May 1, 2025 • 48 mins
Craig Bradley, founder of AO Lab, introduces the revolutionary Seed Bible platform that enables communities to create customizable, shareable digital Bible experiences with integrated multimedia content and collaborative features.
• Creating digital Bibles that communities can fully own and customize
• Building technology that works globally and offline through web-based solutions
• Enabling "playlists" of scripture with integrated videos, links, and resources
• Giving families tools to create generational Bible legacies with personal reflections
• Supporting Bible translators with free-use frameworks and distribution tools
• Working with non-Christian developers who have opportunities to encounter the gospel
• Addressing copyright barriers that restrict Bible distribution and accessibility
• Partnering with organizations like E10 (Every Tribe, Every Nation) to reach the unreached
• Making all technology free without monetization strategies, ads, or data harvesting
If you want to support this ministry or learn more, visit helloao.org where you can watch demonstrations and see monthly updates about this revolutionary gospel tech platform.
Check out this video from Craig to get even more info!
https://youtu.be/KWDSWSpzplo
Follow @unreachedpodcast on Instagram for more!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
In Revelation 7, john shares his vision of heaven,
with members from every tribe,tongue, people and language
standing in the throne roombefore the Lamb.
Yet today there are still over7,000 unreached people groups
around the world.
For the last six years, myfamily and friends have been on
a journey to find, vet and fundthe task remaining.
(00:28):
Come journey with us to theends of the earth as we share
the supernatural stories of Godat work for the men and women he
has called to reach theunreached.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hello friends, dustin Elliott here, your host for
today.
Welcome back to the Unreachedpodcast Really cool episode.
Today We've talked about thisconcept of finding new methods,
finding new ways to reach theUnreached people, groups around
the world, to love our neighboracross the street and across the
ocean, and through those of youthat have been following along
(01:02):
with the pod through, one ofthose new methods being our
friends Scott Eloquin andSwitchboard.
I got pinged, I told y'all,clint and I both set up a
profile on Switchboard and I gota ping from a guy that wanted
to talk about his ministry andwhat he was building, and so I
jumped on it.
I accepted the invitation andmy friend Craig is here with us
(01:23):
today.
Craig Bradley the invitationand my friend Craig is here with
us today.
Craig Bradley.
Craig is with Hello AO or AOLabs and he is building this
integrated tech stack into aBible.
That I wish I could explain,but I don't have to because I
got Craig, so help me.
Welcome, craig Bradley.
Craig, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Thank you so much for having me, dustin.
Yeah, so AO Lab is the 501c3nonprofit and our website is
helloaoorg.
It's exciting to be able towork on tools today that can
have massive global impact usingthe Roman roads of the modern
world the internet right and soit's all about gospel tech and
seeing what God can do.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah, incredible.
And so he took me through inthis conversation we had through
Switchboard.
He took me through kind of theconcept, what they're building,
his background, why he has apassion for this, why he has a
skill set for this, and I got soexcited about it.
I called Clint, I called BradThomas, our head pastor.
I told him about it and ourwhole team at the Ridge and
beyond is fascinated by this.
(02:25):
So, craig, why don't you takeus through your story a little
bit, get us kind of teed upthrough how you got into
building this type of tech?
You were doing it on afor-profit side and then you
kind of had a revelation Wait asecond, I could do this over
here as well.
Kind of bring us up to speed.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, so it's a weird story, but I just feel like God
has led me in a direction for along time without me knowing it
exactly.
But years ago I live in GrandRapids, michigan, so I'm up here
hanging out far north fromAustin, and I was a venture
capital advisor for startups andI was working my way through
(03:06):
helping startups build theirbusiness plans, their models,
things like that, and thispatent attorney kept telling me
about another guy who kepttalking about this weird concept
of augmented reality.
This is back in 2015, 2014.
This is long before conceptslike AR or VR were in the
popular nomenclature and, longstory short, I connected with
(03:29):
another guy who was working onthat core technology and it
happened to be one of the mostinnovative firms in and around
Michigan, and we went on to workwith Google, atap.
