By Gavin Boyle
A new report revealed that viewers who engage with Christian media do so to engage with their faith and learn about God, as well as to avoid the questionable morals present in much secular content.
“We want to be a place that you can come to, and you click on a movie, and you know you’re going to get a certain experience. And that means faith. That means family. That means country,” Great American Media CEO Bill Abbott said about what sets his platform apart. “That means supporting the things I think that are very important to our culture and very important to people and that they don’t get from the typical media outlet.”
The new report affirms Abbot’s message, as 66% of all Christian media users say they turn to the technology to escape secular content. However, people do not only turn to it to flee the world. Over 90% of users reported watching Christian media to be encouraged (94%), to learn more about the Bible (92%), to love God with all [their] mind (92%), to be more informed about [their] faith (90%) and to experience inner peace (90%).
Other recent studies have also revealed that more than 60% of all American adults engage with Christian media on a monthly basis, and the genre is particularly popular among the younger generations.
While reading the Bible can feel like a daunting task, especially for new believers or those exploring their faith, tools like Christian media are making God’s word and stories more accessible to everyone. Shows like THE CHOSEN are available one multiple streaming platforms, and the relatively new HOUSE OF DAVID was the No. 1 show in Prime Video when it released.
At the same time, podcasts like “The Bible Recap” help people engage with scripture in a new way and overall make it easier to grow closer to God.
“The most recent numbers that I heard, which may or may not be out of date, the last I heard, we had something in the range of 350 million downloads in a little over five years,” “The Bible Recap” host Tara-Leigh Cobble told Carey Nieuwhof. “And we launched our YouTube January of last year, and we did the math on, I don’t remember how many it was, but I divided it by the number of hours in a year, and I was like, we’ve been listened to something like 230 years of listening.”
“Those numbers represent people. Like, those aren’t just random numbers, it’s not just hours and downloads, it’s souls and individuals and their stories and those are people who want to read the Bible,” she added. “I’m not out there talking about makeup, you know, these are people who want to read the Bible, who want to engage with the living God and that is so crazy to me.”
While it can sometimes feel like the world is farther from faith than ever, studies like this prove that God is still on the move and using modern mediums to reach evermore people.
Read Next: How ‘The Bible Recap’ Host Tara-Leigh Cobble Fell in Love with Scripture
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