Innovation with Worldwide Impact

BY ANNA DERBYSHIRE (‘90)

In 1995, a group of business majors hooked up an answering machine to a phone in an empty dorm room of Snowbarger Hall on the campus of Southern Nazarene University. With the encouragement of long-time professor and mentor, Dr. Larry Mills, and other members of the SNU School of Business faculty, they were determined to build a web hosting company. One member of that group was an innovative thinker and entrepreneur named Bobby Gruenewald (‘97).

Today, Bobby serves as a pastor and Innovation Leader at Life.Church, a multi-site Christian church, and is the founder of the YouVersion Bible App. Arguably one of the most innovative, impactful ways the Bible has been made accessible around the world, the YouVersion Bible App is projected to have over 500 million unique downloads by November 2021.

After Bobby’s graduation from SNU in 1997, the web hosting company was sold, and by age 23 Bobby had built and sold a pro-wrestling site that drew 100,000 daily interactions from fans. When the local (Oklahoma City) newspaper ran a story on the deal, an associate pastor at Life.Church saw the front-page picture and recognized Bobby as “the guy who plays the keyboard on Sundays.” He invited Bobby to lunch and asked if he would consider being on staff of the growing church. Bobby initially told him “No” but was willing to donate his business expertise if it would benefit the church.

At the time, Bobby did not realize how that appointment would change the trajectory of his life. The Lord spoke to him, reminding him of something he learned from his years at SNU: sometimes the Lord says, “you have plans, but I want you to go this way instead.” After several months it was apparent the Lord was directing him to accept the staff position at Life.Church.

“I connected the dots between problems and solutions all the time, but it never occurred to me that my business world experiences could be applied to the church world,” he explained, “And I’m a connect the dots sort of guy!”

Bobby reflected that an often-overlooked resource is sitting in the church pew. “Each congregation has a set of people with unique skill sets. When we think of serving in the church we tend to gravitate toward ushers, teachers, greeters, worship team members. There needs to be an empowerment and connecting of the dots for people to engage at a more purposeful level,” he said. Bobby looks back at his own experience and sees how important it is for church leadership to see the congregation as the number one resource. In his case, a lack of resources was an opportunity for innovation by connecting people and identifying their unique gifts.

Life.Church was only a few years old when Bobby’s skills as an entrepreneur were utilized to develop the multi-site model by using technology as the link between locations. He wore many hats and addressed the problems of the rapidly expanding locations along with the growing technology challenges.

In fact, Bobby was serving the church in so many capacities, he found himself with a full calendar and a longing for more time to engage in reading and studying the Bible. And so it was that in 2006, in a crowded O’Hare airport, that Bobby first thought of leveraging technology to help with Bible engagement. He immediately thought up several names for a Bible website and registered them while standing in line to board his plane. When he presented the idea in a staff meeting, he explained “I think this might help me engage in the Bible more, so I think it might help others, too.” The other pastors told him, “Sure, try it.” But the church did not have the budget. There was no extra staff. It was just “go.” That began the quest for volunteers and any resources they could scrape together. They built a website with free Bible access and named it “YouVersion.”

However, YouVersion failed! Technically, it worked, but even those who built it had to force themselves to use it. Then Bobby took an important leadership step and made the call to shut it down. As he knew, in most ministries fear of failure is one of the most paralyzing obstacles. He explained, “Fear does not usually keep ministries from starting something, it is the fear of stopping the thing that often keeps the church from innovation.”

Bobby presents Pope Francis an iPhone with the YouVersion App installed.

Bobby speaking at Hillsong in Sydney, Australia

A lack of resources was an opportunity for innovation by connecting people and identifying their unique gifts.

Bobby collecting Bibles in different languages from the Bible House

Bobby reflected that fear of failure also prevents the church from measuring outcomes. If it is not measured, it cannot be quantified as failure or success. Plus, fear of failure is more complicated in the church than in the workplace. Recognition of failure may cause rifts in relationships. Many pastors think if the idea fails, the church will lose confidence in “me.” However, it is freeing to acknowledge “It failed.” The win comes because there is freedom to assess the failure.