We went on to work with most ofthe major players.
I traveled all the world.
I even flew out to Nintendo.
I flew all over the worldmeeting and talking with people
from the tech industry and thatbecame my life from 2016 onward
(03:53):
to the present.
That organization startedbuilding out this new tech stack
for the future that we wereimagining.
That could be pretty compellingand I saw an opportunity to
take that tech stack that wasbeing built and share that with
the world.
So I founded a nonprofit.
With the support and it waseven the idea of some of the
(04:14):
partners of that organization, Ifounded a new nonprofit, put
all the technology in thisnonprofit that was built for
education, but my heart wasalways the gospel.
So I left that nonprofit and Ifounded a new nonprofit and that
was AO Lab, which is a lab forthe Alpha and Omega.
That's what the A and the O arefor, and our whole mission is
(04:34):
to take the tech that's outthere that people don't even
realize can be used, and to makethat freely accessible, free
use, maximally powerful for thereach of the gospel and get that
out into the world.
And that whole tech stack washonestly a revelation as to what
(04:54):
the internet can do.
People don't fully understandwhat the internet is capable of
of and our nonprofit has built alot of core technology and used
a lot of open source technologythat's already out there to
create a new platform that willenable everyone to use the
internet in new ways.
That's a huge opportunitybecause the internet goes
(05:17):
everywhere.
It's globally, on all devicesacross the world, and that's
what we want to do so.
I'd love to unpack that alittle bit more, but that's how
I got here.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Okay, all right, so stay with us.
Stay with us.
If you don't understandeverything that was just said,
we're going to take this downinto terms people like me can
understand for all of us.
So I think of what you'restarting, or what you're working
on, and similar to like a Bibleapp, so you have access to the
Bible and you can get in thereand you can read it in different
translations if you like, andright now that exists, and it
(05:52):
exists in the context of I canhighlight and I can share, and
there's some limited use, butit's nice.
It's been a great tool and oneof the most popular apps ever
with YouVersion and CraigGroeschel and their team, and so
when I brought that up, youwere like yes and yes and yes
and so tell us about the ands.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Yeah.
So there's a huge—the problemsthat we're trying to solve are
so big.
People don't realize theseproblems exist in a lot of ways,
and I can say a lot ofsentences that require
explanation, because peopleassume the Bible is so much more
accessible and more useful thanit is.
And until you actually try toapply the scriptures to some
kind of ministry application,only then do you hit a massive
(06:36):
barrier between what you'retrying to accomplish with what
God has laid on your heart andwhere the industry currently is.
So that gap is what we'retrying to solve and that gap it
looks like a Bible frameworkthat is useful for any ministry
purpose.
Youversion can't do that rightnow as much as they would love
to and I spoke to them aboutthis years ago because of the
(06:56):
copyright restrictions thatthey're under and because of the
tech stack that they've built.
So our heart is to see adigital Bible that every family
can own, every church can ownand every ministry can own, that
they can customize with studyresources, that they can
customize with tools for theiraudience and that they can
(07:17):
deploy on demand, online oroffline, all across the world.
And some specific examples ofthis would be, for example,
let's talk about a playlist.
You know, a playlist is an easything that most people can
understand.
If you go to Spotify or any, oreven a YouTube playlist, you
(07:39):
can find a playlist of songs ora playlist of videos that
someone can make.
But there's no tool right nowthat is a Bible that you can
make and share a playlist ofscripture.
If I could open up a Bible, makea playlist for tackling anxiety
, or let's say I'm a ministrythat's targeting a children's
(08:00):
ministry and I want to have, forchildren specifically, a
playlist of verses that aregoing to take that children's
ministry through lessons thatI've pre-planned, and I want to
have, for children specifically,a playlist of verses that are
going to take that children'sministry through lessons that
I've pre-planned, and I want toinclude in that links to videos,
links to articles, links tosongs, even and I want to text
that to somebody.
There's no tool that lets me dothat right now, today, and so,
having the ability to take aplaylist, put all that into a
(08:21):
single link that I can text tosomeone.
They can open that up and thenit opens the Bible with them.
