Latest / Solving the World's Greatest Problems / Episode 9 - Running Jesus Ads To Gen Z. Will It Even Work? | Sean Dunn

Transcript

Episode 9 - Running Jesus Ads To Gen Z. Will It Even Work? | Sean Dunn · Solving the World's Greatest Problems

0:00
SPEAKER_07: God just impressed in my heart, the message has to be in the URL.
0:04
SPEAKER_07: Some people relate better to whenlifehurts.com than JesusCares.com.
0:08
SPEAKER_07: So we just started to iterate on that.
0:10
SPEAKER_07: So now we have I feel broken.
0:12
SPEAKER_07: We have do I matter?
0:14
SPEAKER_07: We have what's the point?
0:16
SPEAKER_07: We have um godlikes you.com, just different messages, and we found even geographically people respond differently.
0:23
SPEAKER_07: San Francisco doesn't do real well with Jesus Cares, but they do really well with do I matter and what's the point?
0:34
SPEAKER_05: Solving the world's greatest problems is an audacious proposal, and yet no generation has more talent, capital, or tools than ours.
0:43
SPEAKER_05: The time has come for entrepreneurs, investors, givers, ministry leaders to reclaim the church's ancient calling.
0:54
SPEAKER_05: The scale of brokenness is too big for us to do this in silos.
1:01
SPEAKER_05: Under his power and for his glory, together.
1:04
SPEAKER_05: Welcome to the Solving the World's Greatest Problems podcast.
1:14
SPEAKER_05: 76% of Gen Z and millennials don't trust the person behind the pulpit.
1:20
SPEAKER_05: Most are detached from the church, but they are attached to their phones, mostly seven hours a day.
1:27
SPEAKER_05: If most of the world's young people aren't hearing the gospel in church, how do we reach them?
1:35
SPEAKER_05: Sean Dunn, a founder of Groundwire, pivoted from stadium stages to digital evangelism and built a platform that interrupts young people in their feed with one message.
1:47
SPEAKER_05: Jesus cares.
1:49
SPEAKER_05: With websites like Do I Matter?
1:52
SPEAKER_05: Groundwire tripled its follow-through rate in a single year and is reaching people in over 80 countries.
1:58
SPEAKER_05: Let's talk about the problem of the evangelism gap and how to solve it.
2:03
SPEAKER_07: Scripture says go.
2:06
SPEAKER_07: And I kept saying come.
2:07
SPEAKER_07: I kept saying, come to me, come where I am, and I can share truth with you.
2:12
SPEAKER_04: When we do the research, we understand that 76% of Gen Z and millennials don't trust the person standing behind the pulpit.
2:21
SPEAKER_04: They have no church connection whatsoever.
2:23
SPEAKER_04: Nobody in their life that even has a spiritual background.
2:26
SPEAKER_07: Young people are staring at the device seven hours and 22 minutes a day, and so we know where they are, but we can't get them to walk into the church seven hours and 22 minutes a day.
2:36
SPEAKER_07: So that's why we've taken this model of introduce them to Jesus and then bring them into the church on the back end.
2:41
SPEAKER_07: And one of our key words is interruption.
2:44
SPEAKER_07: We don't invite because people can say no, but we can interrupt.
2:48
SPEAKER_07: It's meeting them where they're hurt.
2:51
SPEAKER_04: And it's hey, life hurts, Jesus cares.
3:07
SPEAKER_07: So I'm one of those weird kids.
3:08
SPEAKER_07: It was called a ministry at 14 years old.
3:11
SPEAKER_07: Uh and uh it was so clear that I actually wrote in the back of my Bible content for a generation.
3:16
SPEAKER_07: So um 14 knew the direction I was supposed to head and uh assumed it would be local church because that was the only model that was encouraged back then.
3:25
SPEAKER_07: So 18 years old went to Bible college and got hired at a church my second week I was there.
3:30
SPEAKER_07: So I've been in vocational ministry now since I was 18, but uh assumed it'd be local church, but I started traveling full-time as a speaker and author in 97, and uh it really I learned early on.
3:40
SPEAKER_07: I'm an evangelist, I'm not a pastor, I don't think about the ones that keep coming, I think about the ones that need and won't walk through the door.
3:48
SPEAKER_07: So I thought I'd stand on stages my entire life and was moving in that direction, and God kind of got my attention.
3:53
SPEAKER_07: In 2002, I was looking at how many people I'd spoken to, and I was really excited about that.
3:56
SPEAKER_07: I was patting myself on the back.
3:58
SPEAKER_07: I was I just thought I was pretty awesome.
4:00
SPEAKER_07: And uh God got my attention because the very next day I started reading a George Barna book, and the very first paragraph said there are 33 million teenagers in the United States.
4:11
SPEAKER_07: And so I went from feeling really good to being deflated because I didn't know how to reach 33 million.
4:18
SPEAKER_07: I had three primary observations.
4:21
SPEAKER_07: Number one is the model of ministry that I had standing on stages wouldn't meet the need that existed.
4:27
SPEAKER_07: There's no way I can stand in front of 33 million.
4:30
SPEAKER_07: The second thing that I realized was scripture says go.
