How to use
Whetstone

1

Install Whetstone on your phone.

Whetstone runs on any phone — install it from your app store, or straight from the browser: on iPhone, open whetstonebible.com in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen; on Android Chrome, choose Install app. Installed, it opens with no signal, and anything you download from the Audio tab under Manage downloads works fully offline.

2

Start your first cycle.

Tap Start a Training Cycle on Today. Choose your track first: Memory only (verses to memorize over 42 days), Reading only (read through a plan with no verses — graduates at Day 42 with no checkpoint), or Memory and reading (both tracks together). For a memory cycle, pick your verses from a starter pack, a search, or the Bible itself — one per slot is the recommended pace, ten slots the target. Add any daily habits, pick a start day, and your next six weeks have a shape.

3

The daily session.

Each day, Today lays out exactly what to do: your verse work, today’s reading chapters if you’re on a plan, up to five requests from your prayer list, your habits, and anything on your group’s calendar — one pass, one screen. Verse work runs from first-letter prompts to reciting out loud while the app listens and scores you word by word. Miss a day and you pick up where you are. The cycle bends; it doesn’t break.

Every recall activity carries a Skip for now button. What the note under it says depends on where you are: in a daily session, “Today still counts. This verse just doesn’t get the rep.” At the Day-28 checkpoint, “Marks this verse untested — no score, and it gets extra reps through the last two weeks.” At Day-42, “Marks this verse untested — no score, and it graduates as still sharpening, not held.” In maintenance, “Nothing changes. It comes back tomorrow.” In a Sword Drill round, “Nothing is recorded. Your best stays as it is.”

4

Reminders.

Settings → Reminders holds them all. The Daily reminder — one push a day, nothing else, ever. Each habit can carry its own, set during cycle setup or right there in Today. An active reading plan can carry a Reading reminder — a push when it’s time to read, toggled on the Plans screen. Your group’s calendar events offer reminders too, flipped on per event. Reminders need an account, so the schedule can follow your devices.

1

Listen — the audio Bible.

The Audio tab reads Scripture out loud — a chapter while you drive, a book while you work. Play in order, loop a chapter, book, or range you pick, or choose Memory Deck to loop the chapters holding your cycle’s verses. Set a sleep timer and let it carry you out. Download chapters or whole books and keep listening with no signal. Recorded narration covers BSB and KJV — the licensed translations don’t come with audio.

2

Read the Bible, and mark it up.

The Bible tab is a full reader. Press and hold any verse — or tap its number — to highlight it, bookmark it, keep a note, queue its chapter for listening, or save it for memorization. Saved verses wait under Saved for memorization next time you set up a cycle. The toolbar’s bookmark button collects everything you’ve marked.

3

Ask what it means — commentary.

Stuck on a verse? Open the commentary right where you’re reading — plain teaching, verse by verse, from six classic sets you can switch between. It’s there for the moment a line doesn’t make sense: read a paragraph, get your footing, get back to the text.

4

Study one verse.

Press and hold a verse and take Commentary for this verse — just the block covering that verse. Below every chapter, the Teaching section links out to Enduring Word’s written commentary, and for many chapters a teaching video.

5

Pick your translation — and the voices.

Tap the translation name in the Bible toolbar to switch between six translations. BSB and KJV download for offline reading; NLT, NKJV, NIV, and ESV are licensed text and stream online only. Two voices live in Settings: Reading voice — your device’s own voice, for verse work and commentary — and Narrator, the human voice for BSB audio chapters.

6

Download for offline.

On the Audio tab, tap Manage downloads. Four bulk options sit at the top: Memory deck (the chapters holding your cycle’s verses), Old Testament, New Testament, and Entire Bible. Or pick any book and grab individual chapters. A storage estimate runs before anything large starts and warns you if the download may not fit on your device.

1

Fill the Gap — one word missing.

On the Practice tab: a verse with one word removed and four words offered. Tap the one that belongs. The three wrong answers are pulled from your own verses, never invented — otherwise the odd one out gives itself away and you would be answering by elimination instead of memory.

2

Next Line — what follows?

On the Practice tab: one phrase from a verse, and four candidates for the phrase that follows. The hardest wrong answers are other phrases from the same verse, so getting it right means you know the order, not just that you recognise the words.

3

Verse Pairs — the memory board.

