EP342 Live Recording - Jeff & Marilyn Adamson Talk Evergreen Content, Reaching GenZ & GenA, Digitally

all right hey jeff uh with church digital episode 342 as i was sitting here listening to the uh the

music uh i realized episode 350 is a couple months away actually i think it's right around

my birthday august 18th gonna have to have some fun uh with uh the 350th stream coming up we gotta

do a town hall somewhere around there i wonder i wonder if that lines up we'll have to we'll have

to figure that out for another day not not for now i got enough going on my life uh but hey i am

excited about this this conversation uh coming up uh we've got marilyn adamson uh from every student

coming on to share there's some phenomenal stories some phenomenal resources uh that are right around

the corner that are available for you and some of the stories that i've been hearing are are ridiculous

and so i cannot wait to uh to get in to to share some of these resources with you

we are digging into a season here with the church digital uh equipping partners and empowering tools

and what we're seeing from from marilyn and every student is um well it's it's it's exciting

you know and i don't want to call out my friend ian kirk who uh who's chiming in in in the chatter

you're excited just about every conversation that's a good thing yeah i do i get excited a lot i'm like

a woo girl except uh i don't woo and i'm not a girl so you can do with that what you want i'm sure

somebody in social media will clip that i'm like a woo girl yeah i said it twice you got two different

takes so you can find a way to make uh that work for you but it's gonna be really good hey i tell you

what another exciting thing um we have been uh neck deep as an organization working through the fall

digital missionary conferences conferences we are doing four uh half day conferences in uh september

and october it's conference season in the fall we've announced three of them uh there is uh there's

actually we've done some title changes we've done a focus change and so you can go to uh you can go to

the website missionary.digital to get more information on three of the conferences that we've announced but

the fourth one well we decided to keep it a secret but we're going to announce it it's gonna be really

cool next week wednesday uh september 18th we are doing a a live stream uh with alan hirsch uh probably one of

the the fathers of of modern church planting alan hirsch uh the incarnational guru himself who

happens to be a strong supporter of digital missionaries and digital church planting now

i'm not actually sure how incarnational ministry and digital go together and to be honest that's the

conversation we're going to have with alan hirsch next week as we're trying to figure out what

incarnational does with digital and how digital can influence incarnational uh our friend on the board

jesse carbo on the tcd board wrote an excellent article that was published uh in missio alliance i

think a couple weeks ago and uh alan was was quoted in there and just a lot of good conversations with him

around that so hey september 18th jump on this stream uh with us more information uh coming to you via email in tcd

uh whatsapp and discord i for the life of me i can't think of the time right now it's an it's an

afternoon or evening stream because alan is like literally in australia and so it's gonna be thursday

when we talk to him but that's coming up right on the corner and we will announce the four conferences

that secret fourth conference that we've yet to announce uh we will announce publicly uh on alan hirsch

it's gonna be worth it it's worth that coming around for it so i you know what i guess that's

it for my commercial spiel i don't what was that three four minutes i don't i kind of hate doing those

things like you know i'm as excited as i am about people i really am not that good about promoting

myself and god's actually done a good job promoting tcd along the way and so i'm just

sitting back and smiling uh like i'm sure uh maryland is uh with some of the things she's

going to share so let's go ahead and bring maryland on for the conversation hey maryland how are you

doing i think it's going okay for you yeah doing well i really appreciate this opportunity

that to be on i love what you're doing yes now um maryland is she lives in no you're not in orlando

yeah you are in orlando you're with the crew she's she's in orlando she's about four hours away from me

um i'm i'm down in miami and a lot of the the crew team uh is based out of orlando for whatever

reason one of their headquarters is there but maryland um connected with me starting to talk about

some of the stuff that she's doing and things that are happening over with every student and a lot of

the really exciting resources that are now available uh for people to to really reach jen a and gen z and

so um maryland maryland's got a presentation that we're going to walk through here in a minute but

before we even even get to that point maryland you know tell us a little bit about yourself how'd you get

connected and how are you doing this stuff digitally how what's your story yeah well actually

my story really does play into my creating every student dot com uh i had been an atheist

and then i met a christian who really walked with god really trusted god in her life and so i began to

