Hallow is a prayer app that has been advertised by actor Mark Wahlberg, such as during a Super Bowl LVIII ad. It’s also now the number 1 app on the App Store charts, a spot it reached on Ash Wednesday, the day marking the first of 40 days of Lent. Lent commemorates the 40 days and nights Jesus spent in the desert fasting and fighting off temptation before he began his ministry.
Posting about the app’s success on X, Hallow said, “#1 in the App Store!! Glory Be – He is #1.” Continuing, it wrote that it had made App Store history with that success, as it is the first religious app ever to top the App Store Charts.
Doing so, it wrote, “We are overjoyed with how powerful Day 1 of Lent Pray40 was. Not only did over 1 million people join the challenge and start a transformational prayer journey yesterday, Hallow also became the first religious app to ever reach the top of the App Store Charts!”
Further, the screenshot the app’s account shared showed that it had managed to surpass, in becoming the number one appl, both shopping discount app Temu and Instagram’s X competitor, Threads. “Jesus is #1,” the graphic they posted proudly proclaimed.
Following that up in a second post, the Hallow team noted that it has only a few dozen total employees, whereas Temu has more than ten thousand and Threads has a whopping 67,000 employees. Hallow, in saying it has “85 employees + Jesus,” indicated that its success came from the Lord above, not from earthly attempts to succeed.
Commenting on those respective employee counts, Hallow added, “And here’s a comparison of our small team to the teams behind the apps we’re sitting next to in the App Store today! We are so grateful for the dedication of all our team members at Hallow and our Hallow Partners to help people all over the world pray. AMDG.🙏💜”
Alex Jones, the CEO and co-founder of Hallow, commented on the app’s astounding success in a press release. In it, he gave all glory to God, saying, “We’re blown away. When we started Hallow, it would’ve been crazy for us to imagine a thousand people praying together on it, much less 1 million. God is doing incredible things. All glory and credit and praise belongs to him.”
Continuing, he said the outsized success of the app came as a surprise to him. “Never in a million years would I have imagined we’d be at the top of the App Store. The other folks in the top 100 apps are just such incredible and popular apps with tens of thousands of employees — Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, Google, Instagram. What a crazy world,” he added.
Jones also spoke to CNA about the app’s successful Super Bowl ad. He said, “[I]t was a phenomenal night. A dream come true. For the first time ever during the Super Bowl, we all got to take 30 seconds to give thanks to God.” He continued, “We’ve been blown away by the responses to the spot. We’ve heard from many who were inspired to join us and give prayer a try for the first time in a long time this Lent.”
He then added, “It was a huge bet for us. When we were producing the spot we decided really to just focus on making it all about Jesus — just on spending time in prayer with God. It was amazing to see how the spot resonated with so many. It was an honor to get to pray together and we’re thrilled to continue to pray together with everyone this Lent.”
Featured image credit: Hallow post on X