Get to know the team behind Dwell Daily, our all-new biblical devotional for spiritual transformation, available exclusively in the the Dwell app!

Biography

Tripp Prince serves as the Head of Formation at Dwell. Prior to this, he worked for over a decade as a pastor in parishes across the United States. He holds a master’s degree from Regent College, as well as a doctorate from Nashotah House Theological Seminary. Additionally, he is currently studying ancient Christianity at the Antiochian House of Studies. Tripp, his wife Rachel, and their three children make their home in the countryside of North Georgia.

Q&A

1. Where did you grow up and where do you live now?
   
   I grew up in the northern suburbs of Atlanta, Georgia. My father is from a rural town south of the city, and my mother is from Texas. As such, though I was raised in Georgia, my “expat” mother ensured my siblings and I were raised with a healthy love for all things Texas. I’ve since lived in multiple states and countries, yet decided a few years back to return home, and now my wife and I are raising our three children just a few miles from where we grew up.
   
   
2. What drew you to join this project with Dwell?
   
   I was a backer of the original Kickstarter and have had a love for the Dwell mission from day one. A few years back, I had the opportunity to come on board full-time with the Dwell team, which has been an incredible honor and joy. In my opinion, Dwell Daily represents a first step into the long-term future of Dwell. While “on-demand” access to Scripture through a wide range of self-guided plans and playlists will always be a part of our identity, we believe there is an incredible opportunity for us to encourage deeper engagement and formation in and through Scripture in the form of guided experiences that are led by faithful and trustworthy Christian leaders.
   
   
3. What is your favorite story or character in the Bible?
   
   I have always been deeply fascinated by King David. As a child, I was drawn to the stories, such as his battle with Goliath, his friendship with Jonathan, or his decision to spare Saul’s life. Yet as an adult, I now take great solace and comfort in his Psalms and his example of a life of repentance, contrition, and trust in the goodness and mercy of God.
   
   
4. Do you have a favorite verse of Scripture?
   
   For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. 2 Cor 4:6 (ESV)
   
   
5. What is one thing you hope the Dwell community gains through this new content? 
   
   It is my prayer that these experiences lead people into a deeper encounter with God through his Word. By learning to attentively listen and prayerfully respond, these experiences invite us deeper into an abiding life with Christ, one in which we are able to experience his love, anytime and anywhere.

Get to know the team behind Dwell Daily, our all-new biblical devotional for spiritual transformation, available exclusively in the the Dwell app!

Biography

Jonathan Bailey is an advocate for a Christian spirituality that is rooted in the Christian tradition but also practical for people living in our technological world. He is Co-founder at Dwell. Jonathan also serves on the Ministry Team of Renovaré, a non-profit ministry that models, resources, and advocates fullness of life with God experienced, by grace, through the spiritual practices of Jesus and of the historical Church. He also is the creator of The Inward Odyssey newsletter, which is sent out each week to people who long to deepen their life with God. He lives in North Dal­las with his wife Kori, son Gray, and daugh­ters Abi­gail and Liv.

Q&A

1. Where did you grow up and where do you live now?
   
   I grew up in Plano, Texas, a booming city not far from where I now reside. Living in Frisco, just north of Dallas, has become home for me and my family. I enjoy the time spent with my wife Kori, son Gray, and daughters Abigail and Liv, all of whom make life a joy.
   
   
2. What drew you to join this project with Dwell?
   
   It’s exciting to be part of Dwell’s mission, guiding people through thoughtful experiences with Scripture. There’s something special about participating in this role; helping others connect with ancient Christian practices through Dwell is more than a job – it’s an incredibly meaningful experience. That’s really what I love about Dwell, it weaves together ancient practices and modern technology, forging a link between the wisdom of our Christian Tradition and the ease of technological innovation.
   
   
3. What is your favorite story or character in the Bible?
   
   I have a deep admiration for the Apostle John. As one of Jesus’ closest companions, his insights and writings have always struck a chord with me. His unique relationship with Christ offers me profound lessons of love that inspire my own transformative journey today.
   