4:35
SPEAKER_07: And I kept saying, come.
4:36
SPEAKER_07: I kept saying, come to me, come where I am, and I can share truth with you.
4:41
SPEAKER_07: But then the third thing that I realized was I'm an evangelist who is speaking to people who agree with me because heathens don't go to Christian events.
4:51
SPEAKER_07: Media is the addiction of the day.
4:54
SPEAKER_07: If we're going to reach them, we need to go where they are.
4:57
SPEAKER_07: And so I made a pivot in 2017 when we went 100% digital because we knew that the small device was what was driving the younger generations.
5:06
SPEAKER_04: The mission field had moved, where we again used to say, hey, come to us.
5:12
SPEAKER_04: You know, we'll build a great facility, we'll have great lights, you know, and fog machines, and the music's fantastic.
5:18
SPEAKER_04: But we had to go and say, hey, again, they're not coming this way.
5:22
SPEAKER_04: We need to go out that way.
5:25
SPEAKER_07: The younger generations are trying to get all of these spiritual answers in a different place than we did, and that's why what we do works.
5:35
SPEAKER_01: Many people think that the young people is not really uh interested in the spiritual, but Genseers are more than we think, and they are looking, and it is sad to think that they are finding responses in spiritual places that uh are full of darkness and are not going to be the response because only Jesus has the answer.
6:02
SPEAKER_04: The trends that we're seeing is isolation and loneliness.
6:06
SPEAKER_04: Doesn't matter where in the world you live, they're all feeling the same hurt.
6:10
SPEAKER_04: It's not it's not the attitude of, hey, I'm going to hell, it's I'm living through hell.
6:16
SPEAKER_04: Our strategy is really fivefold.
6:18
SPEAKER_07: First thing we do is interrupt them.
6:20
SPEAKER_07: Again, we don't invite them, we interrupt them.
6:22
SPEAKER_07: We spend our money to get in front of people who are driving past the church, not walking into it.
6:27
SPEAKER_07: So we interrupt them on short form content.
6:30
SPEAKER_07: They say a millennial has a 12-second attention span.
6:33
SPEAKER_07: Gen Zier has eight.
6:34
SPEAKER_07: But in 12 or 15 seconds, we have a piece of content that connects with them emotionally, suggests Jesus is the answer.
6:41
SPEAKER_07: So some of our websites are JesusCares.com.
6:44
SPEAKER_07: I feel broken.com.
6:46
SPEAKER_07: Do I matter?
6:47
SPEAKER_07: Second thing we do is we communicate the gospel to them, but we offer them a conversation, chat with us, we're ready.
6:53
SPEAKER_07: So we interrupt, communicate the gospel when they get there, bring them to a place of commitment to Christ.
6:58
SPEAKER_07: That really is our ultimate goal.
7:00
SPEAKER_07: And then after that, we have tools that move them uh vertically towards Christ and horizontally towards communion.
7:07
SPEAKER_07: So that's really what the process looks like.
7:11
SPEAKER_04: Whether it's meta or Instagram, you know, TikTok, it's getting into their feed.
7:17
SPEAKER_07: These multiple types of interruptions.
7:19
SPEAKER_07: Um videos that connect.
7:21
SPEAKER_07: So they're scrolling through their feed, they see a piece of content that comes across that that connects with them emotionally, where a young lady is breaking down and she's saying, Man, life is hard.
7:32
SPEAKER_07: I drive and I just feel like I'm alone.
7:36
SPEAKER_07: The tagline comes up even when life is hard.
7:39
SPEAKER_07: Jesus cares.
7:40
SPEAKER_07: Um we use some deals basically on TikTok, we use whatever's trending.
7:44
SPEAKER_07: We also have um we have anime.
7:47
SPEAKER_07: One of the crazy things is they say that 72% of high schoolers watch anime entertainment every week.
7:53
SPEAKER_07: We really have to study the audience.
7:55
SPEAKER_07: We have to understand what their pain points are, we have to know where they are, what what will grab their attention.
8:01
SPEAKER_07: You have to pay attention to the metrics.
8:04
SPEAKER_07: You can't go by your hunch.
8:06
SPEAKER_07: If the numbers say, Yeah, that's not working, you have to be willing to pivot.
8:10
SPEAKER_02: We want to see everybody that's made a profession of faith have an opportunity to go deeper.
8:15
SPEAKER_02: And our dream is that they would be connected with believers in their area.
8:20
SPEAKER_02: We've tried to leverage Discord to create a server where they can go and be around 24-7 new believers and mature believers.
8:29
SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
8:29
SPEAKER_02: And they can share what they're going through.
8:31
SPEAKER_02: They can ask questions.
8:32
SPEAKER_02: We have Q ⁇ A with the pastor every week.
8:34
SPEAKER_02: We have worship nights weekly, we have Bible studies, and ultimately they're just always around others like them and others who have been there before them who are eventually able to hopefully walk them through the process of uh connecting with believers in their area.
8:51
SPEAKER_04: Gen Z is really saying, hey, we don't want the AI.
8:55
SPEAKER_04: We don't want you know something that's just made up.
