The milestone was announced in a “verse of the day” video from Craig Groeschel, the founding pastor of Life.Church, which created the app. He called the achievement “a testimony to the goodness of God and the power of His word.”
Bobby Gruenewald, the founder of the app, told The Christian Post in an interview that before the platform was created, he was “below average” in the duration and frequency he would read the Bible.
So he created YouVersion— first as a website, hoping that it would increase his desire and the desire of others to read the Bible more consistently and draw an audience of Bible readers.
But, he said the website “failed” at first. Despite drawing a lot of attention, there wasn’t a continued interest in those who used the website.
Gruenewald said he and his team realized that the YouVersion website was unsuccessful because it was not a mobile-friendly platform. With the hope of potentially keeping a more expansive audience engaged, they launched the YouVersion app in July 2008 as the only Bible app available when the App Store first came into existence.
During the first weekend after the app was released, the app brought 83,000 installs, a number Gruenewald didn’t think would be hit until after a year of being launched.
When the YouVersion app first launched, the app was only available in two languages: English and Spanish.
Now, there are over 1,750 languages in which the Bible can be read within the app.