wonder if it was possible that god could exist um i couldn't understand how somebody as smart as her

could believe in god so i was challenging her but i wasn't mean about it we debated for uh i bet a year

and a half i'd ask her questions almost daily and finally she gave me a book that had um information in

a minute and when i was away from her and this is key you know when we think of being online when i was away

from her all my defenses could come down and i could be honest and that's when god really spoke to me and

it was i was into philosophy but it was science that spoke to me um the earth's position to the sun and

the properties of water so and then i saw evidence for jesus being god but um bottom line is when i asked

jesus into my life he really changed my life in a dramatic way and i just wanted everybody to know him

and so after i graduated college i had a degree in journalism and advertising and it turned out i

became friends with a webmaster who was able to work with me to build the site and this was back in

it launched in 2000. yeah i don't i don't think they use the word webmaster anymore i don't know

that's the thing they've moved away from that i have been a webmaster in my life and yeah that that's

good that's funny yeah yeah no that's a dated term you're right well cool um so and so you're going

to talk about every student and and walk through some of that phenomenal uh story with that so marilyn i'll

go ahead and fire the slide deck if you're ready and uh let me just let me just mention one thing for

your audience uh the purpose of this time is to help you see ways that you can very comfortably and

very quickly get into conversations about god with people when you're online whether it's live online uh

you know if you're in gaming or in discord or or even if you want to post something in social media but

any direct messaging any of that there's a quick way that you can begin to have conversations with

people about god in a way that's comfortable for them and i'm going to be showing you a couple websites

that can really help you in your evangelism and your discipleship so that's what this is about and i i

think it'll be really useful to you awesome and so you know i know we've got some people in chat feel

free to throw questions in their comments we'll we'll put them up and address them uh throughout the

presentation and if you're watching on demand of course feel free to to put comments uh in chat as well

i i personally interact with all the youtube comments okay i'm like a week or two behind but

normally i'm really on top of my game it's it's just it's it's been uh it's been a rough week uh

you know steven steve good insight i'm meeting jesus when alone we should probably have a choice

of hand oh you know it's steve slow down slow the roll uh let's let uh let's let marilyn get

into what she's she's showing so marilyn you ready to get started on this yes thank you awesome here

you go hey the magic button worked good uh this i love this verse it's what has motivated me it's

in philemon in the rsv it reads and i pray that the sharing of your faith may promote the knowledge

of all the good that is ours in christ and to me that's the definition of evangelism we get to tell

people the good that is found in christ

so this is how the world lives this makes it very easy to help non-believers

most non-believers i found don't know who god is or what it's like to know god and that's why

i build everystudent.com it's a safe place to explore who god is and what it might be like to

know god everything on the site is about god and everything is worded to non-believers it's for them

with reasons to begin a relationship with god so john was one of the people uh i visited your site last

year and it has been a life-changing experience i came to know about the love of god and the

relationship we can have with him i do not have words to explain the joy i'm experiencing today

everystudent.com is in 50 languages now each is its own website

and you can find those by scrolling down the home page of everystudent.com to this word cloud

it'll show you all the urls

uh just during last year more there were more than 80 million visits to the site so god's really drawing a

a lot of people to the site

and more remarkable i think 1.5 million people told us that they asked jesus into their life while

on the site so you had 1.5 million people um i mean that's like two percent of people two percent of

people that visited your site last year accepted christ and that's like them reporting letting you know that

uh yes we have um we have about 20 percent of the articles actually include the gospel

and if they do there's a link at the end of these articles and they're long articles

and there's three links at the bottom one says i just asked jesus into my life and that's what we count

another one says i may want to can you explain this more fully and we take them to another page and then

there's also a link where they can ask a question and someone will personally reply to them

yeah that's that's a that's a those are strong numbers um i'm curious one more question how how do people find you

we're doing a lot of google and facebook advertising okay so um seo uh social media

marketing social uh search engine marketing to to get people there we pretty much gave up on search

engine optimization a lot of time ago yeah just skipped over it wasn't worth the effort

i almost want to have a side conversation on that that's interesting yeah yeah well and it's becoming

even more so with ai now you know okay so if you do the math on the 1.5 million people that's more