8:57
SPEAKER_04: They're looking for genuine relationships.
9:02
SPEAKER_04: We're always measuring views, we're always measuring clicks, and we're seeing the follow-through in all those things, right?
9:08
SPEAKER_04: How many are coming to POFs?
9:10
SPEAKER_04: How many spiritual conversations are we having?
9:12
SPEAKER_04: How many, you know, non-spiritual conversations are we having?
9:16
SPEAKER_04: So we measure every point of the contact from when it's first being seen to when they're clicking to when they're having a conversation.
9:25
SPEAKER_04: In 2025, we saw over two million people raise their hand and say, you know, I would love to make a profession of faith in Christ and I want to get to know Jesus.
9:34
SPEAKER_04: Um, that's been absolutely incredible, right?
9:36
SPEAKER_04: Because that's it's not just a number, those are souls.
9:40
SPEAKER_04: Jude 23 tells us, hey, if possible, to pluck another one from the fire.
9:45
SPEAKER_04: That's not us, that's God and only God.
9:48
SPEAKER_02: To see that two million people last year ended up making a profession of faith is extremely moving.
9:55
SPEAKER_07: We've been stuck at 13% that were responding, that were after getting their life to price, but we're doing something that we can better.
10:04
SPEAKER_07: We are now getting that over 30%.
10:07
SPEAKER_07: So not only are we reaching them, we're helping them build the disciplines and connect them to computers, we've had certain businesses that have said, hey, we want to champion a whole week.
10:17
SPEAKER_07: So we want to pay the marketing expenses for what you're doing.
10:20
SPEAKER_07: And then they put them up on their TVs so that their clients and their staff can celebrate about the fact that, hey, we are seeing over 10,000 people a day come to Christ.
10:30
SPEAKER_07: And you can actually look at the map and see where people are responding based on their investment, and they can actually calculate okay, so that check saw 10,000 people come to Christ or saw 100,000 people come to Christ.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: We're doing a lot more active corporate giving at blue, and it's really brought new life to the organization, excited about our profits now have purpose.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: And so we've identified a few organizations that are tied directly to the mission of the firm to help fulfill the Great Commission, one of which is Groundwire.
10:58
SPEAKER_00: I've had the privilege of serving on the Groundwire board for a number of years and seeing the legitimate impact of how they're reaching these folks in the Gen Z and millennial generation.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: I don't think there's a more effective evangelical ministry in the U.S.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: today.
11:11
SPEAKER_07: We don't know how long we have, we don't know how long the platforms will let us run gospel messages.
11:18
SPEAKER_07: We don't know how long governments will let us run gospel messages, and we don't know how long until Jesus comes back.
11:24
SPEAKER_07: So we have a window that is closing every day.
11:27
SPEAKER_07: We don't know how much more margin we have, but in that margin, we have to be as aggressive as we possibly can be.
11:34
SPEAKER_07: Because people need to know Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior.
11:38
SPEAKER_03: Sean, one of the fun things that we get to do here, we feel like there's this like, there's this full circle moment as entrepreneurs.
11:44
SPEAKER_03: I think for the last 20 years, maybe longer, God's been building this wave where he's awakened his church to say, entrepreneur, you can lead differently, you can build differently, you can care for your team differently, you can do all of those things.
12:00
SPEAKER_03: But he's also leading entrepreneurs this moment to say, gosh, I want to give together.
12:05
SPEAKER_03: I want to be involved in God's picture and I want to do this.
12:08
SPEAKER_03: But if we're honest, it's overwhelming.
12:10
SPEAKER_03: We've talked about this statistic a lot as a team that, gosh, there's, you know, 1.8 million nonprofits.
12:17
SPEAKER_03: There's only 5,000 publicly traded companies.
12:20
SPEAKER_03: And so there's 450 times more nonprofits than our publicly traded companies.
12:26
SPEAKER_03: But there's no MSNB squat MSNBC squawk box, there's no data, there's none of this type of stuff.
12:32
SPEAKER_03: Much of giving has been a lot of kind of sorting through it.
12:37
SPEAKER_03: And so we're excited today to bring this conversation in a series of conversations we're having that faith-driven entrepreneurs that they might be called into this as a family, as a business to give differently, that we can introduce them to some of the incredible things that are happening.
12:53
SPEAKER_03: And I want to start off with this idea.
12:56
SPEAKER_03: We just saw this incredible story, and you just separated like the divide that sometimes exists between ministry leader and entrepreneur because so many of us entrepreneurs just saw ourselves in your story.
13:11
SPEAKER_03: You know, sometimes we wear that hat as ministry leader, but I think if Sean's the entrepreneur, yeah.
13:17
SPEAKER_03: When did that identity and that journey and feel in the story a little bit of like, but it's it just feels like it's always been in you.
13:25
SPEAKER_07: Well, I don't know, I I I feel like I was traditional.
13:28
SPEAKER_07: I feel like I was modeling ministry after what everybody else had done.
13:33
SPEAKER_07: I actually, one of the things I say when people ask me what's one of the mistakes you made ministry, was I asked God what I was supposed to do, I never asked him how.
