Am writing this as I am preparing a presentation on tablet computers in ministry for the Mobile Ministry Forum. Some application ideas have come to mind as I’ve looked at the sad state of things in this niche of persona/mobile computing:

Choose Your Biblical Adventure
In the mode of the Choose Your Adventure books of my youth, wouldn’t it be suitable to create an interactive ebook which takes a selection of Bible stories and allows a person to insert themselves into the story. When they choose a route that follows the chronology of literal reading of the text, the person is shown the reference to the text. Such an application would be built with the in-app purchases tech so that stories can be added over time instead of getting the entire text at once.

Color Me A World
A coloring book which draws solely on Genesis 1. As each “day” is colored, additional items appear in the screen to be detailed/colored. Maybe add something like a canvas/palette enhancement where you might only get a few colors to start with, but by the time you get to the 6th day, you have the complete color wheel. Limited use, but invites the artist to join into the understanding of what God went through when creating the world.

Life of a Disciple
Given that there’s little known about most of the disciples, a comic that uses art, text, and video to expand the story of following Christ through that perspective. Something like a cross between Operation AJAX and The Jesus Film Project’s My Last Day.

Scout Out the Land
Using Google Maps/Earth, create a photo book which encourages a person to see the lands talked about in the Bible as if they were walking through it. Here, they’d choose the century/kingdom, and then be pulled down ground-level to the land and its up to them to explore and collect facts. After a certain amount of facts are collected, the maps zoom out and the Scriptures along with other data are given to fill in the blanks about the stories.

Beatitudes Devotional
A 30 day devotional based on the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12, Luke 6:20-26) in which a person is invited to write, record (audio/video), or link to a demonstration of that beatitude. 

Seriously, all that I’m seeing in the app store is variations on Bible/devotionals. How about we take things a considerable step forward and actually using the tablet space to instigate maturity in the faith, but making applications that compel us to want to share the outcomes of our steps in Christ?