than 4 000 people every day who ask jesus into their lives while on the site that's crazy

it is crazy and and most of them are in closed countries uh this is tough to see but you've heard

of the 1040 window and that's that's a latitude right latitude section of the earth

where you've got a lot of muslim hindu uh we have a lot of people come to the site from vietnam which is

communist communist atheist uh and and this is mostly where we are running ads in google i'm running

campaigns in 14 languages in google so it's fun to be able to go into countries where it's not easy

it's not safe for people to talk about jesus and yet they can come and safely explore without them being

at risk and i love that so here's the what we've seen over the years in terms of the number of people

who are coming to christ i mean it's god's just had his hand on it and i'm i'm just watching it like

anybody else even though okay so you started this thing in 2020 2002 20 years ago and you were like

double digits 10 15 people two people no people looks like the first year did you have any idea

this would happen like when you first got started what was what was the hope what was the dream what

was the ridiculous fantastical goal yeah i was in the campus area um of crew in the united states so i

was doing it for university students in english in the us but what happened is as our staff in other

countries around the world began to know about the site i started being asked to speak at global events

and then even more staff became aware of the site and all 50 languages came about at the request of

our staff in various countries and are they are you using ai to translate is it manual like manual be

ridiculous the number of articles no we we've mostly done manual um really yeah yeah i'll send yes we'll

have staff send in rarely have we hired mostly it's been our staff who have found people to translate and

it's it's been a lot of work there's that volunteer like act of love to to do the translation well because

they really wanted the site in their language you want to use it and so um that was that's what i

asked of them we built it we have um a web designer yeah who has built all the sites i learned that's

funny yeah it's beautiful and you're mostly in closed countries yeah oh did i went the wrong way wrong but my

thought that's okay so i wanted to read this one because this again is typical patrick wrote uh he's

in ireland he said he was doing just enough drugs each morning to get through the day without killing

himself and then he sent a really long email this is an excerpt he said i went to my computer and googled

starting a new life with god and led me to your site what i read made the most perfect sense in a

life trampled by confusion i found clarity you have offered me a gift which has changed my life i feel

indebted to you for making the information available in a way a complete novice like me could understand

and and that's what we hear most is that first of all the site doesn't mention crew doesn't mention

any church or organization it really is all about god and it's worded very uh simply and persuasively

and so people who know nothing about christianity understand the site and and it helps them

and so yeah this is again from my own background but as you know online is comfortable it feels safe

they're in control no one is challenging them and so their defenses can come down and they can be honest

it's the perfect environment for god to speak to someone

here's what this person posted on her blog this is for the article is there a god she said the funniest

thing happened when i read the first paragraph of the article i wanted to read the next and when i did

i wanted to read the next and the next you should all look at this article something made me want to

believe again i mean believe just reading the intro to the article gave me a newfound respect for

christian thought i'd been looking for a reason not to be disgusted by christians i didn't know

interesting comment huh i've taken another step closer i read the article and saw god coming to

me from a place outside myself that is revealing himself to me from the actions of others

the faith i had that he existed was suddenly renewed so good

and this was i met this guy in jordan he said he went into an internet cafe

to search for scholarships for his phd and landed on our arabic site every arab student and he said here i was a

muslim reading article after article and thinking this is true this is true i sent the site to my friends

praying that god would speak to them and many became believers and and he told me that over two years

he saw four generations of believers where people that had come to christ through his email

you know they led others who led others who led others wow and i mean it's so cool to see because people

share what has an impact in their life so even if you talk to just one person online you have no idea

what god will do in that person's life to impact others

so not all sites do this but on ours each article or video page has its own url so that means you can

copy and paste it into a message or or just use their icons yeah shareability we talk about evergreen and

the shareability of that it's really smart to do the uh unique urls for that um

everything on the site is worded to people who are yet to know god

its goal is not to inform or educate but to seek to give people persuasive reasons to begin a relationship

with them uh just dig into that 30 seconds yeah well okay a lot of sites um where they give

they give an accurate presentation of what's true okay um but it's it's like reading an encyclopedia

it's just information it's nothing that would necessarily move someone to action so i said my

background was advertising and so everything in the site is written in a persuasive copy format

