Moore’s next piece of advice appealed to FCA’s sports DNA: The ministry needed to have both a passing game and a running attack.

The passing game (or air cover, as Moore alternately described it) meant making sure that FCA had organizational buy-in and as much of its pre-existing content broken down into shorter, digestible Bible Plans. Camp ministry and Huddle groups are two specific areas that Moore believes will greatly benefit from this idea.

“My hope is that when campers come to camp, they can be doing a Bible Plan together in their Huddle,” he said. “That opens their eyes to what a great discipleship tool they have access to for the long haul in their walk with Christ. We can create a Bible Plan that happens during the camp and create another Bible Plan that starts the day after camp. That creates a long term relationship between the Huddle leaders and the athletes that are coming to camp.”

Conversely, the running attack (or ground game) meant training FCA staff to create content on their own.

Moore spent most of his time in Guatemala meeting international leaders face-to-face in order to encourage and equip them to make that second piece of strategy a priority.

“Sometimes things that are different are scary,” Moore said. “That is not the attitude around here. These leaders speak languages that none of us at YouVersion speak. They can create content that none of us can create. We may be able to deliver content, but we need that great local language content in order to deliver it. That’s a partnership worth pursuing.” 

Ironically, it was the team from Ukraine who helped jumpstart the concept before it even existed. Global Regional Coordinator Andriy Kravtsov spearheaded the first reading plan based on FCA’s 3D Coaching, which was subsequently downloaded by over 3,000 Ukrainian coaches. Dan Britton heard about it while visiting Andriy.

“They beat us to the punch,” Britton said. “The Bible Plan was wildly successful within their ministry, and so I asked them to translate it into English.”

For FCA International, the benefits for a strong partnership with YouVersion are especially rich. For instance, while the mobile app doesn’t see itself as a replacement for printed Bibles, it doesn’t cost to be printed, shipped, stored or distributed, and is accessible to anyone with a smart phone, tablet or internet access.

“We’re already seeing in every nation a generation where their mobile device is their lifeline to the rest of the world,” Moore said. “It’s with them all the time. We can use tools that are on a device that they have with them 24-7 to enable them to understand and grow in their faith a little bit each day. When there’s a generation regularly engaging in the Bible, we’re going to see nations change. We’re going to see communities change. We’re going to see churches planted. We’re going to see ministries explode. We fully believe that the Bible transforms lives.”

The Bible app is also able to transcend many of the barriers that exist in nations where sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ is either illegal or socially unacceptable. Moore spoke to at least two attendees at the conference in Guatemala who said they couldn’t carry a physical Bible in public but had YouVersion on their phones. 

And finally, FCA believes that this partnership will help continue its goal of creating more resources that are specific to each nation.

“We want to engage our international leaders to start developing and writing some of their own plans instead of just taking what we’ve done and translating it,” Britton said. “We want the plans to be more contextualized and written from their perspective. Our vision would be that we have Bible Plans for coaches and athletes in every single language and in every single country that we’re working in, free of charge. Providing new ways to engage in God’s Word would be the ultimate win."