On the Practice tab: cards face down, half of them references and half of them opening lines. Turn two and keep them if they belong together. No timer and no move counter — the point is the reps, not your working memory.

This is the lightest of the drills, and deliberately so. A board can be cleared by remembering positions, which is not true of the others. It is here because it is familiar, it is quick, and it puts references beside their verses again and again.

4

Reference Match — which verse is that?

On the Practice tab: references down one side, opening lines down the other, in a different order. Tap a reference, then tap the line that opens it. Get it wrong and nothing is lost — the selection clears and you try again.

This is the only drill that runs the other way. Everywhere else you are given the reference and asked for the words; here you are asked which verse a reference names, with several close cousins on screen to tell it apart from. That is the gap behind “I know the verse but I could never find it.” Unscored, like Scramble.

5

Verse Scramble — put the phrases back.

On the Practice tab: a verse arrives broken into its phrases, out of order. Tap a phrase, then tap where it belongs. “Check the order” tells you how many are right from the start — counting from the beginning, because a verse is recalled in sequence, so four right at the front is worth more than four scattered.

No clock and nothing recorded. Sword Drill is the scored round; this one is for the days when you want the reps without the pressure. Verses shorter than three phrases are skipped — there is no puzzle in two.

6

Sword Drill — 60 seconds against the clock.

On the Practice tab: draw a verse, get its reference and nothing else, then 60 seconds to type it from memory. Hints arrive as the clock runs — and they cost you. Pure extra reps, never a requirement; it keeps your best today and your best ever.

7

Progress — your training record.

Scroll to the foot of Today for your Training record — one block per day, days trained counted at the top. A missed day is a dim block, not a red one, and nothing here ever resets. Finished cycles keep their records too.

8

Reading plans.

The Plans tab holds the catalog: fourteen presets from Proverbs in a month to the whole Bible in a year. Five of them are sized to a Training Cycle at exactly 42 days: 1 & 2 Samuel in 42 days, Paul’s Letters in 42 days, Genesis & Exodus in 42 days, Gospels & Acts in 42 days, and Psalms in 42 days. Today’s chapters sit on your Today screen with Read and Play — open the reader and a ribbon walks you through each one.

Fall behind and the plan tells you where you stand, then offers to skip you to today. Days you part-finished are never thrown away. Stop a plan with Pause this plan (progress saved, restartable any time) or remove it entirely with Delete this plan.

Build your own plan opens a form: give it a name, pick the books, set the number of reading days, and optionally check Add a Psalm and a Proverb to each reading day.

9

Invite a friend to a reading plan.

On any active plan, tap Invite a friend. The link carries the plan name, start date, and reading-day schedule so the recipient joins at the same day 0 and reads the same chapters each day. No account is needed; each reader’s progress is their own and stays on their device.

10

A reading plan inside a Training Cycle.

When you start a cycle on the Reading only or Memory and reading track, the setup flow asks you to pick a plan. Plans that fit a Training Cycle (42 days) are listed first; a longer plan continues running after Day 42 — it is not cut short when the cycle ends.

If you already have an active plan, the setup offers to continue it or start a different one. Choosing Continue anchors the plan to the same start date so your daily reading stays in sync with your cycle.

11

Day 42 — Graduation, and ending early.

On Day 42, Today offers Open Graduation: your cycle read back — days trained, verses carried, checkpoint scores. Complete this cycle keeps everything and moves every verse onto the maintenance ladder; anything Still sharpening stays one tap from a retake. Need to stop sooner? Abandon this cycle… sits at the bottom of Today, asks twice, and keeps your record.

1

Your prayer list.

Your personal prayer list lives at its own screen — reach it from the “Your prayers” card on Today. Up to five requests surface in each day’s session, rotating so every request comes back around. Mark answered moves a request into the Answered log — kept to be read on the hard mornings. Works without an account, a group, or a connection.

The group Prayer Wall is separate: it’s shared with everyone in your group and visible on the Community tab’s Prayer Wall. Any request on the wall folds into your own rotation with one tap.

2

Your group.

Groups in Whetstone come in four kinds — church, family, class, or friends. Enter an invite code under Invite & Settings on the Community tab to join one: announcements, a shared prayer wall, a shared calendar whose events land on your Today screen — each with an optional reminder — the sermon library, and the group podcast open up straight away. No code? Everything else works fine without one.