That capability, right there isa simple tool and it's one of
many kinds of tools that we'reworking on.
That suddenly puts the abilityto share the Scripture and
Scripture resources into asingle text and it's just a link
.
You can share that anywhere.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
So I could take a concept or a topic.
I could walk through the sevendeadly sins and I could go and I
could find scripture relativeto greed or envy or lust or
whatever the rate I could go in.
I could create a playlist ofthe relevant scriptures through
the Bible.
Then, within each verse, when Igot to it, or my constituents
(09:00):
or my group got to that verse,then it would open, next to that
verse, videos that I included,links to articles, links to
other commentaries around thattopic, so they could dive deeper
into really understanding whatI've curated for them on that
topic.
Is that fair?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yep, exactly, and so we're building use cases and
tools like that for a whole hostof audiences.
Let me just run through thoseaudiences and then we can unpack
that in a lot of ways.
But we're building tools forBible translators that are
trying to actually create newBible translations.
We're working with E10, everyTribe, every Nation and their
innovation lab on that.
We're building tools forpastors.
We're building tools forfamilies to collaboratively
(09:44):
experience God's word together.
We're building tools for contentcreators, so Christian
evangelists that are going onYouTube making videos.
They want to share a playlistof follow on scripture for
people to go explore on theirown.
And we're also making tools forany developer out there that
has something that God has laidon their heart that they don't
(10:04):
have a way to do that.
We're making tools to help themput their dream into action,
and everything we're making is100% free use.
There's no strings attached,there's no monetization strategy
, there's no gotcha, there's noads involved, there's no data
harvesting.
It's very much open-handed.
What can we do for the globalChristian church that can really
(10:27):
make an impact and equipeveryone with new tools to live
out the gospel?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Love that.
And one other thing I was goingto add that you told me I think
was possible is I couldactually even record on my own
phone myself talking about thatverse and then I could put that
into the playlist or into thefamily Bible or the group Bible.
And one thing that just grippedme was this could be a family
(10:55):
Bible that's generational, sograndma and grandpa can go
through the Bible, highlight,make notes, talk about what's
relevant to them, shoot a littlevideo, even talk about what
that verse has meant in theirlife, talk about you know, this
was the verse we were prayingover your mom when she was in
your grandma's womb.
This is the verse that wetalked about when we lost your
uncle, so-and-so, and this iskind of what was going through
(11:17):
our minds.
And so then that family Biblebecomes something so powerful
and so generational that yourgrandkids and great-grandkids
could even connect back tograndma and grandpa, et cetera.
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (11:29):
That's exactly right, and the challenge here for
years was working on how do wecreate and we don't have good
language to describe thisbecause we think about the word
Bible in a certain way but howdo we create a Bible that is
useful for all of those usecases?
(11:50):
So how do we make a Biblethat's useful for building a
legacy as a family?
How do we make a Bible that'suseful for immediately sharing
the scripture with someone thatyou maybe don't even know or you
haven't even met yet, like acontent creator putting video
out there for the internet?
How do we make a Bible that'suseful to explore content in 3D
(12:15):
and we have a whole game enginein it.
So if you want to exploresomething like the tabernacle,
or you want to know you knowwhere is Jerusalem as it relates
to, or you want to know youknow where is Jerusalem as it
relates to Shiloh or Bethel whatdo these words mean in context?
And so going all the way backto how I began this journey is
it was really a quest todiscover what are all the ways I
(12:36):
could ever imagine myself oranyone else I know and love
using the scripture, and how canwe make a framework that makes
it easy for anyone to accomplishany of those purposes, and how
do we make a framework thatmakes it easy for anyone to
accomplish any of those purposes, and how do we make it simple
and accessible?
And even if we made that, howcould we share that with anyone?
Those questions led us to a fewanswers.
Answer number one is we had tomake all of our technology
(12:57):
web-based.
It can't be something that youhave to download, because
downloads take a long time andnot all devices share the same
hardware, and even if they doshare the same hardware, you
know, if I want to give yousomething that's, you know, 10
gigabytes to download, it'sgonna be impossible to use in
places with low connectivity.