13:42
SPEAKER_07: I asked him what, and then I looked to see who I could learn from, and I copied them.
13:47
SPEAKER_07: Variation, very little.
13:49
SPEAKER_07: So um I think that when the Lord finally got my attention and I started to realize that I wasn't uh supposed to stand on a stage because that wasn't where the evangelist in me was going to encounter the lost people.
14:04
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I think I got to a place where I was more spirit-dependent.
14:07
SPEAKER_07: I wasn't looking at the model or reading the books, I was saying, God, only you know how.
14:13
SPEAKER_07: And that's really when that began to be inspired.
14:15
SPEAKER_07: And then there's a second element to it, too, when I realized that the first iteration isn't the best iteration because we saw success, but there was something inside of me, like in every entrepreneur, where I was saying, it's good, yeah, it's not there yet.
14:30
SPEAKER_07: Yes.
14:30
SPEAKER_07: What can we do?
14:31
SPEAKER_07: How can we learn?
14:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I love that.
14:33
SPEAKER_03: I love that idea because like entrepreneurs, like, yes, there's always fail, repeat, fail, repeat.
14:38
SPEAKER_03: And it's not just like for every business you do that a couple of times, you're always doing that cycle.
14:44
SPEAKER_03: And I love that just kind of like ethos to it.
14:46
SPEAKER_03: But I think the other thing that just jumped out to all of us in that story is just this very black and white side of things of like so much of the time as a church, we're asking people to come to us.
15:00
SPEAKER_03: And we've like maybe internalized that phrase of like people have stopped knocking on the door of the church, but they're not any less broken.
15:08
SPEAKER_03: Right.
15:09
SPEAKER_03: And I love this idea of like we've got to stop asking them to come and we've gotta go.
15:13
SPEAKER_03: That's a it's a powerful pivot that's really so deeply entrenched in so many of the ways we do ministry.
15:20
SPEAKER_07: But I had a very interesting encounter with a server who told me for seven years I've had this burden.
15:26
SPEAKER_07: I gotta know God and I gotta figure out what he wants for me.
15:29
SPEAKER_07: So God had set the table for my conversation with him, but then he said two things.
15:34
SPEAKER_07: He said, But I've never picked up a Bible and I've never gone to church.
15:38
SPEAKER_07: I mean, that's crazy for my generation.
15:40
SPEAKER_07: Because my generation, if you're trying to figure it out, you're gonna start with those two things.
15:46
SPEAKER_07: And so I asked him, where do you go?
15:49
SPEAKER_07: He goes, online.
15:50
SPEAKER_07: That's where I go to get my answers.
15:53
SPEAKER_07: And so it just kind of points out the difference in culture.
15:56
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
15:56
SPEAKER_07: They don't do what we wish that they would do, they don't go where we wish that they would go, yeah, but yet there's still opportunity to meet them.
16:04
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
16:04
SPEAKER_07: I think we as Christians wait for people to walk up to us and say, Hey, do you have answers to my questions?
16:08
SPEAKER_07: Yes.
16:09
SPEAKER_07: But they don't even know what questions they should be asking.
16:11
SPEAKER_07: So we kind of have to help them ask that question.
16:13
SPEAKER_03: And that's crazy, right?
16:14
SPEAKER_03: We have to help them ask the questions, and then you think, where does that happen in business?
16:18
SPEAKER_03: Where do we try and get the customer?
16:20
SPEAKER_03: I mean, maybe in some long, long, long, long, long sales cycle, but more often than not, they say, like, meet the customer kind of where they are.
16:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
16:29
SPEAKER_03: Talk about just this digital side.
16:31
SPEAKER_03: We all know it.
16:32
SPEAKER_03: Like, we see ourselves doing it, we see our kids doing it, we're all on the devices.
16:38
SPEAKER_03: What does it mean to interrupt?
16:40
SPEAKER_03: We saw some of it in the video, but like put flesh on it.
16:42
SPEAKER_03: Like, when it says like we are going to interrupt somebody, what does that look like?
16:46
SPEAKER_07: Well, we are gonna find out where they are, what they're looking at.
16:49
SPEAKER_07: The algorithms are indicating they're going after people that specifically show some form of depression, suicidal ideation, that something's unsettled in them.
17:00
SPEAKER_07: And then uh we're gonna they're gonna target those individuals and say, you're trying to run this race on your own, you're trying to solve this problem on your own.
17:08
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, God's there for you.
17:10
SPEAKER_07: Come talk to us about it.
17:11
SPEAKER_07: And so the interruption, it's gotta be short because the millennial has eight seconds or has a 12-second attention span, Gen Z has eight.
17:19
SPEAKER_07: So you can't ask them for a 30 or 90-minute window.
17:22
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, you've got to sneak in.
17:23
SPEAKER_07: So it's got to be quick, it's gotta connect.
17:25
SPEAKER_07: It's like any marketing.
17:26
SPEAKER_07: You have to connect quickly.
17:28
SPEAKER_07: You can't have your only powerful statement at the very end because they're not gonna stick to the end unless you grab in the beginning.
