Dr Aaron Tabor launched Jesus Daily on April 7, 2009 as a Facebook page to propagate the gospel.
The popular page, which now has its own website, has more than 27 million likes and has been engaging people around the world ever since.
Posts of cute babies and pets, personal encouragement, and Bible quotes all play a big part in its popularity. But according to Dr Tabor, the 44-year-old gene therapy researcher behind it, he uses the same probability and statistics-based techniques he learned from the medical field.
In that respect, what he posts is only as successful as it is because he is so intentional about how and when to post.
"A lot of those techniques I learned in the medical research field, I simply applied to the Jesus Daily page, in terms of, for example, testing different times of day of posting Christ facing this way versus that way, etcetera and on and on," he said in an interview with The Christian Post.
"I treated the page as I would a medical clinical trial. I think what we learned from that has really been priceless in terms of keeping our engagement high in order to continue to spread the Gospel."
Jesusdaily.com promotes Bible verses and tools on how to share the gospel. The website has an "Accept Jesus Now" button which brings readers to a sinner's prayer link on Facebook. As of January 1, 2015, the prayer has been liked 2.4 million times and shared 136,000 times.
During the entire year of 2011-2012, Jesus Daily remained unrivaled in popularity and became the most active and most-talked about Facebook page – a title much sought after by public figures, athletes and TV shows.
The page continues to reign as the most popular Facebook page in the Church/Religious Organization Category followed by Joel Osteen Ministries according to Page Data and Trackalytics.
Tabor praises Facebook as an avenue in propagating the gospel to the very ends of the world and as Facebook expands along with its technology partners, creating more Internet access for 4.4 billion people, he is intending to be at the forefront spreading the gospel.
As of September 30, 2014, Facebook reported that there were an average of 864 million daily active users - 82.2 per cent of those are from US and Canada.
Not surprisingly, according to Social Bakers, a social media analytics service, the page has far fewer users in Muslim-majority countries – just 91,000 followers in Saudi Arabia and almost 110,000 in Pakistan.
The largest fan bases are in the United States (21.8 per cent) and the Philippines (21.6 per cent), which later Tabor labelled as "on fire for God".
"About half the country is on Facebook, and about one out of every six people in the Philippines on Facebook are a fan of Jesus Daily. There's no one in the Philippines that doesn't have a friend that is a member of Jesus Daily. Through the liking, commenting, and sharing, we're pushing the Gospel out to essentially all of the Facebook-connected world of the Philippines," said Tabor.
Currently, Dr Tabor is promoting his published devotional book, Jesus Daily: 365 Interactive Daily Devotions. The book encourages readers to do a "daily step mission", also know as Web missions, at the end of each daily reading – in other words not just read a devotional but also act on what they have learned.
The non-profit organisation aims to be financially independent but Dr Tabor admits it's been a challenge as a lot of Christians in the position to donate do not understand the need to donate to a social media ministry.
"What I found with the nonprofit is that a lot of the big donors who have historically donated millions and millions of dollars to the legacy ministries, kind of your name brand ministries, the legacy ministries who have failed to adopt a social media strategy, they simply don't understand and get social media so it's been very hard to raise funds that way," Tabor told CP.
That has forced Dr Tabor to create some for-profit revenue streams in order to fund the spread of the Gospel and more staff.
"That's been the strategy, and it's working well so far," he added.
"It's nice as a ministry that we don't have to depend on people to donate because donations kind of come and go based on the economy or the understanding of the technology or whatever the current pressing world need is."
When asked if he had a message for the millions of Jesus Daily Facebook followers, Tabor said: "Be bold for Christ".
