“I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you.“

– Psalm 119:11

When asked about Dwell and its origins, I sometimes begin the conversation by remarking that Scripture listening was never actually the goal of the app. Dwell certainly does that. And it does it well. And we believe it’s an important part of spiritual formation. But listening alone has never been Dwell’s ultimate aim. All along our team has been working to build an app that would help God’s people saturate themselves in His Word, giving them a beautiful and convenient way to essentially “live in the Bible,” as Charles Spurgeon so succinctly put it. That includes listening, but we believe it also includes other spiritual practices like Scripture meditation and Scripture memorization.

The new feature we’re announcing today helps us take a step toward meditation and memorization. We’re calling it Dwell Mode.

What is Dwell Mode?
Dwell Mode allows you to go deeper with Scripture through repetition and reflection. Particularly, it gives you the ability to repeat just about anything you listen to inside the app. That means a passage of the Bible, a chapter, playlist, plan, or even your entire queue can be looped in order to meditate on or memorize it. At the same time, Dwell Mode also lets you add quiet moments of reflection in between whatever you repeat. You can easily control the time between each repetition by adding 3, 10, 30, or 60 seconds between each hearing.

How to use Dwell Mode
It’s easy to get started using Dwell Mode. When you open the player, you’ll now see a new icon at the bottom (Psst! It’s the one circled in the screenshot above ☝🏻). Tapping it will reveal Dwell Mode’s two primary features.

Once opened, you’ll notice two new toggles: Repeat and Reflect. ☝🏻

Repeat
To begin repeating what you’re listening to, just tap the Repeat toggle (If you see pink, you know the feature has been activated 🙌🏼).

When the Repeat feature is activated, you’ll see two options for repeating:

1. This track – When selected, the track you’re currently listening to will be repeated indefinitely (that could be a chapter, plan, passage or playlist).

 2. Queue – When selected, your entire queue will be repeated.

By default, “This track” will be selected which means that whatever you’re listening to will automatically be repeated. In the screenshot above, Psalm 100 would continue to repeat until you either paused the playback, toggled the repeat feature off, or closed out of the app.

But wait! There’s more!

Reflect
If you activate the Reflect toggle you can add a period of silent reflection in between whatever it is you’re repeating.

This is really beneficial if you’re wanting to memorize a certain passage of Scripture, or just wanting to reflect and process what you’re listening to.

The screenshot above ☝🏻, highlights the different duration options available for Reflection. Shorter durations are great for memorizing short passages of Scripture. Longer durations give you more time to think through what you’re hearing, even incorporating times of prayer. Try them all out and see which one works best for you!

How to know Dwell Mode is activated
When you tap out of the Dwell Mode menu, you’ll know the feature is activated because the “head” icon will turn pink. 👇🏼

With that said, when you want to turn Repeat or Reflect off, you’ll need to tap on the Dwell Mode icon again and turn off each toggle.

Soaking in Scripture
We’re hoping Dwell Mode will make Scripture memorization and meditation easier than ever before for you. Like I said, our vision from the beginning has centered on helping people soak in Scripture—to truly dwell in it, wherever they are. With the release of Dwell Mode, we feel like we’re moving closer to realizing that vision. There’s a lot more to do. We have so much more in store for you! Thanks for your continued support of Dwell. Onward! 

Note: Dwell Mode is currently available for iOS only. It is coming to Android soon.

“God knits man in his mother’s womb, slowly and wisely. Art should be born in a similar way.”

– Arvo Pärt

That was the line I heard this week from Arvo Pärt, the Estonian composer of classical and religious music. It could have easily been said by Steinway Artist & composer Chad Lawson, the man responsible for all the music you hear on Dwell. Lawson, like Pärt, is the kind of craftsman who knits his notes together slowly and wisely. And when you hear his compositions while listening to Scripture, it always has the effect of drawing you to the heart behind the text. How that happens is hard to articulate, but there’s a genuine spiritual quality to the music he writes. 

This month he’s composed four new tracks in our Piano & Cello genre. They’re soothing, quiet, and potent—and we’re releasing them inside Dwell today:

To include them in your listening experience, simply change the music genre inside the app by tapping on the music 🎵 icon in the bottom right corner of the Player. Then choose Piano & Cello. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do. But more than that, we hope they lead you into a greater wonder and deeper intimacy with the Life behind the Bible: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Prixel Creative is the talented design team tasked with creating masterpieces that encapsulate the spirit of each book and passage for Dwell. Their team is comprised of a husband and wife dynamic duo, Kendra and Justin Skinner, along with the newest member, Travis Gann. Prixel’s studio is located in the historic district of Springfield, MO. Get to know them:  

1. How did you first hear about Dwell?

Josh and Jon first spoke with us about Dwell towards the end of the 2016. They talked about it with such passion and enthusiasm that we couldn’t help but get excited about the project.

2. What made you want to join this project?

We wanted to join this project because we loved the idea of making listening to the Bible more accessible. We also knew that we’d love using the app. It was also a no brainer with Josh and Jon at the helm. They do such great work with anything and everything they are a part of. 

“He gives us all creativity and we realize that anything we create comes from Him. Our desire is that the artwork will help people relate to the scriptures in a way they hadn’t thought of before. ”

3. What are you most excited about in the app?

We are really excited to hear the beautiful voices and be able to switch between them within the app. We’ve heard snippets along the way and it’s going to be so neat to have full access when it launches

4. What has been the biggest challenge of taking on such a big/multi-faceted project?

Portraying the stories of the Bible is kind of a daunting task and probably the most difficult part of our process. We take that seriously and want the pieces of artwork to be as good as they can be. Some are literal and some are abstract. We want the artwork to be inspiring and not distracting to the listener. 

5. Walk us through your process of coming up with a design for a Bible book or playlist, where do you get your inspiration, how does the design evolve into the final product?

We first read through the verse or story and then jot down key ideas for the artwork. Once we have that base, we research ideas and techniques and then it’s on to implementation. We gather multiple images from places like Designspiration and Pinterest, and then form mood boards. We like to create our own textures and painted backgrounds to use throughout. Sometimes we get it right on the first try and other times it takes us many iterations to get it looking and feeling right for that story. Jon is also a huge help in giving valuable feedback and direction when needed. 

6. Beauty is one of the routes of access to God; how do you think this ties into your designs for Dwell?

God is the master artist, that’s for sure. Trying to capture the beauty of the verses in the Bible is humbling. The process of creating is something that we love doing and the responsibility we feel is great. He gives us all creativity and we realize that anything we create comes from Him. Our desire is that the artwork will help people relate to the scriptures in a way they hadn’t thought of before. 

7. Which of the designs are your personal favorites and why?

We have many favorites, but so far our favorites are Colossians 3 (the butterfly), Proverbs 31, Pslams of David, Institution of the Lord’s Supper, and The Epistles – The Prayer of Faith. It’s actually really difficult to think back through all the designs we’ve created so far. Can’t wait to create more!