17:36
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, and a lot of times it's just by our interruptions, primarily just show them how they're feeling.
17:41
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
17:42
SPEAKER_07: And then it's just, we get it, come talk to us about it.
17:45
SPEAKER_03: It really just illustrates the point, is it's not that the world is any less broken.
17:48
SPEAKER_03: No.
17:49
SPEAKER_03: We're we're probably maybe even more searching for answers.
17:51
SPEAKER_03: We're kind of even actually trained to do that.
17:53
SPEAKER_03: We're in a search economy where people are an answer economy where people are looking for those answers, but we've got to meet them in the brokenness.
18:01
SPEAKER_03: And I I love the way that you guys say, okay, there's not just one customer journey here, if you like just even talk about the different kinds of websites because you're using language to try to really pinpoint where people are.
18:14
SPEAKER_07: Well, when we started, we had everything driving through Groundwire, our our main website, groundwire.net, and God just impressed on my heart, the message has to be in the URL.
18:25
SPEAKER_07: And so we we went after JesusCares.com because I I thought if I could whisper to a struggling college student something that would help, I'd just say, you're not alone, Jesus Cares.
18:35
SPEAKER_07: So we launched that and was doing really well.
18:38
SPEAKER_07: We had some issues with uh Google.
18:40
SPEAKER_07: Google shut down some of our SEO stuff, which was a very small percentage of what we do.
18:45
SPEAKER_07: Only 6% is SEO.
18:47
SPEAKER_07: And so, but what it did is it alerted us to the fact that if Instagram shut down JesusCares.com, we would be messed up because that was 60%.
18:56
SPEAKER_07: So we decided to add another messaging campaign.
18:59
SPEAKER_07: We went with JesusCares.com and then we added WinLifeHerts.com.
19:03
SPEAKER_07: And what it did for us was it it was to mitigate our risk, but what we quickly learned is some people relate better to whenlifehurts.com than JesusCares.com.
19:12
SPEAKER_07: So we just started to iterate on that.
19:15
SPEAKER_07: So now we have I feel broken, we have do I matter, we have what's the point, we have um godlike you.com, just different messages, and we found even geographically people respond differently.
19:28
SPEAKER_07: San Francisco doesn't do real well with Jesus Cares, but they do really well with do I matter and what's the point?
19:35
SPEAKER_07: And so we just learned to keep adding.
19:37
SPEAKER_07: We just added a new one that I'm really excited about in the sports space called I Need a Win, which so many, you know, do you do you remember growing up?
19:46
SPEAKER_07: Do you remember the wide world of sports?
19:48
SPEAKER_07: Oh, of course.
19:48
SPEAKER_07: Do you remember their wide world of sports?
19:50
SPEAKER_07: Remember their theme?
19:51
SPEAKER_07: Which part?
19:52
SPEAKER_07: Their their theme at the beginning.
19:55
SPEAKER_07: It was the thrill of victory.
19:56
SPEAKER_07: Oh yes, the agony of the fish.
19:58
SPEAKER_07: Remember that guy tumbling?
19:59
SPEAKER_07: Oh yeah.
19:59
SPEAKER_07: So during the Winter Olympics, we played imagery of major fails and said, Do you need to win?
20:07
SPEAKER_07: How can Jesus help you that?
20:08
SPEAKER_07: And then bring him in.
20:09
SPEAKER_07: So just continuing to iterate and find new ways that uh that work and even some that don't.
20:15
SPEAKER_03: And that's a great point there to make, because I love that in the video here where you say you have to have this ability to quickly pivot if something in the data doesn't show up.
20:26
SPEAKER_03: And I love it how a friend Mark Green says this idea of like we want to be spirit-led, but gosh, we want to be data informed.
20:33
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
20:34
SPEAKER_03: And that's a new horizon in this particular place of ministry, is like you really have an incredible amount of data ahead of you.
20:42
SPEAKER_03: What has that been like, just both even personally or as a creative team to say, gosh, I really like this campaign.
20:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
20:49
SPEAKER_03: The data said this other one worked better.
20:51
SPEAKER_07: Well, I would say from a high level, let me answer it high level and then go down to that.
20:55
SPEAKER_07: So one of the things I've realized is that in business as well as in ministry, a lot of times our innovation becomes our rut.
21:03
SPEAKER_07: We do something that we love and we keep running after it even after it loses its effectiveness.
21:10
SPEAKER_07: Ministries do it all the time.
21:11
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
21:12
SPEAKER_07: We have to pay attention to how it's so from a big picture, there's that.
21:16
SPEAKER_07: But what I've learned is some of the things that I thought wouldn't work have been our best performing.
21:22
SPEAKER_07: And some of the things that I didn't, that I that I thought would work haven't proven it.
21:26
SPEAKER_07: You just have to trust the data because it's I I had somebody come up to me one day and they said, I don't understand.
21:34
SPEAKER_07: Uh, my husband's podcast is seen by tens of thousands of people, but the numbers are only saying it's being seen by 300.
21:40
SPEAKER_07: I'm like, yeah, the data's accurate, your assumption is not.
21:46
SPEAKER_07: And so you have to you you can't just trust your hunch.
