01 Reverence
What stands before you is a person, not a user.
To build a tool for the spiritual life is to step onto holy ground. Behind every screen sits a person made in the image of God — with a story, a longing, perhaps a wound. Begin not with what you wish that person would do, but with what they actually do, who they actually are, and the context they actually live in. An app that opens with five permission prompts has already lost reverence — so has one that asks who you are before it shows you what it is. Reverence takes the shape of two humilities at once: toward the person as they really are, and toward the context in which you work — neither of which is what Silicon Valley has handed you.
02 Hospitality
There is more than one door to faith.
People come to faith through genuinely different doors — through the Word, through music, through silence, through a guided practice, through a question, through a wound. A seven-year-old, a doubting student, an aging widow, a Muslim friend with a quiet curiosity — they do not all need the same door. A good spiritual tool recognizes that reading the Bible is not the single highest form, and refuses to relegate other forms to the role of supplement. It welcomes people where they actually stand — not where we wish they were. This is not a mandate of ecumenism; it is the refusal to assume there is only one valid way in.
03 Rootedness
Innovate in the form; remain rooted in the substance.
For two thousand years, the church has been formed by tested practices: lectio divina, the daily office, the Christian calendar, the examen, the sacraments. A spiritual tool does not have to reinvent every function from scratch — it stands in a long tradition it is free to draw from. The form may be contemporary, even surprising; the substance should stay rooted. It is precisely this rootedness that protects against faith becoming a kit from which each user assembles their own feel-good spirituality. To stand in a tradition is not to extract from it; it is to live from it.
04 Bridge
The tool is the bridge, never the destination — a means, not the mediator.
A spiritual tool must never become a substitute — not for the church, not for prayer without a device, not for the encounter with Christ himself. It is a means, not the mediator. This does not mean it has to add 'community features' — it means it must not pull people into filter bubbles and self-isolation, whether that community is in the end a local congregation or an online one. Its task is to point beyond itself: to Scripture, to tradition, to community, to life beyond the screen. When someone decides one Sunday to put down the device and walk to a real congregation, the right response is to celebrate — not to show them three reasons to come back. A mature tool rejoices when people need it less.
05 Grace
Grace and freedom, not pressure and guilt.
Christ promises freedom, and no spiritual tool may become the opposite of that. Yet streaks, shame triggers, and social comparison produce exactly that: pressure and guilt. Even a reading plan that expects daily reading and then tells someone they have 'fallen behind' works against what it claims to serve. Hold one line: the person chooses tools for their own growth; the platform never deploys mechanics for its own retention. And trust two things — the content itself, and the care with which it is offered: what is genuinely relevant and well-given needs no artificial reinforcement to keep people coming back.
06 Honesty
Know whom you serve — and be honest about what you cannot know.
Honesty is a twofold discipline. First, about the audience: which people, at which point on their journey, do you actually help? You do not serve everyone — name whom. A spiritual tool that pretends to speak to all ends up speaking to none. Second, about what is measurable: the spiritual life resists full measurement. With passive content especially; with interactive tools, only in part. Data captures only what can be captured — and that is never the whole. Say so plainly, both to yourself and to those you intend to reach.
07 Costliness
Pay the price the people you serve shouldn't have to pay.
A redemptive design bears costs that others refuse to bear. It declines viral growth mechanics even though they work. It measures fruit instead of attention, even though attention is easier to show. It points beyond itself and rejoices when people leave. It takes time for theological depth where fast content would be easier. It does something well where a quick fix would satisfy the investor. This is not romantic — it is the hardest decision in any project, made again and again. But it is precisely what distinguishes a spiritual tool worth the name from one that merely wears the costume.
08 Fruit
Look for fruit, not numbers.
The true goal of any spiritual tool is that people become more like Christ — in love, in freedom, in peace, in faithfulness. That is fruit, not reach. Fruit most often shows itself beyond the screen: in how someone treats a neighbor, in their capacity to be still, in their finding their way back after a fall. Yes — fruit barely fits in a chart, and growth in faith resists measurement. But that is no reason to ask the wrong question. Success is not how many people open the app each day; success is whether the people who are there are growing in what matters.