The Biblr Vision & Story
From my teenage years, I’ve been leading small groups and Bible Studies, always convinced that Holy Scripture is the primary way God reveals himself to us. I trained for ministry at Sydney Missionary and Bible College in Sydney, then pastored churches across NSW and later in Adelaide, all the while longing to help people genuinely engage with God’s word. I tried every method—from “lecture mode” to carefully crafted question sheets—but for 25 years, it seemed that real engagement with Scripture happened almost in spite of me, rather than through me!
When I married my precious wife in 2018, we started using a simple approach for our church Community Group, based on what she’d learned previously. Our group would read a Bible passage together and ask just three questions:
- What stood out to you about the passage?
- What did you find tough to understand?
- What’s one thing you can pray for from the passage?
We shared meals, joys, and burdens, but the focus was that word based hour of free-flowing discussion. For the first time, I felt God working through me rather than just around me. These questions lowered the barrier for everyone to participate and shifted the group’s focus from “Phil knows a lot about the Bible” to “God is a great God and his salvation through Jesus is breathtaking.”
I came to see that modelling humility—coming as a student before God’s word—was more important than providing all the answers. Even as a leader, I wanted to help people pray in response to God’s word, rather than just filling their heads with knowledge. Group members started ministering to each other, encouraging each other, and finding their own prayer points. The life of our group changed!
I still prepared deeply: researching the background, structure, church history, and main themes of each week’s passage. I found it was essential to have a range of application questions and theological insights in mind. But instead of dictating the flow, I could naturally join the discussion, confident that God would use his word in the lives of each person.
I soon discovered that leading more open, participant led Bible studies required more preparation, not less. I needed to ensure the discussion stayed faithful to the passage’s main thrust while still letting the group members own the conversation. The goal: people leaving Bible Study affirmed in their ability to read and understand God’s word, and confident in the Spirit’s power to transform lives. Biblr was born as a way to make this kind of “behind the scenes” prep much easier—for myself, and, as the vision grew, for others.
My own background as a maths teacher, programmer, pastor, and MBA graduate equipped me to build Biblr. In 2021, after reading Guy Kawasaki’s The Art of the Start, I started praying for a place where my passion, expertise, and opportunity could meet. Then, in the week beginning Sunday 20th April 2025, God gave me the idea for Biblr. What began as a tool for my own group grew into a vision to serve others and, God willing, to build up his church for his glory alone. The vision is simple: make it as easy as possible for people to engage with God through his word—removing barriers, including cost.
If you share a similar approach and want to see God’s people equipped to encounter Jesus in Scripture, I’d love to connect and partner with you. Only today—three years and 361 days after first sketching three circles for “passion, expertise, and opportunity”—did I finally write “Biblr” at the centre. Appropriately, this was prompted by last Wednesday night's community group discussion on Colossians 4:17: Tell Archippus, "See to it that you complete the ministry you have received in the Lord."
—Phil, 27th June 2025
