ABible app announced this year’s most popular Bible verse is about trusting God.
YouVersion said many people have engaged the passage Philippians 4:6 in 2019, which reads, “Don’t worry about anything; instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.”
Our desire is to help people grow in their relationship with God by encouraging them to read the Bible and seek Him every day. —YouVersion Founder Bobby Gruenewald
YouVersion Founder Bobby Gruenewald said, “Our desire is to help people grow in their relationship with God by encouraging them to read the Bible and seek Him every day.” He added that, “We’re encouraged to see so many people turning to the Bible in response to their worries, remembering what God has done in their lives, and choosing to trust in His faithfulness.”
Launched in 2008 by Edmond, Oklahoma megachurch Life.Church, YouVersion offers over 2,000 Bible verses in more than 1,350 languages. The app now has 400 million installs worldwide, with 50 million new installs for this year alone. Most of the new users came overseas—Poland with a 75% increase in user engagement and India with 51% increase compared to 2018.
“Every year, when we dig into these numbers, we’re overwhelmed by how God is using this app to deliver His message of hope and love to a hurting world,” said the app’s leader.
YouVersion’s annual report showed that this year saw a record-breaking number of people who engaged with the Bible using the app. Data indicated that people read and listened to the Bible 30% more this year compared to last year. The Bible app saw 5.6 billion chapters listened to and 35.6 billion chapters read in 2019.
App users made 2 billion highlights, bookmarks, and notes to record meaningful verses, and more than 478 million verses were shared in social media.
“What we are seeing in global engagement is exciting to us because with every verse highlighted, Plan day completed, or audio chapter listened to, that’s a person who is being transformed by knowing God more intimately through spending time in the Bible,” remarked Gruenewald.
YouVersion has partnered with illumiNations, a group of Bible translation agencies, to make Scripture available in more languages.
“Experiencing the Bible in your own language is a powerful gift, and we’re eternally grateful to our partners who share our dream of making the Bible for everyone,” Gruenewald said.