“The next meeting after deciding to shut down the website, we were free to discover why YouVersion did not work for us,” he said. It was the failure discussion that led to the idea of making YouVersion a mobile website. BlackBerry was the big mobile choice at the time, so they created a mobile version of the website not knowing if it would be effective on such a small screen. At the last minute they added code from the only company who created analytics at that time. This gave them the power to measure the success or failure of the mobile YouVersion. The ministry team quickly found their own use of the digital Bible went up simply because it was always right there in their hands.

Shortly after, Apple announced the new iPhone and the concept of mobile apps. Bobby and his team did not have years to figure it out and plan, they had a few weeks. So they created the iOS version, and the YouVersion Bible App was in the App Store opening day in July 2008. They hoped the analytics would show 80,000 downloads in the first year. They were way off. It had 83,000 downloads the first weekend. A HUGE success!

“There is not an easy recipe to help make decisions unless you assess expectations,” Bobby explained. “Expectations need to be defined from the beginning of any innovation and should not be re-written after the idea is underway. That is why it is important to measure everything and decide if the results are equal to the resource energy spent. Many start ministry ideas with no form of measurement. If success cannot be measured, then ‘the why’ is not clearly defined. It takes courage and honesty to measure and discuss outcomes,” he said.

“Just as we should evaluate why something failed, it is equally important to measure success, because we need to learn how to repeat it. Even if an innovation is successful, it can be frustrating if you don’t know the ‘why,’” he declared. Bobby believes there must be at least one goal from the original problem that might answer the question, “Why it is working or not working?” Only then can leaders learn to “add or subtract from the process,” repeating the successes and stopping the less successful things altogether.

Bobby with Bishop Dale Bronner, Lead Pastor at Word of Faith Family Worship Cathedral in Georgia

“Our focused goal from the beginning of YouVersion was how to get people more engaged in the Bible,” Bobby shared. He recalled two metrics that helped them measure success; one was the analytics, and another was the Streaks feature, which tracks how many days in a row a person engaged in Scripture within the app. “We had polarizing opinions when we launched Streaks. The ones who hated it were very vocal about it. If we had only that to go on, we might have taken Streaks out,” he shared. But the analytics told the other side of the story. A much higher number of people were using the app daily after the feature launched. That was the main goal, and with Streaks it was measurable. Bobby said, “How do you know if you are using resources in the right direction if you don’t measure it? Using resources with measurable accountability is important, assuming you don’t have unlimited resources.”

Bobby is selected as Commencement Speaker and is presented the Honorary Doctorate from SNU in 2015

“YouVersion started with humble beginnings and a lack of resources. Honestly, when the church has plenty of resources its biggest struggle is to stay innovative,” he said. “When there is no financial resource and ‘$100,000 doesn’t drop from the sky,’ innovation is the necessary route to solve problems.”

And so, technology and the Church was not a new combination for Bobby and Life.Church when the global pandemic took place. But it was an unprecedented challenge for countless ministries around the world. Today, the innovation that those ministries used during the shutdown has created a hybrid church environment that will likely always remain. During the pandemic many churches relied on the digital world in order to keep ministries moving forward. And, as they did, church members became more technologically proficient users to maintain family and church relationships.

Now, with many churches opening back up, Bobby believes there is a need for both types of church to remain available. “We can expect to see more technological integration and we need to be prepared to use the technology and tools around us to see lives changed,” he said.

Bobby Gruenewald gives full credit to the Lord for all the innovative advancements and readiness of the digital tools that Life.Church created before anyone knew how desperately we would need them in 2020. “It is clearly something God has done, and I am very grateful to be exactly where God wants us to be.”

Bobby speaking at Calvary Temple, a mega church in Hyberdad, India