YouVersion Bible Plan gets 1 million subscriptions on new year's day; 62 percent increase from last year
The popular YouVersion Bible App’s Bible Plans got over 1 million new subscriptions on Jan. 1, representing a 62 percent increase from last year.
Launched in 2008, YouVersion is a downloadable app for smartphones that allows users to access the Bible in an assortment of different languages and versions.
The Bible Plan subscription allows those with YouVersion to pair daily passages from the Bible with audio, video, or devotional content. These plans are available in more than 50 languages and help guide people in reading through the Bible over the course of 90 days, six months, or a year.
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YouVersion Founder Bobby Gruenewald told The Christian Post in an interview on Thursday that the Bible Plans were part of the app’s overall mission of making it easier for their users to access the Scriptures.
“Over the years, we’ve added several features focused on developing a habit of reading or listening to the Bible every day,” said Gruenewald.
“We’re encouraged to see Bible Plan subscriptions continue to increase year after year, and we’re so grateful for our partners who make their content available on the Bible App.”
Gruenewald explained to CP that there are 13,000 different Bible Plans, with an increasing number of these plans being offered in about 1,000 languages aside from English.
“Starting a Bible Plan is one of the best ways to build a discipline of daily Bible reading within the app. In the last year, we’ve added hundreds of new content partnerships, resulting in more than 2,500 new Bible Plans in 2018,” continued Gruenewald.
“Our hope is that by leveraging all the features offered in the Bible App, [YouVersion users] develop a love for engaging with the Bible daily so they can begin to recognize God’s presence in their everyday lives.”
John Piper, founder of DesiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minnesota, recently put forth reasons that people should read the Bible daily in 2019, citing “motivation” as a key essential.
“If we lose motivation, we will not read the Bible. And if we don’t read the Bible, we miss everything God has for us through the Word,” wrote Piper.
“If you want faith, if you want holiness, if you want joy, they all, Jesus says, come through encountering God in His Word. That’s how we get motivated.”
“I think this is just absolutely crucial that we see how to motivate ourselves, because if we go blank when we’re reading the Bible, we quickly lose motivation.”