   
4. Do you have a favorite verse of Scripture?
   
   The introduction to John’s first letter is something that has always captured my imagination. There’s a rich depth of meaning and connection in his words that always draw me in. The entire letter is one of my favorites. It’s filled with profound insights that guide my understanding of what it means to apprentice myself to Christ.
   
   
5. What is one thing you hope the Dwell community gains through this new content? 
   
   My hope for the Dwell community is that they will be inspired by a slower, more reflective approach to engaging with the Bible. And I pray that that inspiration leads them to cultivation, which ultimately leads to more transformation into Christ’s likeness.

Welcome to Dwell Daily

A Biblical Devotional for Spiritual Transformation

Overview
Over the past five years, more than a million people have recovered the ancient practice of listening to Scripture with the Dwell app. Our goal from the very beginning has been to help people, just like you, discover the transformative power of daily time with God in his Word.

And while we’ve built personalized ways for you to engage Scripture more deeply – from custom playlists and daily plans to intuitive tools that foster reflection and memorization. However, we’ve longed to enhance this experience with a communal expression of Dwell, creating a shared space for the entire Dwell community to immerse ourselves in Scripture together.

After many months of prayerful development and exploration, today we are thrilled to introduce you to the all-new Dwell Daily, a guided and interactive audio devotional that roots your day in the rich soil of Scripture.

For years we’ve offered a verse of the day, featuring many of the most beloved and significant passages of Scripture that point us to Christ and his Kingdom. You’ll still be able to listen to these passages, yet in addition to this, you are now invited to prayerfully linger in this passage, with a trusted guide faithfully leading you through the text and into a lived encounter with the Lord.

Trusted Guides for the Journey
Dwell Daily is spearheaded by our trusted team of Dwell Guides – faithful Christian leaders, including pastors, authors, spiritual directors, theologians, and counselors. While representing a diverse range of Christian traditions, they are united in their love for Scripture and belief that God meets us in and through his Word.

Each day, one of these guides will lead you on a short devotional journey, roughly five minutes in length. We’ll begin with a prayer and invitation to quiet our hearts and minds so we can hear from God. The guide will then read a few verses and offer a short devotional reflection on them, followed by what we’re calling a “response of the heart.” We want to invite you into this experience, not only as a listener, but as a participant. So, we may ask you to say a prayer as an act of faith, to meditate upon a specific truth in that day’s bible passage, or to silently listen for the Spirit’s leading. We’ll then close in prayer and leave you with a final word of blessing.

An Immersive Experience
Additionally, we’ve collaborated with a talented composer, Nathan De La Cruz, who has crafted an original score exclusively for Dwell Daily. This music ebbs and flows with the guide’s voice, creating an immersive listening experience, enveloping you in a rich soundscape unlike anything you’ve heard before!

By offering this daily experience, we are not seeking to replace other devotional habits you may keep or practices observed within your church community. Think of this as a compliment and companion, one that you can easily fit into your day whenever you need a few minutes to recenter on God in and through Scripture.

What’s Ahead?
While Dwell Daily lays the foundation, it’s just the beginning.

We’re excited to announce the upcoming expansion of our library of guided biblical content, featuring seasonal devotionals, biblical meditations, prayers, sleep experiences, and more, set to launch exclusively on the Dwell app in the coming months. We believe and pray that each of these will contribute in a meaningful way to the transformation of our lives into the life and likeness of Christ.

A Sneak Peek
Lastly, we’d love to share an example of a typical Dwell Daily guided experience. Simply tap play below as Viv leads you through a reflection on Isaiah 40. We hope it is a blessing to you, and encourage you to join us daily as we seek to Dwell with God in his Word.

Like what you hear? Dive into the app today and discover a new Dwell Daily experience, updated every day!

To try out the new listening player, download our newest release in the App Store. For our Android users, the new listening player is coming later this summer. If you happen to have automatic updates disabled on your device, you can come back to this page and tap here to update manually.

The Why Behind the Player Refresh

Just want the Cliffs Notes version of this post? Watch the video below.