So I had to work offline, andso this is another revolution
(13:21):
for people to even consider, butyou can actually make web-based
internet solutions that workoffline.
That's what we've been workingon, and it has to also be
something that can be useful in2D, in a traditional Bible
setting, or going all the wayback to 2015, 2016,.
(13:44):
When I started thinking aboutthings, it had to be something
that could work in augmentedreality.
If I wanted to walk through theBible with my son, with my
family, I wanted to have a pathto be able to get all the way
from traditional problems tothat future state, and so
working on a tool set that couldaccomplish all those things
(14:05):
without overcomplicating thatwas a real challenge.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I can imagine.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Yeah it was.
And long story short.
You know we've accomplished thecore goals and we're looking to
be in early access thisSeptember, but everything we've
been making is all in public,and before I talk more about
what the product and what theplatform is, I'd like to talk
about how we do it.
If that's okay, yeah, come on.
(14:32):
So because the things we wereworking on were so ambitious
that I wasn't sure it was evengoing to be possible, I decided
I would make the ministry aministry, and so what I did is I
went online.
I didn't have any money.
I had to self fund basicallyeverything, and we've been on
small budgets ever since day one, very small budgets, and so the
(14:54):
only thing I could afford wasdevelopers that were three to
five dollars an hour to start,and so I would go on Upwork or
Fiverr or forums anywhere, and Iwould just do anything I could
to find developers anywhere, andI was committed to trying to
find non-Christian developers,so Muslims, hindus, agnostics,
and that's what we did.
(15:15):
We built a team ofnon-Christians and we built a
Discord community where we allworked together, and for three
years we just worked day in andday out on these tasks and I
told everyone I was hiring.
You're joining a Christiannonprofit.
I am going to try to evangelizeyou at some point.
Just know that it's coming.
You don't ever have to acceptit, you don't ever have to
(15:37):
believe.
We'll always work together.
You'll still get paid, but it'sgoing to come for you.
Just by doing life working onthese tools, two of our
developers have becomeChristians Wow, and we still are
doing active evangelism to thedevelopers working on these
tools.
Most of them are agnostic orMuslim, or now we have a few
(16:02):
Christians that have becomeChristians, and so even the
process of creating these toolsfor me had to be a ministry,
because I wasn't sure if wewould even succeed.
But we're moving in a gooddirection, doing good while
doing good, yeah, well, and it'scritical.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
It's critical right.
We're not called to justdisciple on Sunday mornings or
just disciple our kids or justour life group, et cetera.
I mean, we're called to makedisciples of all nations.
It's very clear, and you got todo that through how you work
and why you work and when youwork and who you work for right.
So it's beautiful to hear yousay that.
(16:37):
I think that a lot of ministriesstart on a small budget.
I think that a lot of peoplelistening to this can certainly
relate to that concept, and alot of it gets built out through
sacrifice, and sacrifice beingone of the greatest tools for
advancing the gospel ever, be itthrough the persecuted church
or through the own personalsacrifices that we make to give
our life to God's will and Hismission.
(17:00):
And we talk about it a lot.
Right, you don't wake up in themorning and think, what am I
going to do with my day?
You wake up in the morning andyou ask God, what do you want to
do with your day?
And you're aligning your lifeto God's will.
And, craig, you're certainlyliving that out.
I'm thrilled that you foundSwitchboard and we got connected
and had a chance to get to knowyou and understand this
ministry a little more.
Let's talk about more use cases.
(17:21):
So our church here at AustinRidge exegetical teaching right,
we're going to start at thefirst verse of a book of the
Bible.
We're going to work all the waythrough it.
In fact, we were just in Actsfor 15, 16 months and now we're
in Revelation.
We'll be in Revelation all yearand when we're teaching through
these books, be in Revelationall year.
And when we're teaching throughthese books, there's going to
(17:42):
be, you know, six or eight orten probably verses per Sunday,
but then there's going to be aton of references back to the
Old Testament, new Testament,other places.
Where did this come from?
Where was the prophecy firstsaid?