in writing you've got news reporting you have um novels are written differently education is different

this is persuasive writing and so it means um you start with attention build to interest lead them to a

decision show them how to take action and everything is designed that way because the goal is to help

them begin a relationship with god but also give them um reasons to do so and we have a lot of scripture

that's in the articles that's in the articles and in the videos because i want i know the power of god

to speak for himself so good yeah uh so here's um every student is useful in helping people who are

asking questions like these how do you know god is real if there is a god why is life so hard does god

really answer prayer if i were to have faith in god what could i expect god to do for me and why should

i believe in jesus i mean we cover many more than that but so on this i just want to give you you can

look at these yourself i'm not going to read them all but um jeff if you could just show some of the page

some of what we cover yeah

i wanted to focus on this this is a email series seven parts comes every two days and it's written

for skeptics agnostics people that aren't sure that god exists and when they fill out the form the the

only thing they have to fill out is their email address and and this is key in that we don't ever

we don't do things on the site for our benefit um so i'm not trying to assemble an email list of people

or get names or cities or any of that this is for them so even after somebody has completed a series

i go through we use aweber as our sending company and after people have gone through email series i

will delete their email address because i really care about their privacy and we tell them if you

sign up for this this is the only thing you'll receive and you won't be put on a list or anything so

privacy has always been important to me this is not a new thing we've always done it this way way before gdpr

came in you know

uganda this person said i never thought i would understand about god and faith like you have made

me i now have a reason to live today and this is the kind of thing you can help people with

right give them reason to live by knowing god

this person from nigeria i was in i was a good performer but deep down i was breaking into pieces

life was becoming harder and harder countless sexual partners bad company lots and lots of lies

sometimes i would just sit to sit down alone and cry my life was a mess you introduced god to me in a

magnificent way it has transformed my life i breathed a fresh air a breath of liberation and freedom i was

finally born again that's kind of thing you might hear from people you know um so here is how every

student can help you in your conversations with people who are yet to know god how we talk to people

through text message it's really no different than how we talk to them in person so this carries over

i'm going to give you some examples of me talking to somebody face to face but i've also had the same

kinds of conversations online okay oh sorry my fault there you go

okay here is your full training it's in one uh slide here as you chat with people online you can

simply say i'm connected to a site that takes on the hard questions about life and god like how do you know

god exists and why is life so hard here let me give you a link to it okay it's that simple

all right so i'm going to give you examples of how this works first of all when you do that when

you resource somebody people appreciate that you're just resourcing them with something that can answer

their questions they sense that you care about them you're not trying to control them you respect their

ability to decide for themselves and they're very grateful

so here's an example of the conversation

i was in a fast food line at a on the university campus and it was a long line and a student next

to me started chatting with me we both happened to look up from our phones at the same time and so

you know so then we started talking because it was too awkward not to um so i asked him about his

major and it was computer engineering uh you know so we talked about security and web browsers and all

sorts of stuff and then i told him a little bit about everystudent.com he said i'm agnostic but my

fiance is a christian i asked him if you saw sufficient evidence for god's existence would you want to know god

he said yes so i pulled out my phone and i had him sign up for the spiritual adventure pack which is

that seven-part email series and you find it um just look for the little hiker icon and you'll be able to find it

so this is what struck me the most about our conversation it was only 10 minutes long maybe

but three different times during our conversation daniel grabbed my hand to shake it and told me how

grateful he was that i would talk to him wow um and part of that is because he's got a fiancee who's

a christian this could make his life a whole lot easier if he became a christian you know

um okay another example of a real conversation that just as easily could have been online

um and let me just say when you're equipped with this site god's going to bring people your way

and here's an example i was in a hotel lobby standing next to me was this woman and she asked are you

with our convention i said no i'm with a site that takes on the hard questions about life and god like

how do you know god exists and why is life so hard she said i'm an atheist but i'm searching

i said you will love this website because it will give you reasons to begin a relationship with god

and show you how you can start that relationship with him today and she had tears in her eyes when

i handed her the card and she thanked me for it um so caroline's another one who signed up for this

series for atheists the site does more than just speak to atheists but it's useful that way she said

although you don't know me i feel like you've taken my hand and led me on a very special journey these

