Examen.me – A New Look to Online Devotionals
At first glance Examen.me just didn’t make sense to me, or I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was.
Thankfully there was a button in the bottom left that let me “Start an Examen” without an account.
Loved it.
Within a few seconds I knew exactly what this service was and I was pretty excited.
EXAMEN.me is a simple-to-use web site that fosters your personal interaction with God. The site guides you to “examen” your life as you meditate on scripture, pray, and journal all of your reflections.
Not only does the site look sleek, it really is simple to use, straight forward, and obvious, and Brent Minter, the Worship Pastor at NorthWood Church, wasn’t kidding me when he told me that it was via email.
A “side project” for him, he’s a Worship Pastor by day who has a heart for people to develop their own personal times of worship.
Taking a look under the hood was impressive. I quickly did a scripture search, journaled a bit, and went through a Prayer Examen.
I could definitely see more than a few people use this constently if you’re already hanging out online and using the web as your platform choice for Scripture and your daily fill.
One of the cooles features was the ability to directly export your journal, auto-generating a printable PDF document. Extremely thoughtful in terms of functional offerings.
A few additonal features would be awesome, especially in terms of social sharing. I’d love the ability to email directly my journal entries, share them with others via Facebook/Twitter/other SN’s, and perhaps some “friending” capabilities.
None of these are absolutely necessary nor does not having them hurt the system as it stands today, but would be some neat feautures for the product roadmap. Evaluating and observing services like YouVersion could probably help as well.
Overall, I’m very pleased and I’m going to shoot it over to a few others that may find it useful and valuable.
If you want to use it and feel inclined to help “build it out” to make it even better, you can follow @ExamenMe on Twitter and tell him your thoughs!
Buzz it!
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16 Responses to “Examen.me – A New Look to Online Devotionals”
worship trench » Blog Archive » EXAMEN.me Launches with Rocketing Signficance
[...] are two reviews of the site: Collide Magazine review EXAMEN.me William Petruzzo’s [...]
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[...] just found the latest in online spiritual journaling in examen.me and I like it! Churchcrunch blog has an article about it and a few screenshots if you need an overview, but this looks like a great little tool. [...]
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Northland Church Launches Facebook Church 
On first look I thought that your suggestions about social networking capabilities on this new site would be good. Then I started thinking about what Jesus said on more than one occasion, "go and tell no one." Sometimes it seems that were better off if we don't share something right away. It seems that sometimes we just need to let something that God is doing inside of us to brew; to steep. Then it will eventually come bubbling out in everything we do, not simply through a tweet this button.
Thanks for the heads up on this nice site!
Chris,
Good point. Definitely don't “have” to use it, but would be nice to share with family/friends and others if you were going through it together.
good point though. thanks for the clarity.
john
I don't know. But I reckon that it is a good opportunity to involve others in your journey with God and so extend you accountability in keeping that process going.
I have just started on it now.
John. Thanks for covering EXAMEN.me
Chris. You have nailed why we did not incorporate social aspects upfront. The core of EXAMEN.me for people to *honestly* examen their lives while meditating on scripture and praying in a quite place before their God. Not saying that we will never have social features, but there is a reason we started there.
Phillip. We are looking at ways we can bring accountability into the site. No solutions yet, but it is definitely on the white board.
Not to nit-pick your post, but I believe it needs a correction to maintain the consistency of your opinion.
"None of these are absolutely necessary and hurt the system as it stands today…" should probably read "None of these are absolutely necessary OR hurt the system as it stands today…"
It appears to be quite the neat service — but for those of us (like myself) that have MANY online distractions, I prefer to take such meditations offline.
love it. you're awesome.
Thanks for sharing this site John! I am looking forward to trying it out!
I like it. I've still got my leather NASB on my night-stand. I love to read and take notes. I've been experimenting with journaling in Evernote. But this looks like something that helps organize. It's like a GTD tool.
Jim.
Interesting you say that. Before we built EXAMEN.me I was using Evernote as well. In fact the initial concept of the site is in a journal entry in Evernote!
The goal was to integrate your journals with your reflection of the scriptures and prayers. I have found that there are profound benefits to journaling, but it can be a hard discipline to start and keep going. If you keep going with your journal, you are creating a record of your spiritual life that you can look back on and learn from.
I am also a huge fan and practitioner of GTD!
Good review. I'm a fan of EXAMEN.me.
Not sure how I missed this post but I found examen.me somewhere else and am just getting started with it. I understand worries about sharing or doing more things online but even if you just use the verse and questions and then write it is still useful. I think it is awesome and anything that makes me more likely to spend time in the Word and His Presense is awesome.
And it is awesome that you can listen to them
The concept of accountability is intruiging. I'd love some sort of accountability tool, even if it's just a way to meet others and then carry on via email.
cool. now… are you spam? shopping cart reviews?
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