Now we've seen it fulfilled andhere it is in Revelation, etc.
And so I think of your conceptin this Bible and there being a
version for our church and Ithink of our pastor's ability to
go in, do his sermon notes andeither him or someone on the
(18:05):
staff can tag those other verses.
You can upload the sermon video.
You could probably use somesort of AI to generate sermon
notes and you could createsomething far beyond just a
video series that lives online,but it would be a whole teaching
component to go with it.
Is that fair?
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah.
So let's unpack that, becausethat's a great example, and
there are so many—I've neverattended Austin Ridge—but there
are so many use cases for achurch body like Austin Ridge
that are opportunities for theglobal church to benefit from
and to also follow that model ifthey want to.
So for starters, the goal wasto imagine what would a Bible
(18:48):
for a community look like, andthis is going back to the core
challenge of what's limiting theglobal Christian church today
as far as technology goes.
Our technology is inherentlyisolating for the most part.
You know you have a Netflix appis for streaming movies, many,
(19:08):
many different shows just to youor Disney Plus, or we have
social media like, let's say,Facebook or X or you know,
TikTok.
That's for creating a singlepiece of media and pushing that
one piece of media to manypeople.
But what not many people haveattempted to solve is how do you
do many to many, how do you geta community of people all
(19:29):
creating and sharing contentwith each other in a way that
are going to actually facilitatediscipleship, growth and doing
life together?
And one of the ways that youneed to begin that process is by
giving a church a space that's.
Think of it as in the marginsor that study notes section of
scripture that is alongside thescripture, so that the content
(19:50):
you're making is in context withthe scripture.
So, going back to what you'resaying, Revelation your pastor's
preaching through Revelationand there's a sermon now in
Revelation 2, verse 4.
Well, three years from now,whenever there's a new church
member that's studyingRevelation, they want to know
hey man, I love this church, Ilove this teaching, I'm hungry
(20:11):
for more.
And in Revelation, if I want to, I should be able to look at
Revelation, chapter two, and seeoh, there's the highlight there
.
You know, so-and-so preached onthat two years ago.
Let me go up three years ago,whatever it is, Let me go back
and listen to that and find thatover time.
That is one of many examples,and so what I'd like to unpack
(20:33):
are a few different types ofcontent that if we could start
thinking about as a globalchurch, we could see how much
opportunity we're missing.
So one of the features in whatwe're working on and I'll talk
about the name of it right nowit's called the Seed Bible.
The Seed Bible is a platformdesigned to help any community
plant and grow a community Biblefor their community.
(20:54):
So one of the features we'retalking about is a layer.
So a layer is something that isgoing to be content specific
over the whole Bible.
So, for example, sermons.
Sermons are a layer of contentwhere, as a pastor, you may have
many different sermons on manydifferent passages, maybe even
(21:14):
by many different pastors ifyou're a large church.
Different passages, maybe evenby many different pastors if
you're a large church.
But another layer that peoplemight be interested in is arts
and crafts.
What if I'm a Sunday schoolteacher and I want to know hey,
Timothy is coming up.
Are there any arts and craftsthat our ministry team has put
together for kids to use forunpacking Timothy?
(21:37):
Or are there video resources, orare there recommended sources
that the people want me to go tofor preparing some kind of
lesson?
And if you think about how manymoms out there are
homeschooling, if you thinkabout how many families are
trying to engage their childrenwith the Bible, if I'm a family
that just attends Austin Ridgeand I want to be able to do some
(22:00):
kind of activity with my kidsin Austin Ridge just by being a
church, having their ownchildren's ministry, creating
resources, if they're justputting those resources in a
community Bible for families todiscover later, well, suddenly
we just create this contentlayer of arts and crafts or kid
engagement or whatever you wantto call it over time that
(22:20):
everyone can benefit from.
So sermons, study notes, videocontent, podcasts, pdfs of arts
and crafts.
There's songs, worship.
What if Austin Ridge Worshipwas creating songs specific to
scripture, the Psalms, forexample and I'm an attendee of
(22:41):
Austin Ridge, I want to go tothe Psalms, I want to find
scripture that has pairings withmusic that Austin Ridge has
made.