last few weeks the information you provided answers many of my questions you have led me from complete

denial of god's existence to not just believing in him but knowing that he is there the evidence you give

was sufficient to convince this 33 year old lifelong atheist and not an easy challenge wow

and dominie who's another thank you so much for your website it's been so nice how much sense it

makes it helped me find jesus god our lord i love that because she's so new she's not quite sure how to

address how to say yeah i'm just trying to figure out words yeah she said of course as i am new to it i

used to be agnostic i still have little doubt but that doubt is fading away quickly your website

has provided believable proof and such eye-opening material

um so let's say you're talking to somebody online and you say something about what you personally know

to be true about god after that like you might say you know i'm sorry you're struggling with whatever

they shared with you and you could say you know i've been in tough times before and i i found that god

gives me a peace that's beyond what the circumstances would call for then after you say something about

god you can say i'm wondering if anyone has ever shared with you how you could know god like that

okay so the key point of this you're not blaming them for being ignorant you're kind of blaming somebody

else that maybe they never shared with him how he could know god like this okay so it's very it's a

disarming kind of way to say it um that makes them comfortable so i'm wondering if anyone has ever

shared with you how you could know god like that let me give you a link that explains how you can start

a personal relationship with god all right and the the two i list here one is an article that goes through

the gospel and the other one's a video that goes through the gospel sure um so to help you know i've

given you a couple examples of when i've been in conversations with people but if you if you're

willing to go through this is free free email series and as you know by now this is all you'll receive

you won't get anything else if you sign up for it um but you this is a site that i'm going to tell you

about in a minute it's a site for new believers or struggling believers it's called startingwithgod.com

so if you go to startingwithgod.com slash conversations um there's a series you can sign up for that will give you

further motivation and coaching and how to interact with non-believers when you're online that's beautiful

let me i want to i want to pause here for for a second i i love i love your the stories you just

rolled through now all of them were were physical interactions and and you're working primarily with

digital here early as we are working with digital what i love about what you're doing is even when

you're standing next to the college student in line to get whatever um you are personally interacting

with that person um like this is not a you know if i'm going to parallel it in the college university

physical realm you didn't print a thousand flyers and wallpaper every light post on campus you're

having a personal interaction with someone you know so often in digital we think about like if i'm

paralleling that to digital oh my gosh let me just create a social media graphic and i'll post it on my

feed and that'll get hundreds of people to to click over to whatever the url is i'm trying to drive them to

and and some people will go but that's a a shallower response and it doesn't convert so to speak marketing

term as much as it is a personal interaction sharing that dm starting that conversation with someone

digitally going a little further in building that that relationship you know we talk about bless

in in in using this in your sharing your jesus story segment of of bless as as a way to start a

conversation with someone even shared experiences watch this video and let's talk about it in um you know

remotely async or let's jump on a a discord call or a google meet or zoom or whatever to interact

like there's ways to not just give this resource and then it's gone like in your situation uh you know

you're telling stories people you meet and then they're they're they're gone yeah i won't see them

again right in in our in a lot of our situations that may be true but there's also an opportunity to

relationally use this as a stepping stone to further the conversation along and i think that's where i look at

like some of this conversations starters and conversations god starts where you you're still

part of the play even after you you release them to the to the website that's right and um as

conversations happen there's lots of um pages that you could share a link and say take a look at this

and then let's talk yeah you know i love that all right let's keep going so this is where you would

find it that there's icons on starting with god.com and it's it's this one's called conversations god

starts and and this series is because i really believe when you're equipped god will bring people your way

one second there you go yep um both everystudent.com and starting with god have got great search boxes

way better than google's they're really good and you can easily find anything you need

so the search this is where they're located whether you're on a laptop or mobile

um so you're also going to find believers when you're interacting online and you can help them also

startingwithgod.com is the site we built for new believers or or struggling believers either one

uh there's a free email series for new believers you know and there's a whole bunch of series and they go

in a particular order but i thought the best way to share with you what they are was through a story

that i'll share a little bit later

morgan said and many of you might relate to this she said as a teenager i feel like there's all this

focus on getting saved and following the thousands of rules but i was never given any guidance after

