The New Year is well underway now, and all of us at Bible Gateway hope it’s off to a great start for you and yours! Looking back, we are happy to say that 2010 was a good year for us at Bible Gateway. We are blessed to be part of an extraordinary community of people—people who visit Bible Gateway to undergo the life-changing experience of reading God’s Word.

You might be interested to know that, in 2010:

• More than 70 million people visited Bible Gateway.
• We spent more than 23 million hours (over 1.4 billion minutes!) reading Scripture on Bible Gateway.
• More than 18 million people visited Bible Gateway from outside the United States.
• We had visitors from more than 236 countries or territories.
• Three of our top ten most popular Bible translations were Spanish language versions.
• People visiting Bible Gateway on mobile devices increased by 83% over last year, and by 51% for mobile device visits from outside the United States.

It is clear that Bible Gateway continues to be a favorite online destination for people who want to read God’s Word, and more people than ever are finding Bible Gateway on their mobile devices or from countries around the globe, some of which offer only restricted access to the Bible, if any at all. Praise the Lord!

We are immensely blessed by this opportunity to share the Bible with people in as many languages and translations as we are allowed. With this opportunity comes great responsibility, and we take it very seriously. In 2011, we are in a position to continue growing and become an even more powerful force for God in the world, and we aim to be worthy stewards of such a responsibility.

Here are some of the things we are working on to continue making Bible Gateway a home for all those who wish to engage with the Holy Scriptures:

• The new BibleGateway.com design. You can see our work in progress at http://beta.biblegateway.com. This new design focuses on keeping Bible search and reading as easy to use as ever, while offering some enhanced features like improved parallel viewing, integrated Bible audio. Eventually, we’ll add features that allow you to personalize your Bible Gateway experience.
• New translations. We are constantly working on adding new translations and enhancing existing ones. We recently added the Common English Bible and the Chinese Contemporary Bible. The Nuevo Traduccion Viviente is nearly ready to go live, as are the SBL Greek New Testament and the Phillips New Testament. We are so very grateful to our many publishing partners who allow us to license these translations and share them with you online.
• More newsletters. In 2010, we introduced email newsletters to Bible Gateway for the first time. In 2011, we plan to bring you more newsletter options to choose from, including devotionals, verses-of-the-day in other languages and translations, and even an exclusive apologetics newsletter we will talk more about in the coming months.
• A mobile app. That’s right! We’re working on it. Stay tuned in the coming months for news on this.

I want to take a moment to thank you, our dear visitors and readers. We are here for you by God’s blessing because you have supported us over the years—by praying for us, by visiting the site, and by holding us accountable when we’ve gone astray. We humbly ask you to continue upholding us in these ways in the coming days, months, and years.

As we endeavor to make Bible Gateway an ever better place to read and study Scripture, we remain committed to the core of what makes us tick: the transforming Word of God. Scripture tells us to

“Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need.” (Romans 12:11-12, NIV)

By God’s grace, may we be blessed to continue zealously sharing with the Lord’s people around the world—both online and off—the living, breathing Word of God, every day, for as long as we are able.

Richest blessings for a Word-filled 2011!

Rachel Barach is the general manager of BibleGateway.com.