Each group wears its own colour — visible in the switcher at the top of Community. The sermon library holds each sermon with the pastor’s notes, slides, and a watch link to YouTube or the livestream. Scripture references in the notes are tappable — one tap opens the passage in the reader.

3

Get notified about new posts.

When anything new is posted to a group — an announcement, a sermon, a prayer request, a memory verse, a reading plan, or a calendar event — Whetstone can send you a push notification. The “Notify me about new posts” switch is on by default; turn it off per group from Invite & Settings. It needs an account and push notifications enabled on your device.

4

Keeping the prayer wall safe.

On any post you did not write, the … menu offers Report and Block. Report flags the post for the group’s admins, who get a push notification and can delete the post and remove the member. Block hides all posts from that person for you. If an admin does not act, use Send feedback under Settings to reach the developer; reports are handled within a day. Posts are also screened for slurs before they leave the device — a post containing blocked wording cannot be submitted.

5

Acting on what your group shares.

When an admin assigns a memory verse or starts a group reading plan, a “From your group” card appears on Today. For a verse: “Add to my cycle” if you have a cycle running, or “Save for my next cycle” if you don’t. For a reading plan: “Follow this plan” starts it as your personal plan, anchored to the same start date so everyone reads the same passages each day. “Not now” on either hides the card on this device only.

6

Run your group.

Create a group on the Community tab and share the invite code — members join in seconds. From Invite & Settings, admins post announcements (give one a date and it lands on the calendar automatically), put events on the calendar, and build the sermon library: title, date, notes, slides from PowerPoint, and a YouTube or livestream link so members can watch. Paste your podcast feed once and new episodes appear for everyone.

The Memory verses section lets you share (or assign) a verse with an optional due date — it shows up on each member’s Today as a group card. The Reading plan section lets you start a plan from the catalog or build a custom one; members follow it from Today the same way. Manage members, roles, and the group’s colour all from Invite & Settings.

7

A church, a family, a class — you can have all three.

A group in Whetstone is any set of people you want to walk with: your church, your household, a Sunday school class, or a few friends. Each one gets its own announcements, calendar, prayer wall and invite code, and you can belong to as many as you like. When you belong to more than one, a row of buttons appears at the top of the Community tab — tap a name to switch. Whichever you were last looking at is the one that opens next time, on that device.

Each group has its own colour, set by the admin from Invite & Settings. The colour dot appears in the switcher and marks the active tab in that group’s view.

8

Create a group, step by step.

Open the Community tab and go to Invite & Settings. Under Create a group, pick what it is — a church, a family, a class, or a group of friends — give it a name, pick a colour, and tap the Create button. You are now its admin, and the screen shows a seven-character invite code. Send that code to the people you want in it. They open the same Invite & Settings screen, type it under Join a group, and they are in. The code is the only way in, so treat it like a door key: anyone who has it can read everything the group posts.

9

Add your podcast, step by step.

If your church already podcasts its sermons, you only need the feed address — skip to the next paragraph. If it does not, that is the first job, because Whetstone plays your sermons but does not store them. You need a podcast host: Buzzsprout, Podbean, Libsyn, Spotify for Creators, Castos and Transistor are the common ones, and most have a free or cheap tier that is plenty for a weekly sermon. Create the show, fill in its title, description, artwork and category before you publish — the feed copies those details — then upload your first sermon. The feed does not exist until one episode is published.

Now find the feed address. It is a web address, usually ending in .rss, /rss or .xml, and it is NOT the page people see on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. In Buzzsprout it is on the Directories page, under the RSS Feed tab. In Libsyn, Destinations → Libsyn Classic Feed. In Spotify for Creators, sign in at creators.spotify.com and go to Settings → Availability, then scroll to RSS Distribution. In Simplecast, the gear icon → Distribution. On any other host, look for a section called Feed, Distribution or RSS — and if you cannot find it, your host’s support will send it to you. If your church website has a podcast page, the address is often linked there as an orange RSS icon.

Two things worth knowing before you turn a Spotify feed on. Enabling it makes the email address on the show public — anyone with the feed link can read it — so use a church office address, never a personal one. And if your sermons live only inside Spotify, there is no public feed to give us; you would need to publish through one of the other hosts first.

