When Bobby Gruenewald launched the YouVersion Bible App in 2008, he never imagined how far it would spread.
“There’s been lots of challenges and ups and downs, but we never thought it would be possible 17 and a half years ago that we’d be celebrating a milestone of 1 billion installs,” he told Fox News Digital. “But that’s what we celebrated last Monday.”
More than a decade later, the CEO and founder of YouVersion says renewed interest in the Bible is unmistakable — and accelerating.
“We’re seeing it globally, for sure, including in the U.S. It’s actually been a trend line that’s been happening for probably more than a year now. It picked up pace even more this year,” Gruenewald said.
YouVersion, created by Gruenewald and Life.Church, recently marked surpassing one billion installations across its family of apps at its “Beyond a Billion” event at the Paycom Center on Nov. 17.
The gathering featured messages from Gruenewald and Life.Church Senior Pastor Craig Groeschel, along with worship led by Christian artists including Lauren Daigle, Phil Wickham and CeCe Winans.
Gruenewald said the app’s rapid growth reflects a deeper cultural longing for faith and truth.
“Here we are in November, which is definitely not a peak time, and we’re seeing the all-time historical record days for engagement in the Bible app,” he noted, explaining that engagement usually spikes around New Year’s Day and Easter.
Some faith leaders say the country is seeing signs of spiritual renewal, with Bible sales rising 36% in September, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis. That follows a 22% increase in 2024, alongside reports from some churches of higher attendance.
Gruenewald sees that momentum especially among younger adults.
“Gen Z is more open to the Bible than we ever anticipated would happen,” he said. “We live in a world where we’re trying to question the veracity of everything that we consume,” he added, pointing to the rise of AI. “The natural reaction to that is to search for and look for things that are actually real and can be trusted and are true.”
“We feel like this is sort of a perfect setup for the Bible because there’s nothing like it in the world,” he continued. “It has been moved and translated carefully from generation to generation for thousands of years.”
Gruenewald first envisioned a digital Bible in 2006 as a way to help himself read Scripture more consistently. The initial iteration, a website, didn’t succeed — but that failure pushed his team to rethink the project for mobile devices. The concept evolved into a Bible app, which launched in Apple’s App Store in 2008 with help from a young volunteer.
He believes a key reason for the app’s success is its accessibility: it is completely free to users, contains no ads, and does not sell or monetize user data, while still offering a high-quality experience.
YouVersion now partners with 30,000 ministries and publishers worldwide and is supported by tens of thousands of monthly donors. Thousands of volunteers have helped make the Bible available in more than 3,600 versions and over 2,300 languages, Gruenewald said.
“We just don’t want there to be any barriers to people being able to use it,” he explained.
According to YouVersion, the past year has brought record-breaking engagement, with app installations rising 12% globally year over year and daily usage up 18%. In the United Kingdom alone, there have been more than 17.7 million app installs.
Gruenewald said his team is humbled by the growth.
“We see ourselves as stewarding this on behalf of the kingdom; it’s not ours,” he reflected.
After reaching 1 billion installs, he believes the next billion users could arrive in as little as five years — and the third billion even faster.
“The best is yet to come still,” he said. “We’re just kind of at the beginning of what God is wanting to do.”
