ministry’s original artwork, please avoid promotional images and book covers that might distract someone from your Plan content.
Optional Elements
Video or Audio
You can include video or audio in your Bible Plan if it helps someone connect your devotional content to Scripture.
Please keep a video’s length at 5 minutes or less since most people will watch on their smartphones.
Video and audio files should be high-quality, without grain/pixelation with the maximum resolution being 1080p. These files should also be free of advertisements and product placements from any brand.
Plan Day Images
Images can be included in the Plan day if they enhance your content, but they must be free from advertising, website links, or other distracting elements. You must upload your image in the Partner Portal during the submission process.
Narrated Audio
Narrated Audio gives our readers the ability to have the written content of your Bible Plans read to them. To include this component, the audio file you submit must be a professional, undistorted, word-for-word narration of your devotional content.
Call to Action (CTA)
A link to your ministry will already be in your Plan’s “Publisher” section, so please only feature one CTA when necessary, and always place it at the end of your Plan. You can pick from one of these CTA options for your last Plan day:
Was this Plan helpful? We adapted this Plan from {another resource}
Want more content like this? Connect with {Your Ministry or Name}
Learn More about {Your Ministry or Name}
Explore Other Resources from {Your Ministry or Name}
Did this Plan encourage you? We’d love to get to know you better. Connect with {Your Ministry or Name}
Need Grammar Help?
We recommend a free tool called Grammarly to help you write devotional content without mistakes.
This is a recommendation and not an advertisement. YouVersion receives no compensation from this recommendation.