21:50
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, you the data will tell you where people are and what they think of what you're what you're doing.
21:54
SPEAKER_03: And it's a new day for people that are giving to see the output metric.
21:57
SPEAKER_03: I mean, so oftentimes we might hear this.
22:00
SPEAKER_03: Story, we might see an end of your report.
22:02
SPEAKER_03: Maybe there's some data that you can verify from a couple of different sources.
22:06
SPEAKER_03: But we're talking about things that like you can measure it to a science of the accuracy of it.
22:12
SPEAKER_03: In fact, it's even maybe kind of one of the conversations.
22:15
SPEAKER_03: Both we're enamored by it, but also how do we find consistent language that other ministries adopt, but also that the customer, the donor, the partner can understand.
22:25
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
22:25
SPEAKER_07: No, it's measurement for us gave us credibility.
22:29
SPEAKER_07: I I spent so many years selling the allegorical story, the heart-wrenching person, the one.
22:38
SPEAKER_07: And I knew that there were more, but I had that one.
22:40
SPEAKER_07: And so that worked.
22:42
SPEAKER_07: But when we started to add that, so kind of a fun challenge, I had a financial planner who looked at me one time and he said, Sean, I don't believe you.
22:50
SPEAKER_07: He said, Your numbers are too good.
22:53
SPEAKER_07: He said, Don't come back and talk to me until you get your numbers validated.
22:56
SPEAKER_07: But if you can validate it, please come back and talk to me.
22:58
SPEAKER_07: It was a great challenge because what when we were able to go and find the best nonprofit metric evaluation company in the nation, and they came in and said, Yes, here's what you're seeing is accurate, it took that story and it said that's just one of the blank number of people.
23:14
SPEAKER_07: And so it gave us this credibility.
23:16
SPEAKER_07: I I do see a movement in investors in ministry spaces where um they they are getting more sophisticated and they're saying, I want to see um evaluation, I want to see a metrics audit.
23:30
SPEAKER_07: And so uh I mean I'm very grateful that we took that challenge.
23:35
SPEAKER_05: Trafficking, structural hunger, a billion people without the Bible in their language.
23:40
SPEAKER_05: These aren't unsolvable, they're just uncoordinated.
23:44
SPEAKER_05: At solving the world's greatest problems, we're a community of givers taking on the root causes of the world's deepest suffering, and we're taking them on together.
23:52
SPEAKER_05: We've identified more than 30 of the world's greatest problems, and the list keeps growing.
23:57
SPEAKER_05: We work alongside the entrepreneurs, investors, and ministry leaders already in the fight, and we fund the breakthroughs happening right now.
24:05
SPEAKER_05: Here's where it starts.
24:07
SPEAKER_05: Choose your problem and start your journey with one of our foundation courses.
24:12
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24:16
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24:20
SPEAKER_05: Come join the fight and find your people.
24:23
SPEAKER_05: Learn more at solving.org.
24:26
SPEAKER_05: Under its power for his glory together.
24:37
SPEAKER_03: I think what's also fun is you've taken that challenge.
24:40
SPEAKER_03: You invited others outside of the conversation, Calvin Edwards and others, to say, come in and look, see, and help us also sharpen just kind of the ways that we tell the story.
24:52
SPEAKER_03: Because sometimes we might say a word and somebody else might be thinking something.
24:55
SPEAKER_03: We gotta get that language consistent.
24:56
SPEAKER_03: But but I love the fact that we're inviting others into the conversation.
25:01
SPEAKER_03: But talk about just also like most times when I think about any time we market something, and any entrepreneur that's listening, whenever we go pay for ads, we start here, and we're pleasantly suppli surprised that the algorithm and everything gets smarter, yeah, and there's really an opportunity to drive costs down.
25:21
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you guys started at and let's just call it a meaningful engagement, somebody of profession of faith.
25:26
SPEAKER_03: It's hard to know if this is a first time or this is their second time really kind of coming back to Christ, but but you've been able to see uh progress over what seven, eight years?
25:37
SPEAKER_03: I mean, just when you think it can't get lower, somehow it does.
25:41
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I was uh one of my board members was hosting something in his country club for us.
25:45
SPEAKER_07: We were sitting at the front after the presentation answering questions.
25:48
SPEAKER_07: One of the guys in the front row, um, marketing guy, he's raised his hand.
25:52
SPEAKER_07: He said, Are you saying that your marketing is linear?
25:55
SPEAKER_07: In other words, if you spend six dollars to see one person come to Christ, are you saying that 12 will get two and eighteen will get three?
26:01
SPEAKER_07: Mark, my my board member, brilliant guy, he gave me some language that I've loved.
26:06
SPEAKER_07: He said, Here's the thing, it's better than linear.
26:09
SPEAKER_07: The more we spend, the cheaper it gets.
26:12
SPEAKER_07: And we've seen that I remember it was uh in 20 January 2024, standing in front of my board, and I said, listen, I said our numbers are at$6.51 per commitment in 2023.
26:25
SPEAKER_07: I said, I don't think we'd get much lower.
26:28
SPEAKER_07: At some point, it's gonna, we're gonna hit the bottom.
