What we can learn from the verse of 2019

Below is an excerpt from an article I wrote for ERLC.com.

This time of year is always good for reflection and planning. And for Christians, one of the things we tend to think about during this time is Bible reading. We assess how well (or not) we stuck to our reading plans, think ahead and set goals for the year ahead, and try to take advantage of the opportunity to read a little more Scripture during the Christmas season. Because of all this, I was intrigued a few weeks ago when I noticed an article in Christianity Today (CT) about the “verse of the year.” As I stopped to read it, mostly because I was pretty curious how such a determination was made, I learned a few things worth passing along. 

Apparently the “the verse of the year” designation came from the popular Bible app YouVersion (which you can read more about here), based on analytics from its users. According to the article, “In 2019 YouVersion users read 35.6 billion chapters and listened to 5.6 billion chapters through its online and mobile Bible app.” Though I didn’t have any sort of baseline, I found those numbers to be shocking, and honestly, really encouraging. Tens of billions of chapters read and multiple billions listened to represents a huge amount of Bible engagement.