(OPINION) With more than 95 installs per minute, Life.Church’s YouVersion Bible App celebrated its 15-year anniversary this month on more than 575 million unique devices in nearly 2,000 languages and the digital popularity of the Word of God is showing no signs of slowing down.
YouVersion CEO Bobby Gruenewald explained in a recent release from the donor-funded nonprofit that the Bible App was one of just 800 apps available for download when Apple launched its iOS App Store on July 10, 2008.
In the first three days, the app was downloaded more than 83,000 times, far more downloads than Gruenewald had expected to have at the end of 2008. Today, the Bible App continues to exceed expectations even in a sea of more than 1.6 million apps that include hundreds of other Bible apps in the iOS App Store.
“When we submitted the app for approval, we didn’t even know if it would make it into the App Store on opening day or even at all,” Gruenewald recalled. “It ended up being one of only a couple hundred free apps available that first day and went on to have an incredible first weekend. Honestly, our minds were blown.”
And as people have continued integrating the Bible App in their daily lives over the years, its popularity has only continued to soar. “Over the last 15 years, YouVersion has leveraged industry innovations to help people build consistent Bible engagement habits, including using push notification reminders, gamification features like streaks, and community features like friendships and prayer,” the YouVersion release said.
When the Bible App was first launched, the text only featured two languages but by its fifth year, it had more than 500. The text of the Bible App is now featured in nearly 2,000 languages and the plan is to feature Scripture in the world’s more than 7,000 languages by 2033.
As digital Bibles like YouVersion Bible App continue growing in popularity, will they one day replace physical Bibles? For now, according to Digital Millennials and the Bible produced in partnership with the Barna Group in 2018, the print version of the Bible appears to be the choice of the majority of young people, 47% to 28%.
Women especially preferred the print version 50% to 24% digital. While more men, 31%, than women preferred the digital version of the Bible, 43% still listed a print Bible as their top choice to engage with the Word of God.
Responding to questions from The Christian Post about whether data from the Bible App could suggest an eventual replacement of physical Bibles by the technology, Gruenewald said he believes the Bible app complements engagement with the Bible.
“The Bible App has been an effective tool to help people read the Bible more consistently, but I don’t think the print Bible is going away. In fact, many of our users regularly use both,” he said in an email to CP.
