Advertisement feature
We are a small charity called Discipleship Tech and we’ve spent the last three and a half years building a mobile adventure game exploring the big story of the Bible, called The Serpent & The Seed. Yet despite its topic, the game is not aimed first and foremost at a Christian audience, but at those who would never normally open the Bible. So why make a Bible based game for an audience who doesn’t read the Bible?
The truth is that Bible engagement is declining across the board. Back in 2021, an article on this website said “Nearly three-quarters of young Britons now identify as having no religion. The number of under 16s in the Church of England has fallen by 20% in five years… the picture is not much better elsewhere and in some quarters, it’s worse. If something is not done to halt the decline… we could hit ground zero within a decade: children and young people could be entirely absent from our churches.”
But despite these dire statistics, we needn’t despair. Old methods of church engagement may be failing, but an openness to the Bible persists. Recently, Barna Research interviewed 25,000 teenagers across 26 nations to better understand Generation Z. They discovered a real openness to the Bible and a willingness to read it, with almost 40% agreeing with adjectives like “good”, “meaningful” and “important” to describe it. The Bible’s message is the story of hope this world is crying out for, and the fact that people are open to reading it is really encouraging - they just need someone to help explain it.
That’s what has motivated us to create The Serpent & The Seed. We want to meet people where they are at (on their mobile devices!) and help them discover why the Bible is so life giving. The 66 books of the Bible aren’t just a random collection of independent texts: there’s a coherent narrative thread that runs from the Garden of Eden through to the Tree of Life at the end of Revelation - the story of Jesus as the one who can redeem us from the curse and restore us to a right relationship with our Creator. The Serpent & The Seed traces that story through the Bible, and how Jesus fulfills God’s many promises, with gorgeous artwork and beautiful music and songs from US indie-folk duo Poor Bishop Hooper.
We’ve had a lot of fun testing early demos at various secular conferences like PocketGamer and The London Games Festival. We’ve had great feedback, with comments like “Even though I’m not a religious person I really liked it! I was afraid it was gonna be too religious but I think the game can be played by anyone.”
We hope it’ll be ready by the end of this year, and we pray it will be a valuable tool for helping people meet with Jesus. We’d love you to follow along with our journey by signing up to our monthly email newsletter.
