We may take that same model to the U.S.
And the reason for that is, the more people that we can get connected to churches within the app, the more people we’ll know who are not connected to churches, and then we can create features that are pathways for people to connect to local churches.
Our goal ultimately is to help someone grow spiritually but to do that in the context of community, meaning, we really want to help people get engaged with the local church if they’re not.
So ultimately, the way it will serve pastors and church leaders, in addition to all those ways already mentioned, [is that] it will hopefully be a way that their church grows.
How People and Churches Can Support YouVersion
ChurchLeaders: Obviously, people can support your efforts by downloading the app. Are there other ways people can support what you’re doing?
Bobby Gruenewald: We obviously appreciate everyone’s prayers, and we have many churches and people that pray for our ministry.
As you can imagine, any time that you’re engaged in distributing God’s Word, there’s spiritual attacks, there’s things that the team encounters, and it’s not lost on us that we’re fighting a spiritual battle every day that we wake up.
We also have churches that started reaching out to us really about a year or two ago and asking if they could financially support YouVersion because it’s donor-supported.
They started to realize that because their congregation uses the app, this might be a mission partner that becomes really easy for them to explain to their church.
It’s easy to say,
‘You guys understand this app. We can help make it available to other people in other parts of the world.’
And so we have several churches that financially support YouVersion, and we’re blessed and honored to do that.