With the address copied, open Community → Invite & Settings in Whetstone, paste it into the podcast feed box, and save. Episodes appear for every member under Community → Sermons, newest first, and new ones show up on their own from then on.

If nothing appears, the usual cause is pasting the listing page instead of the feed. Open the address in a browser first: a feed shows a wall of code, not a normal web page — that is how you know you have the right one.

Find your feed on your host

Each platform hides the URL in a different place. Here is where to look on the common ones.

Buzzsprout

1. 1.Sign in at buzzsprout.com.
2. 2.Click Directories in the left-hand menu.
3. 3.Click the RSS Feed tab — your feed URL is listed there.
4. 4.Copy the full URL (starts with https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/).

Podbean

1. 1.Sign in at podbean.com.
2. 2.Open your podcast and go to Settings.
3. 3.Look for a section called RSS Feed or Distribution — your feed URL is listed there.[unverified]
4. 4.Copy the full URL.

Libsyn

1. 1.Sign in at libsyn.com.
2. 2.Click Destinations in the left-hand menu.
3. 3.Click Libsyn Classic Feed — your feed URL is shown there.

Spotify for Creators

1. 1.Sign in at creators.spotify.com.
2. 2.Click Settings (gear icon, top right).
3. 3.Click Availability.
4. 4.Scroll to RSS Distribution — your public feed URL is shown there.
5. 5.Note: enabling this makes your show’s contact email public. Use a church address, not a personal one.

Castos

1. 1.Sign in at castos.com.
2. 2.Open your podcast.
3. 3.Look for Distribution or RSS in the settings panel — your feed URL is listed there.[unverified]
4. 4.Copy the full URL.

Transistor

1. 1.Sign in at transistor.fm.
2. 2.Open your show.
3. 3.Look for Share or Distribution in the navigation — your RSS feed URL is shown there.[unverified]
4. 4.Copy the full URL.

Simplecast

1. 1.Sign in at simplecast.com.
2. 2.Open your show.
3. 3.Click the gear icon (Settings).
4. 4.Click Distribution — your feed URL is shown there.

Apple Podcasts

1. 1.The Apple Podcasts page for your show is a directory listing, not an RSS feed. Your feed URL is on your hosting platform (Buzzsprout, Libsyn, etc.) — not on Apple’s site.

YouTube

1. 1.YouTube channels have no audio RSS feed, so a YouTube link cannot be used as a podcast feed. Publish your audio through a podcast hosting service (Buzzsprout, Podbean, etc.) first, then use that host’s feed URL.

10

Add a sermon, step by step.

Community → Sermons → add a sermon. Give it a title and the date it was preached. Paste your notes into the notes box — and here is the part worth knowing: any Scripture reference you type, like John 3:16 or Romans 8, becomes tappable for everyone reading it, opening straight to that passage in the reader. You do not have to mark them up; just write them normally.

For video, paste the YouTube or livestream link into the watch box and members get a Watch button. For slides, export your PowerPoint or Google Slides deck and add it the same way. Save, and it is in the sermon library for the whole group.

11

Your private notes on a sermon.

Open any sermon from the Community tab and scroll to My notes. Type your own notes on the sermon — they save automatically. Only you see them; they are not shared with the group, the admin, or anyone else. They sync across your signed-in devices.

12

Put something on the calendar, step by step.

Community → Calendar → add an event. Title, date, and optionally a start time, a location, a color, and notes. Save it and it appears on every member’s calendar — and, when the date is close, on their Today screen.

Reminders for events are the member’s choice, not yours: each person turns them on for the events they care about. If you want everyone to know about something regardless, post it as an announcement as well.

Three kinds of item appear on the calendar automatically, without creating an event: announcements with a date (labelled “Announcement”), memory verses with a due date (labelled “Memory verse”), and group reading plan start dates (labelled “Reading plan”). All three show an “Open in Community” link.

1

Your account — and how to delete it.

There’s no password: Settings → Account takes your email and a six-digit code, and an account is optional — it exists for reminders, the church space, and carrying your training between devices. Delete account sits right under Sign out, spells out exactly what it destroys, and can’t be undone.

2

Never lose your work.

Signed in, your account is the backup — new phone, cleared browser, doesn’t matter. Want a copy in your own hands too? Settings → Data exports your whole record as one file, and imports it back. Your work is yours.