26:31
SPEAKER_07: I I literally didn't know how God was gonna do it.
26:34
SPEAKER_07: Well, I'm sorry, I didn't know how I was gonna do it.
26:37
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, it's still don't.
26:38
SPEAKER_07: We went from 651 to 408, and then the next year$2.30.
26:44
SPEAKER_07: God just, because the hunger's real, the messaging is right, and God's on the move, and those three things add up to some phenomenal results.
26:52
SPEAKER_03: That's awesome.
26:53
SPEAKER_03: Well, I want to kind of as we we come to a close here on the episode, I want to talk about just ways for people to get involved because I think people see this, and let certainly as an individual, as a family, you might be called to get involved.
27:09
SPEAKER_03: But one of the ways that other people can get involved is a business.
27:13
SPEAKER_03: And you've had some good friends at Blue Trust and others that have said, hey, yeah, we want to like be on a team, yeah, and we want to see like the work that what we're doing is not only the way that we're doing it inside the walls matters, but gosh, some of the giving that comes from it matters.
27:29
SPEAKER_03: Just talk about how that's been life-giving for you.
27:32
SPEAKER_07: Well, again, partnerships and kingdom-minded people who come alongside of us make all the difference.
27:37
SPEAKER_07: I mean, encouragement, friendship, you know, uh sometimes I grieve because I talk to donors and they say, Yeah, I know the ministries are gonna come call in it this month because I haven't given in a year.
27:50
SPEAKER_07: I'm like, man, I want to value you, and and so I I so much appreciate those things.
27:55
SPEAKER_07: But we have families, individuals, and we do have businesses that have come alongside and say, Hey, I want to see something tangible.
28:01
SPEAKER_07: You know, like if somebody's building a building, they can say, you know, I want to put the roof on the church in Africa, and it's gonna cost X.
28:08
SPEAKER_07: And so we came up with a couple ways to do that.
28:10
SPEAKER_07: One of them is you can champion a day.
28:12
SPEAKER_07: So we've kind of capped it at$10,000 a day.
28:14
SPEAKER_07: It's a little more than that to champion a day.
28:16
SPEAKER_07: But Blue Trust, um, last year they did multiple days.
28:20
SPEAKER_07: Like their national office did a week, and they we showed our dashboard, and on the dashboard they could see every hour how many people are coming to Christ with their investment, and it just it, you know, it really encouraged their people.
28:34
SPEAKER_07: And then out of that, a couple of their national or their uh local offices did a couple days.
28:38
SPEAKER_07: So we have things like that.
28:40
SPEAKER_07: We have families who like several people, unfortunately, have lost loved ones, like a son who passed too early, and they champion his his uh the day of his death every year as a way to honor him, and they love seeing that people come in.
28:54
SPEAKER_07: So it's it's been really fun because it gives, of course, it it fuels our efforts, but it gives them something tangible to watch participate and to celebrate together.
29:04
SPEAKER_03: So look forward.
29:06
SPEAKER_03: One of the next challenges it sounds like is like how do you take somebody or invite somebody or but walk alongside somebody from this big decision that they make to really kind of finding that community or conversation?
29:19
SPEAKER_03: We know that there's a lot to figure out, so we let's let's just kind of have this conversation lesson of like, oh my gosh, like it's all pretty and got a bow on it.
29:28
SPEAKER_03: But what are some of the things that we're trying to figure out of how we connect from conversation decision to really community?
29:35
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, so we uh in 23 and 24, we were what we measure is how many people take that first measured step.
29:43
SPEAKER_07: How many can we get into a 21-day get to know Jesus challenge?
29:46
SPEAKER_07: How many of them ask us to connect into a church?
29:48
SPEAKER_07: How many of them will join our online community?
29:50
SPEAKER_07: We were stuck at 13%.
29:51
SPEAKER_07: In 25, we got that over 36%.
29:54
SPEAKER_07: So I mean, just being able to triple that in a year is amazing.
29:57
SPEAKER_07: Now we're seeing even greater results.
29:58
SPEAKER_07: Now, what we're trying to do is we've never before measured, can we get them to take a second step and measure it?
30:06
SPEAKER_07: So now, if they take the 21-day get to know Jesus challenge, what can we do on day 22?
30:11
SPEAKER_07: And so we're trying some different things that we're really excited about.
30:14
SPEAKER_07: Uh, read an article that talked about how young people that are growing up in church, if all they do is learn Bible stories and you know, learn the songs, but they're never taught doctrine that centers around your identity or how the Bible's accurate or those things.
30:28
SPEAKER_07: So now we're getting ready to release a series of three-day modules to see can we get a higher percentage of people to agree to a three-day challenge than a 21-day challenge.
30:39
SPEAKER_07: So we're continually working on that.
30:41
SPEAKER_07: And to be honest, we would love for somebody else to solve that.
30:44
SPEAKER_07: So if there's a ministry out there that knows how to speak to people who are brand new in their faith, but digitally not just natives, but digitally addicted, who are anti-walking into the church right now, yeah, and you have tools, we'd love excuse me, we'd love to give you platform.