accepting christ for months i just went through the motions one night after once again hopelessly trying

to understand i came across this thank you i would never be where i am in my relationship today if god

hadn't led me to this wow um i'm good i'm wondering for time if i had to skip a couple of these sure go ahead

let me skip a couple of these but they're people just saying how the impact this site has had

on their lives as new believers okay so let me tell you this story in closing now this guy his name's

yard not really but his name is yard i wanted to protect him he's grew up muslim in northern ethiopia

and he received christ on everystudent.com

and then he went to start with god.com and signed up for the first follow-up series called the spiritual

starter kit um and in this series it showed him how he could be sure jesus is in his life that god drew him

um what god's unconditional love is so different from conditional love why god won't leave you what if

you sin does god forgive you still how to find a church and christians okay so that's what's in that first

series and then at the end of it there is an invitation to sign up for another series but a

person has to sign up again um and this series is called skip the stress and it's all about

living under god's grace not feeling like you have to perform for god or be the perfect christian

um so he signed up for it and then he said thank you very much god bless you forever

please do not stop teaching me i now understand the concept of faith

so then at the end of that series there's one that takes someone through the gospel of john so they

can actually know more about jesus and learn how to notice what scripture's saying he signed up for it

and then he wrote me god bless you i am very happy thanks to god for being with you on this very amazing

great study i got a compass to see jesus in the bible and wisdom for my journey each part is removing blindness

from my life thank you

so then there's one more series um on how to talk about god with other people and he signed up for it

and then he wrote me this my eyes are opened now through your lessons i started to teach your lesson

on whatsapp to all new believers wow and i thought what new believers he said all glory belongs to god

thank you go extra with jesus yaron so i asked him about these new believers and he said

this website everystudent.com is my journey it is satisfying their questions and doubts

it is strength for the believers faith and a way for non-believers to come to jesus

okay so i asked him more and he said this study and websites and he's referring to both

studywithgod.com and everystudent.com these websites continue to bless many lives through me

i am reaching muslims on whatsapp i tell you the truth more than 700 people have been blessed through

this and now new believers around 33 and their numbers are increasing daily wow

so i didn't know a lot about it about whatsapp at the time so i asked if he would invite me into the

group and i took this screenshot and then white it out parts and what he was doing was sharing

what he was learning on everystudent.com and on studywithgod.com and i started looking at the area codes

you know there was 966 and 968 and stuff and realized he was reaching people all across the middle east

saudi arabia yemen sudan egypt uae libya and i asked him where did you get the idea to do this

and he said you told me to and how to talk about god you said share this in your social media so that's

what i'm doing that's what he's doing i love that so you know this is you don't you don't even have to

train people once they see what the two sites are offering they know how to share it with somebody else

so that's the story of yard so i'm on the next slide i'm giving you uh here the two sites and then

i'm giving you my email address on the next slide if you have any questions please feel free to email me

marilyn that was so cool i'll leave i'll leave that slide up for a second um actually i'll come back

to it i do have one question so here i've got more than one question but here are the four

things that were on um started start starting conversations um how long are these four so um

he went through all four of these email series like the entire gospel of john he learned salvation

spiritual starter kit like what was the process how many months how many years of learning are we talking

about here what does this actually look like you mean to write these and no for him to read them oh okay

yeah well um gospel john was 36 emails long okay and they come every three or four days so

you know yeah these are easily over six months and then to be honest i started another ongoing series

called call you'll find it on starting with god.com called the findables yeah and you're welcome to join

that group also there's 6 000 findables around the world that i write to every 10 days and to be a

findable i ask uh i i tell people i'm going to ask you to take faith steps and try some things you're not

obligated you know but i just want the freedom to ask them to try things and so the findables are people

who want to help make jesus findable to millions of other people and uh you're welcome to sign up for any

of the series i i love that we'll we'll put the links in in the in the uh the youtube descriptions and

and and and we'll we'll put this out there but i i love the idea uh that uh you said yared uh here

has uh you basically six months of training and is um is owning what he's learning and is then

distributing it out you know you were referencing generations earlier he's he's naturally moving to

whatsapp uh and and getting connected with people across in his context the middle east uh in his in

his relationally engaging these people like this is that this is an incredible story of um

