News from our organization
Dutch Bible Word Reaches 100,000 Followers!
News from our organization
Dutch Bible Word Reaches 100,000 Followers!
News from our organization
Dutch Bible Word Reaches 100,000 Followers!
Our Dutch Facebook page Bijbelwoord (one of the brands of GlobalRize) reached 100,000 followers on March 11, 2023. This makes Bijbelwoord one of the largest Christian Facebook pages in the Netherlands. Reason for celebration!
On April 15, the Dutch team celebrated this milestone together. Part of the celebrations was a beautiful cake, especially baked for the occasion and enjoyed by all. Evelien Simon, language team leader: “We are extremely grateful that we were able to achieve this. God has blessed us richly.”
The very first post of Bijbelwoord was in 2011, after missionary director and founder Marten Visser had been posting Bible texts on Twitter for a year. There was a lot of interest in the posts; the page soon gained a lot of followers and that’s how the internet mission started.
A team of volunteers from the Netherlands and Suriname are behind the success of the Dutch page. It all starts with the graphic designers who make beautiful slides. The texts for these slides are supplied by other volunteers and checked for spelling errors. Next, the team members who actually upload the posts come into action, to post about 5 to 6 messages a day – and overnight, because we have many followers in the Suriname timezone (more than in the Netherlands).
When a message is posted, there are always many reactions, often with “Amen”. Every day, these comments are all liked by a team of ‘likers’ who work according to a schedule, supervised by the Facebook coordinator.
Sometimes page visitors have questions or need conversation or prayer; these visitors are referred to our chat team. The team are ready to talk, pray and make people aware of our online Bible courses, where our Bijbelwoord mentors are available to assist the Bible students.
Our oldest volunteer is 83! But he enjoys being on ‘chat duty’ every day and supervises dozens of students.
Thanks to the team’s enthusiasm, we now have an enormous reach and the Bijbelwoord page is one of the largest Christian Facebook pages in the Netherlands/Suriname. Our goal is to share the Gospel and lead people to the Lord Jesus. We also think it’s great that we can encourage people in this way: page visitors are regularly touched by a text or a song that we post.
Our volunteers are happy to participate in our mission. They usually do this from the comfort of their own home and derive a lot of encouragement from their work, themselves. One of our youngest likers, Judith, said, “I am thrilled to be able to help and serve in God’s Kingdom like this. ‘Liking’ is not the most inspiring work, but it is important that it happens and that’s why I like doing it. In addition, it gives our followers a valuable sense of acknowledgement.”
2011- first post
2017- 37,000 followers. At the time, two posts were posted per day. That number has slowly grown to 5 to 6 per day. Due to the time difference with Suriname, we now also post at night
2020 – 70,000 followers, start of the corona pandemic. During the pandemic we were able to encourage a lot of people with prayers, favorite Bible texts, etc. We asked our followers the question: Which Bible text / song has encouraged you the most? Then we made posts about the answers they provided
March 11, 2023 -100,000 followers
Top 5 countries with the most Bijbelwoord Facebook followers:
1. Suriname 46.6%
2. Netherlands 30.8%
3. Belgium 5%
4. Philippines 2.6%
5. Indonesia 2.4%
Top 5 cities with the most followers:
1. Paramaribo, Suriname 39.8%
2. Willemstad, Curaçao 2%
3. Amsterdam 1.8%
4. Rotterdam 1.7%
5. Lelydorp, Suriname 1.1%
The Christian holidays always receive extensive attention, and during the Week of Prayer we always create special slides.