For a good part of the spring, we’ve been hard at work redesigning arguably the most important screen in Dwell, the listening player. We began this project with a few goals in mind: 

1) A Return to Simplicity – Over the last five years, we’ve added a lot of exciting new features, such as Read Along, Read, Repeat and Reflect, etc. These new features, while making your experience with Dwell more robust and useful, have also caused the player itself to become more clunky. So we really wanted to streamline and simplify the UI where we could, making it easier for you to focus on what matters most. 

2) Digital Wellbeing – It’s important that Dwell be a digital space that’s life-giving to you. We want you to feel a sense of calm when you interact with the app, and nowhere is that more important than when you interact with the listening player. 

3) One Player for All – The new listening player design not only improves upon our classic Scripture listening experience, it paves the way for new guided biblical experiences, such as devotionals, meditations, and prayers, all coming to the app this fall. In fact, we have a sample of the new daily devotional coming to Dwell below that we’d love for you to hear!    

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What’s Changed

Streamlined Primary Player Options: Voice & Version and Background Music

We’ve consolidated the four UI elements that help you view and select your voice, version and background music into two, providing some much-needed breathing space at the bottom of the player. 

Things are just more intuitive now. Simply tap the new voice pill to switch voice or version of the Bible that you’re hearing. Likewise, tap the music pill to change the background music.

Built new Options screen to keep Dwell’s growing suite of controls in one place

We’ve consolidated all of the Listening and Read Along controls into a single screen giving you one place to make any and all adjustments as well as view which controls are “on” or “off” at a glance.

This consolidation of the Listening and Read Along options means that the Sleep Timer and Repeat buttons are no longer visible at the bottom of the screen, but they are just one tap away in the new Options area.

Made it a breeze to favorite and share Scripture

We’ve made it a lot easier for you to share and favorite the content you love. We’ve provided quick access to each action at the bottom of the listening player. With the release of Scriptural devotions, meditations, and prayers, this change will be even more beneficial for you.

Repositioned Title and Subtitle for easier viewing

We’ve relocated the title and subtitle near the bottom of the listening player so that your eyes no longer have to scan up and down the screen to view all of the relevant information about what you’re listening to. The comparision above makes it easier to see some of the other, smaller tweaks we’ve made to the player. For example, when Dynamic Background is turned on, the background color of the player is not as strong as it once was. We want this player to be enriching and have a sense of freshness when you come back to it to hear God’s word, but we don’t want it to be visually overpowering so that it becomes a distracting. We feel like we’ve arrived at a good balance.

Made the Scripture reference tappable

Related to that, we’ve made the Scripture reference, which is more often than not the subtitle of any piece of listening content, tappable. It will now pull up the corresponding chapter and book of the Bible, giving you quick navigation to another chapter within the book you’re listening to or access to all of the books of the Bible.

This means that we no longer need the books of the Bible button and is another example of us trying to simplify the screen for you, taking away everything that isn’t necessary, but no more.

Shrunk the artwork to allow the UI elements to better breathe

We’ve done a lot of work to remove visual friction to the listening player; one of the ways we’ve done this is by shrinking the artwork to allow for the other UI elements on the screen to breathe better. More margin, more padding, and more empty space makes for a more relaxed viewing experience. 

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Listen to a sample of the new daily devotional coming to Dwell

The really exciting thing about all of the work we’ve been doing on the new player, is that it helps pave the way for all of the new biblical content (devotionals, meditations, prayers, sleep experiences, etc.) that is coming to Dwell this fall. Listen to a sample of our new daily devotional experience that will be launching at the beginning of September. We hope you find it as life giving as we do.

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We hope this post has given you some helpful info on the new listening player. Please reach out with any questions or suggestions! Thanks again for supporting Dwell, and we look forward to continuing to serve you. ❤️

Warmly,
Team Dwell

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“A beautiful audio Bible like Dwell could change someone’s life if that becomes a part of their daily rhythm.”

— David Burke, LifeLine TMU Lead Pastor

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LIFELINE’S CHALLENGE

We recently sat down with David Burke, Pastor of LifeLine TMU in Toronto, Ontario, to discuss how he’s used Dwell to strengthen the church’s discipleship.

