Nearly two decades ago, Bobby Gruenewald found himself inching through an airport security line at Chicago’s O’Hare airport when a thought passed through his mind: “What if technology could help people read the Bible more consistently?”
Gruenewald, then a self-described “below-average Bible reader” and tech-savvy pastor at Life.Church, tucked the idea away. But he returned home, built an early website that quickly failed, then tried again, this time adapting the concept for the small, low-resolution screens of early smartphones.
On its first weekend in Apple’s newly launched App Store in July 2008, the YouVersion Bible App was downloaded 83,000 times. Earlier this month, YouVersion crossed 1 billion installs, becoming not only one of the most widely used faith-based digital tools in history but also an example of a free, non-monetized platform sustaining long-term global growth.
“What still feels most unbelievable,” Gruenewald, the founder and chief executive officer of YouVersion, told The Christian Post, “is that God used a below-average Bible reader to build something that ended up on a billion devices. We had absolutely no idea what God was going to do.”
The milestone was celebrated at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City on Nov. 17 with what the ministry called “Beyond a Billion,” a stadium-sized worship night attended by 13,000 people, featuring artists including Lauren Daigle, Chris Tomlin, CeCe Winans and Phil Wickham.
Between musical sets and messages from pastors, including Life.Church Pastor Craig Groeschel, Gruenewald and author Christine Caine, screens played first-person stories of transformation, from celebrities including Tim Tebow and Manny Pacquiao, to a boy with autism whose first spoken phrases came through the Bible App for Kids.
“YouVersion isn’t powerful,” Gruenewald said. “The power is in the Word of God, and we just try to get it into people’s hands.”
Yet alongside the celebration, Gruenewald is sounding increasingly cautious notes about another corner of the digital world: the rapid embrace of artificial intelligence by pastors and Christian organizations. As deepfakes and unreliable AI-driven spiritual content become more prevalent, Gruenwald said he worries that “trust” might be the most endangered commodity in modern ministry.
Simply put, YouVersion is a digital library of Scripture, devotional plans and reading tools, and now houses Bible translations in more than 2,000 languages, a number that stunned even its creators.
“I never would have guessed there were 2,000 languages, much less 7,000 in total,” Gruenewald said. “I didn’t even realize the Bible hadn’t been translated into every language yet.”
That discovery pushed YouVersion beyond distribution and into the funding of translation projects, partnering with global Bible societies to accelerate work that often takes decades. Millions of users who donate through the app have helped underwrite translation efforts around the world.
“You don’t realize how much you take for granted until you meet someone who can’t read Scripture in their heart language,” he said. “It’s like they feel as if Jesus doesn’t speak their language.”
Growth in the Global South has been especially pronounced, according to Gruenewald. Latin America, Kenya, South Africa and parts of West Africa represent some of the fastest-expanding regions for the app.
“The church is alive globally in ways that many Western Christians don’t realize,” Gruenewald said. “We’re seeing explosive growth.”
YouVersion’s team has responded by launching “global hubs,” regional offices of local staff and leaders in six countries, with more planned. Gruenewald said the hope is to contextualize the app so it feels like a local tool, shaped by the pastors, churches and the cultural dynamics of each region.
“When someone opens the Bible app in São Paulo or Nairobi or Berlin,” he said, “we want it to feel like it was made for them.”
While YouVersion’s numbers abroad are climbing, perhaps its most surprising surge is among the youngest users in the United States. Gruenewald credited part of that rise to the frustration many young people have of trying to discern what’s real online.
“My 17-year-old son has never known a world where you can trust what you see,” he said. “AI can produce videos that look completely real and aren’t. If everything is questionable, you start looking for something that isn’t.”
That, he contended, is pushing many young adults toward Scripture as a source of ultimate truth and stability.
“There’s nothing else like the Bible,” he said. “It’s been preserved and passed down accurately for millennia. When you stand in front of the Dead Sea Scrolls and see the consistency between those texts and what we read today, it builds trust.”
Pastors, he said, tell him they’re seeing something unusual: people with no church background walking in for the first time carrying physical Bibles or, more often, YouVersion on their phones.
“They didn’t start with church,” he said. “They started with Scripture. And now they’re exploring community.”
Despite YouVersion’s heavy use of technology, Gruenewald has become one of the more prominent Christian leaders publicly urging caution about AI, particularly in spiritual and pastoral contexts.
Gruenewald emphasized he’s not anti-AI, as YouVersion uses the technology internally in limited ways. But his concern is that churches are experimenting with it faster than they are understanding its risks.
“We have to respect its limitations,” he said. “Right now, the models most people use, ChatGPT, Gemini, others, give non-deterministic answers. You don’t know what you’re going to get.”
“We know people in dark places open the Bible app looking for help,” he said. “Some are contemplating suicide. So when you create an AI chat tool that says, ‘Ask anything,’ people will ask the most painful questions they’re carrying.”
Most AI systems, he said, fail to recognize self-harm indicators or to route people to trained humans, and “that’s not a theoretical danger,” he added. “It’s real.”
Equally concerning to him is AI’s inconsistent relationship with biblical text. Because most users cannot recite passages word-for-word and biblical literacy is overall low, they may never realize the mistake.
“The models misquote Scripture,” he said. “At best, they’re inaccurate 15 percent of the time; at worst, 40 or 50 percent. … That’s unacceptable for us. We want YouVersion to be a trusted source. We can’t have people wondering if the Bible they’re reading is accurate.”
Gruenewald also pointed out that there’s a theological issue with AI, as systems ingest enormous libraries of content, much of it contradictory, and blend it into answers that might sound plausible but actually lack doctrinal grounding.
“That has to be reviewed independently,” he said. “It can’t be left to chance.”
While nearly every digital platform generates revenue from ads, YouVersion is an exception. It remains a ministry of Life.Church, funded by donations and the parent church’s budget, and doesn’t sell data. It also has no ads and has never charged for access. Since 2006, Life.Church has given away virtually everything it creates for free.
“If we wanted to be a tech company, we’d operate differently,” Gruenewald said. “But this was born out of the heart of our church. We felt like God told us: ‘You’re stewards of Kingdom resources.’ So we made everything freely available.”
“Charging isn’t unreasonable,” he said. “But the people most willing to pay are the people who are already Christians. We want the app to reach the person who’s asking, ‘Is there truth here?’ Removing barriers matters. … It’s taken 17 years to build that trust. We won’t do anything to erode it.”
YouVersion expects to reach 2 billion users within five years, 3 billion within three, and Gruenewald said he believes that the trajectory could accelerate beyond that.
“We’ve seen God do the impossible already,” he said. “It doesn’t feel naïve to expect more.”
Two major initiatives will shape the app’s next chapter. First, global expansion and local contextualization. With six international hubs already established, YouVersion plans to open several more.
Read the complete article at ChristianPost.com
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