History of GotQuestions.org

GotQuestions.org was launched in February of 2002. In late 2001, God gave our founder, S. Michael Houdmann, a passion for helping people find answers to their Bible questions through the internet. Little did he envision how quickly God would turn GotQuestions.org into a full-time ministry. He quickly discovered what a great need there was for a quality Bible answer service on the internet.

Within one month of our launch, GotQuestions.org was receiving over 30 questions a day. We quickly recognized our need for help, so we began searching for volunteers to assist us in answering all of the questions we were receiving. The volunteer staff grew steadily, ultimately to our current team of over 200. At the same time, the volume of questions steadily increased. We are currently averaging 100 questions per day. We continue to praise the Lord for our volunteer writers. They are what makes this ministry possible!

As our website traffic increased and the volume of questions continued to grow, we recognized the need to have our most frequently asked questions and answers posted online for easy and instant access. We currently have over 9,200 of our most frequently asked questions posted online in our archives. Now, the vast majority of GotQuestions.org's visitors find their answers in the online archives rather than by submitting a question to us.

In May of 2002, we started posting a question of the week online and immediately received requests for it to be sent out via email as well. Our Question of the Week email now has approximately 185,000 subscribers.

The internet is a spiritual battlefield. Cults, false religions, and other pseudo-Christian groups have websites as well. Some of these sites perform much the same function that we do. The answers these sites provide are often unbiblical and lead searching people down a false path—potentially to their own spiritual destruction. (Note: we by no means claim to be the only site on the internet that answers questions in a God-honoring way. In fact, there are many others.)

So, we began to pray, how can we prevent people from visiting these unbiblical sites? In response to our prayers, God led us to focus on search engine optimization. By designing our webpages to be search engine friendly, we achieve good rankings in the search engines. If anyone searches for anything Christian or Bible related, we want to be there near the top of the search engine results. We strive to be listed higher than the sites that do not proclaim the truth. God has blessed our efforts, as we knew He would (Philippians 4:19). The vast majority of our approximately 18,000,000 monthly visitors find us through the search engines.

In November of 2005, we began the process of translating what we believe to be our most important webpages into other languages. It is our goal to translate our fifty "most important" articles into every major world language. Beyond that, it is our goal to translate at least 200 webpages into all of the world languages that are most prominent on the internet. There are, sadly, many languages which have very little quality Christian content available online. Our articles have now been translated into 205 languages, with a total of 79,000 pages of translated content.

In order to expand our impact, we have launched several other websites and avenues of ministry focused on different audiences. We launched our Christian research search engine — SeekFind.org — in 2005. We launched our site for kids — GQkidz.org — in 2007. We launched our discipleship and worldview focused site — CompellingTruth.org — in 2011. We launched our site for teens — 412teens.org — in 2012. We launched our apps for Android and iPhone in 2014. We launched our Bible Commentary site — BibleRef.com — in 2016. We launched our blog site — GotQuestions.blog — in 2017. We launched The GotQuestions.org Podcast in 2021. We launched the Got Questions Ministries hub — GQM.ONE — in 2023.

We continue to pray and dream regarding how God would expand and improve the ministry of GotQuestions.org! We praise the Lord for what He has accomplished through us and in us! We look forward for how God will use GotQuestions.org in the future.