sorry planning center just called me i have no idea what planning center is calling me

anyway um i don't even use planning center but i just i love this story of of of how somebody is is

owning the the the teaching and and moving forward what all right so one other question because also

this is one of the best examples of evergreen content i've seen yes where you're you're creating stuff

once it goes on a server you create a mail list it goes into a platform and over years it it is it

multiplies up and to the right uh in in its impact like someone some of the stats and stories on this

are incredible the sites that are in other languages so starting with god is in 30 languages and um

in arabic spanish portuguese a whole bunch french a whole bunch of languages they've taken

at least two or three of the email series and they've created it they translated it they changed

anything that i shared that was personal about me they made it true about them for the leader of that language site

and and so you can you can have an impact in all sorts of people's lives who don't even speak english

yeah i the the scalability of what you're doing is incredible the the content now you said you didn't

pay for a translation volunteer acts of love love that actual writing the content have you

paid for any of like the author's writing no um and so you're i mean you're you're hosting um html files

on a server and your uh your youtube is is your video source i would assume uh that's youtube's where

you put all your videos yes and and the two um videos that go through the whole gospel one is about

is strictly about how to know god personally the other one is um what god offers you in difficult

situations and uh both of those videos were created by a findable who did them for free wow so you you you

you connected with people they shared ideas and you experimented with it you tried it you learned from

them and then they as an act of service as an act of love they're they own the vision of it they're

they're replicating it out like this is this is beautiful and uh i don't mean to be rude but this is very

cheap like there's not a lot of money in in in in your in your model here yet we're seeing 1.4 million

people globally uh through 50 languages accepting jesus in 2024 like this is uh when when you told me

this i was like this is unbelievable and when i'm hearing a second time i'm like my gosh it the the model

worked well let me add since you're talking numbers and cost uh we're seeing people come to the site

for less than three cents a person uh and we're seeing people indicate that they've received christ

for under two dollars a person okay so cost per click is is three cents less than three and in the actual

the the conversion to get to is the conversion accepting jesus like filling out that form yeah

so to get to to that point is less than two dollars wow that's that's unbelievable um

and it's and it's mostly you said in the 10 40 window kind of in that middle east uh in in the

hot zone area where it's so much of this is needed this is this is beautiful so i i can tell you i'm

i'm looking at chat and steve reed uh is is blowing up right now because he has been trying to figure out

what to do and i know he was inspired by some of what you've said today i'm just curious like

somebody that's starting out is wanting to do something like this what what advice what counsel

what would you what would you give them as as a as an idea directive or what's a lesson that you learned

that oh my gosh it was so hard and you want to save somebody from that

wow that's a big question um first of all you know i've worked on this for a long time and so

it takes it takes a lot of years to produce something like this um i think to be really honest god has

simply brought people my way at the right time uh he's brought the opportunities i mean god really has

built this and had his hand on it but i will say there's a lot of things about google that i have

learned in google advertising and one is do not let google choose websites where you show your ads

because it's wasted money there's too many fraudulent sites out there search has also declined as you know

with ai and so the most successful thing i've done the last half a year is building new google ad campaigns

where i choose the sites and i use chat gpt to help me find reputable sites of news and sports and lifestyle

kinds of sites in other languages and then i've personally gone in and looked at every one of the

sites to determine if i mean as a double check plus we have a click fraud company we hire just to be

because i don't i don't want i have to know these are all real if i'm gonna spend my time on it or ask

anybody to give financially to it i need to know they're all real yeah so facebook has been useful also

yeah you know steve uh steve let me let me reshape what you heard uh google ads are not bad um google

ads is is a tool uh but you have to direct it well exactly and you you tell google what you want as

opposed to google using the algorithm uh to tell you what it thinks you wants that's that would be

uh the lesson and the takeaway uh on this google's been great for us i mean i've loved being able to

reach people around the world so yeah i'm not but it was funny in this call in this literally while i

was on this this stream with you uh jesse who's doing my uh some of the google work for the church

digital it's like hey i want you to look at these campaigns before we roll it out so i mean we we we use

it as well in in some context oh beautiful we'd love that um let me ask um how do you this the biggest