31:03
SPEAKER_03: That's uh it's powerful to see the partnership really offer out there.
31:07
SPEAKER_03: It's part powerful, I think, as we've talked about other ministries in the space.
31:11
SPEAKER_03: It's a shared challenge.
31:13
SPEAKER_03: And I love the fact that you're also like identifying to say, hey, we think that people that come from this media addiction side of things, because we know who it is we're meeting, we know some of the tendencies and baggage that they're creating, inside of that, we know what some of their issues are, we know some of their blockers are, we know some of the challenges that could push them back into this life that's lost and broken again.
31:37
SPEAKER_03: And so I love the fact that you're leading into data, that you're leading into partnership in that, and it's just fun to see that like there's an there's a next iteration to come.
31:46
SPEAKER_07: Well, and I I would say too that we use a little really simple across it, uh not across it, a linear graph.
31:53
SPEAKER_07: The vertical is motivation and the horizontal is access.
31:58
SPEAKER_07: Most of the people that we see they're doing ministry, they're trying to make it easy and accessible.
32:04
SPEAKER_07: But if you don't tap into the motivation, so there's a lot of people out there with great content, but if it's not delivered in the way that the audience wants, they won't utilize it.
32:13
SPEAKER_07: So my example is why don't people go to church?
32:16
SPEAKER_07: Is it because they can't find one?
32:17
SPEAKER_07: They're not they don't exist, or is it because they're not motivated?
32:20
SPEAKER_07: It's motivation.
32:22
SPEAKER_07: So the reason we went from 13 to 36% is we kept playing with language and things like that.
32:27
SPEAKER_07: So what I believe we can do is there's people out there with great content that would do great if they could just get people to access it or take advantage of it.
32:35
SPEAKER_07: We might need to talk about how do we language that in the way that they will want it, and they'll say, Yeah, I'll sign up for that.
32:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's so often that we go to like we we just go into fix it mode.
32:44
SPEAKER_03: And I think about this as a husband or whatever it is, like you just go into fix-it mode and you don't like listen long enough to make sure you got an accurate assessment of what the problem is.
32:53
SPEAKER_03: You think everything's a nail and you just just solve it with the same solution.
32:56
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
32:57
SPEAKER_03: And I love that posture of really listening because we do, you know, he who describes the problem most accurately kind of can earn the right to take that first step into what the solution could be.
33:06
SPEAKER_03: But if we don't, yeah, man, we're often just like pray and spray kind of mindset.
33:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
33:12
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
33:12
SPEAKER_07: No, it's uh it's very true.
33:16
SPEAKER_07: We just we just need to one of our core values is celebrate but never satisfy.
33:21
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
33:21
SPEAKER_07: And it it's too easy to get comfortable.
33:24
SPEAKER_07: It's too easy to say, that's good enough.
33:27
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, I'm just gonna manage what I have.
33:30
SPEAKER_07: That's just not our culture because there's more people who need Jesus and more people who need to uh be reached and moved along.
33:36
SPEAKER_03: Grateful for you.
33:38
SPEAKER_03: So grateful for the way that you're using this entrepreneurial vision, passion, building this.
33:43
SPEAKER_03: We're thrilled to lock rooms with you with solving the world's greatest problems and just so encouraged by material.
33:47
SPEAKER_03: Well, thank you.
33:47
SPEAKER_03: Appreciate it, Jess.
33:48
SPEAKER_03: Well, friends, we love to leave you at the end of every episode, not just with this hype and this idea of what could be, but really a next step of action.
33:56
SPEAKER_03: And I hope it's clear as day to you, like that there is opportunities to get in the game as a family, as a business, in so many different ways, maybe even as a church, to say what more could you do together than you might otherwise do apart?
34:09
SPEAKER_03: And here's an opportunity to do this.
34:10
SPEAKER_03: We have got these collaborative giving funds.
34:13
SPEAKER_03: We have one specifically around evangelism that's supporting ministries like Groundwire and Groundwire itself to say what could it look like to come alongside and to really say, as a community of entrepreneurs, could we all do more together?
34:28
SPEAKER_03: Can we celebrate this win together?
34:29
SPEAKER_03: Can we see our entrepreneurial journey and story in the groundwire story, to be a part of it and locking arms in it?
34:36
SPEAKER_03: And so check it out at solving.org.
34:38
SPEAKER_03: You can see the collaborative giving fund.
34:40
SPEAKER_03: There's easy ways to make a donation, to contribute to it, and to really be a part of this community together.
34:48
SPEAKER_05: So, what are your next steps?
34:50
SPEAKER_05: Give together, meet friends, and discover how you can go further.
34:53
SPEAKER_05: Join us on a call and we'll give you a 30-minute overview of giving funds and how they work.
34:59
SPEAKER_05: Visit solving.org to join the call today.
35:02
SPEAKER_05: Pick a fund and step into the story.
35:05
SPEAKER_05: Breakthroughs are happening right now.
35:08
SPEAKER_05: God is already at work, and you're invited to join him.
35:11
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35:14
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35:17
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35:19
SPEAKER_05: Thanks for listening, and we hope that you join us in solving the world's greatest problems.