If you’d like, you can watch our full conversation here or read a summary of it below:

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Ministering in a 48,000-student university presents unique challenges and opportunities for David Burke and LifeLine TMU. Like many churches, LifeLine finds itself in a context that has grown increasingly disenchanted (and at times, intolerant) of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

As David considered how to help his students navigate their secular context, he took a serious look at the role of digital tools for discipleship and came to this conclusion:

“I think digital is not just a means to ministry, but it is ministry in and of itself…If digital is where people are gathering, that’s where Jesus would be.”

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THE DWELL SOLUTION

With that in mind, David decided to give his students a digital tool that made it easy to consume God’s Word. He registered for a Dwell Church Plan in April 2022 and onboarded his leadership team the very same day. A few days later, his students began to join the account.

As a longtime Dwell listener, David had come to love how Dwell helped him consume larger chunks of Scripture and encouraged his students to do the same.

“One of the things that I love about Dwell is that it comes to us in auditory narrative form in these beautiful, well-spoken voices which makes it easier for students to digest a larger chunk…They can digest a verse in its larger context to understand how that story fits into the larger story. Every time that we get students into our Dwell subscription it’s really cool to hear them talk about how it is very different than any other Bible experience that they’ve had before.”

Of course, not everyone is ready to jump into large chunks of Scripture. For these students, David leverages the curated passages, playlists, and plans already available in Dwell to help other students engage relevant Scriptures for their season in life.

“Generally a student is looking for a clearly-defined plan or playlist [when they start with Dwell]. So we’ll recommend a plan or playlist for a particular season of life or a particular emotion so that they can jump into a particular part of the overall Scripture narrative.”

But they haven’t stopped there. David and the leadership team have built a discipleship program and use the custom content builder inside Dwell to help their students engage God’s Word together.

“We’ve also been able to create some specific plans ourselves. We’ve created a journey through the Gospel of John, a journey through the Gospel of Mark. And we’re able to break it down to a chapter a day. And then we’ve coupled those daily breakdowns with a cohort…And each day one of our student leaders will invite the students to listen to that day’s particular chapter and then share a devotional based on what God said to them through that particular book or that particular chapter of the Bible through a group chat. It’s students discipling students and it’s really beautiful to see.”

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THE RESULTS

David notes that the audio medium is more popular than ever and recognizes the impact Dwell’s had on helping his students grow in their faith.

“Last year we got to baptize two students. And at the baptism, one of those particular students shared their journey. Hearing them sit in the baptismal tank and talk about the transformation that God has made in their life and about where they were, where they are, and where they’re going…And it strikes me that that particular student was the last student to join our Dwell subscription. And so the role that them being able to ingest and digest God’s word and as we’ve been discipling them, just trying to encourage them to get further and deeper into God’s word and build a Scripture listening experience into their daily rhythms. I’m just really thankful for the tool that Dwell is and the role it’s playing in that particular student’s story.”

When asked what he would say to a church leader thinking about investing in Dwell for his or her church, David replied:

“If we believe that the word of God never goes forth void, then every time somebody’s hearing God’s Word, be it while they’re washing the dishes or sitting down taking notes or driving their kids to school, God is always doing something. His Spirit is always breathing and moving in those moments…A beautiful audio Bible like Dwell could change someone’s life if that becomes a part of their daily rhythm. So I would say don’t hesitate. Jump in. Try it. Watch what it can do for your community.”

Thank you, David, for your faithful work to extend God’s Kingdom and allowing us to be a part of what God’s doing in your midst.

We’re praying for you, your family, and LifeLine.

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INTERESTED IN DWELL FOR YOUR CHURCH OR GROUP?

Schedule a 15-minute, no-pressure discovery call to help discern if Dwell fits your ministry below.

It’s not too late to encounter the wonder of Advent.

In this final of four videos, Tripp Prince, Head of Product at Dwell, reminds us of the unfinished nature of life, where God draws near even when we are scattered and distracted. If this has been your experience this Advent, don’t lose heart! Advent is still for you, inviting you over these final few days to prepare to greet Christ at his birth.

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Discover the Nearness of God this Advent with Presence.