problem we have is fundraising uh as as a general role not just the church digital but digital missionaries

a lot of bivocational um and and you have a relationship with crew and so i know fundraising

is is a big part of what you guys do anyway as missionaries through crew but how do you like how

do you fundraise is there is there a secret or a tip maybe you could share on on what that looks like

for for you personally or you organizationally uh

the results that we're seeing are are pretty uh speak for themselves yeah yeah yeah i mean that's

that's significant 1.5 1.4 whatever it was million and 24 is is significant and so that does deem man

there's a lot of opportunity to invest in that and all those clicks you know it's just just to be honest

it's just going to keep going up and to the right like you we talk about the flywheel and you were patient

enough in the early years to stick to the guns to allow the flywheel to to multiply and now

you're in the next couple years you're you're just going to be living on that flywheel

especially if your ads kick in and gasoline on the flame and i believe you're going to see some

explosion on that after somebody accepts accepts christ what do you do is there is there a follow-up

is there an email is there a community yeah well when somebody clicks on that link on everystudent.com

it says i just asked jesus into my life they land on a hidden page that invites them to go to starting

with god.com so they have to they have to go there they have to actually go to the effort

we don't automatically send them there and that's another way for me to see if these are real so what

i have seen is there's a there's an absolute parallel between people that receive christ and people that

go to starting with god when that goes up i mean it's just uh it's a confirmation to me uh a little bit

but yes they we have an email page and someone personally replies to them

in any of our language sites we don't use bots and as long as i'm directing it we will never use bots

it will be it will be an individual who prays about how to answer the person and care about the person

and give them a good answer yeah it was funny we discord the other day we had uh we do we do use bots

we use people too but we use bots and people simultaneously and uh we had we had a we had a non-friendly

bot person join discord and he was he was kind of upset at the bot so i i i totally get that yeah i

will throw rocks at it it's just a personal it's not like it cares it doesn't know but there's it's fun

um oh my gosh so good i i would love uh to have more conversations with you i'm intrigued about what

happens afterwards uh like there's a there's a really strong opportunity maybe to introduce some

digital churches uh in the space people that aren't in a position because of persecution or whatever to

to get connected into a digital environment or you know create a whatsapp community similar to what

uh the individual was that people could join yard uh yeah yard uh could join in uh and um in dialogue

with like i just i'm i'm um i'm intrigued because you've really got that you know we talk about connect

community equip mobilize you've really got that connection well and and my my gut is if there was a

community uh peer community where people could bake on it together and um in dialogue you know i bet you

would see you know even more conversions at the community level through that and so you know you

may after i think after this week you may get an email right now it's all about my daughter's dance

recital like i'm not gonna kid that it's that's tonight and so that's like number one priority in my life

right now is i got to be sitting at a high school auditorium in in about two hours three hours but

after that i do have a conversation with you about this so check for an email on that uh but hey this

has been beautiful as as we're wrapping up here um in any closing thoughts

no i'm happy to answer any email that someone sends me if there's uh questions you have or other ways i

could help i mean i i can't really review everybody's google ad campaign that was only to do that

that's awesome i get to do a couple my my uh my friend jesse's got a guy that that i pay to do this

and so uh you know uh i i don't think she can handle doing all that for free but um it has been an

absolute pleasure maryland thank you for jumping on the stream uh for if any questions on maryland

uh it's on the screen maryland adamson at every student dot com is her information there and uh

for that we're gonna we're gonna land a plane uh hope you enjoyed the stream uh as we're digging

into uh equipping partners and empowering tools maryland thank you uh for today uh next week i have

no idea what's coming up and then we've got the um uh the stream wednesday with uh alan hirsch i you

know i'm normally an organized person and i'm not gonna lie the past two to three weeks have been

pandemonium like i have no idea what was going on and uh i just i want to thank maryland uh she sent

me all like all of her notes and stuff friday and i didn't actually reply until like 30 minutes before

the stream started and she's like are we doing this today it's just it's it's been a it's been a mess in

the head lately but maryland thank you for the time i appreciate it check out every student uh there and

we'll have all the links in the in the show notes but for maryland this is jeff with the church digital

thanks for hanging out today and we'll see you next time on the show you have a good one

you