When I first envisioned creating a devotional series for Passion Week, I knew it would be a meaningful project to me, but I had no idea just how impactful it would turn out to be. Now that Passion Week has finished. I thought it would be good to report on how the project was received.
We ran Passion Week from April 13 to April 20. This eight-day journey through the Scriptures detailed Christ’s final week as a unified chronological narrative. But this project became more than just another series on the site; it turned into an incredible experience for me and, as it turns out, for many readers as well.
The Passion Week devotional was published simultaneously on my ministry platform, Nerd in the Word, and my church’s official website. This dual-platform approach allowed us to reach local individuals through the church website and to reach a more diverse audience by publishing in Spanish and Portuguese on our website. We found roughly the same number of readers on both sites. And we did see a couple of readers from outside the English-speaking community, but most of the readers came from English-speaking countries.
The response blew away every expectation I had for it. Typically, Nerd in the Word articles see around 70 views on their publishing days. I’ve grown accustomed to this as our standard performance. However, this Passion Week series averaged a remarkable 345 daily readers, totaling 2,763 views over the span of eight days. Achieving over 300 daily views was entirely unexpected and, honestly, more than double what I had considered our best-case scenario.
If the views were not enough of a surprise, the retention was equally incredible. On Friday, we found a retention rate surpassing 80%. It became clear that readers weren’t just casually finding this series and moving on; they were genuinely invested in the devotional journey. This connection and enthusiasm made it evident that this was by far Nerd in the Word’s most successful project to date.
Reflecting on this overwhelming success, I’m now inspired to explore ways to develop this series further in the future. I’m already thinking about how we can enhance the content, incorporate additional elements, or perhaps add translations for more languages to reach even wider audiences in the following years.
Before I go, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who participated in the Passion Week devotional series. Your involvement, encouragement, and commitment have profoundly blessed me, and I am beyond thankful that you chose to share this journey. This has truly been an incredible milestone, and I can’t wait to see what God has in store for our next steps together.