I want to just have access tothat.
So Austin Ridge itself becomesan opportunity for people to
experience the media, all formsof media that Austin Ridge is
generating.
And then, hopefully, phase two,as the congregation gets an
(23:04):
appetite to go wow, if AustinRidge makes a song that I can
open up the Bible and discover,maybe if we made more songs,
more people would open theirBibles, right?
Or if people, if Austin Ridge,made content teaching on these
specific topics.
Let's say RevelationRevelation's a very popular
(23:25):
topic.
If Austin Ridge has a YouTubechannel and puts up a sermon on
Revelation and in the link tothat sermon says hey, if you
want to open up the Austin RidgeBible, you'll open up the Bible
and find other content onRevelation, then suddenly, by
sharing content, austin Ridgecan share the Bible and by
(23:46):
sharing the Bible, austin Ridgecan share content.
And all of this has to besomething that's web accessible.
It has to be performant, it hasto be fast, it has to be cheap,
it can't have ads, there can'tbe strings attached and Austin
Ridge needs to be able to fullyown, completely, with no
licensing agreement, all of thismedia.
(24:09):
So it's Austin Ridge's now andforever, and so that's what
we're trying to work on.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Okay, Now, this is beyond fascinating and it takes
me in a lot of directions, butlet's just let's go to the least
fun of the directions for amoment, which is who gate keeps
it.
So you talked about it likelayers, right?
So there's I'm assuming there'slike the A layer, or whatever
you want to call it of thepastoral leader of the church,
(24:35):
and then maybe the B layer couldbe the other pastors that are
the heads of the premarital orthe special needs ministry or
the addiction ministry or thedivorce ministry or the business
ministry or whatever, and theycould then put their notes in
there or they could tag thosefor part of what they want their
people to connect with.
And then you've got anotherlayer that could be community at
(24:56):
large, right, Just the folks inthe seats, and they may be
putting comments in at differentlevels of maturity, and some
may have eyes to see and ears tohear, and some may not.
Some may say things that areinappropriate.
How do you handle?
Speaker 3 (25:12):
all that.
So the answer to how we handleall that is we just leave it up
to the churches as to what theywant to allow.
One of the things we, if achurch wants something to be,
you know one directional wherehey, only approved people can
post resources, PDFs, links,whatever.
Then that's all that exists,and that's wonderful.
(25:33):
If the church wants to open upto a wider community and let
everyone participate, they'rewelcome to do that as well, and
the answer is that everyone canset their own boundaries and
will support that and buildtools to undergird that.
What I'm most excited about,though, are for churches to have
an appetite to figure out whatdoes it mean to be a community
(25:56):
of people in the Word of God,and if we were, what sorts of
opportunities might emerge?
Let's talk about a few more usecases to tell that story.
Going back to your Revelationseries, let's say the pastor is
preaching next week onRevelation chapter 10, and they
have a path through the Biblethat everyone can see that says
hey, next week is Revelationchapter 10.
(26:18):
So, hey, anyone in thecongregation let's call it the
Austin Ridge Bible Go to theAustin Ridge Bible, Go to
Revelation chapter 10 and putquestions.
You have right in there, thepastor will see them and on
Sunday we can go through it andwe can answer questions the
pastor wants to call out and wecan answer questions the pastor
wants to call out.
(26:38):
And if the pastor wants to thentake that sermon, that whole
moment on Sunday morning, themessage, the questions that were
answered, and then put that asan annotation in Revelation
chapter, whatever it was, thenthat's there for the future.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Well, you could do it live, or you could do it after
or before.
You could pre-record answers oryou could post-record answers
to the questions and add that assupplemental content.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yep all of the above and two weeks later, the church
might have questions on apassage that you just spoke
about that you want to go backand comment on, absolutely, and
so we're going to make tools tosupport all of those things.
We're going to make tools tosupport all of those things and
then we don't know currentlywhat the right mixture of
leadership activity and anaudience participation or church
(27:27):
participation is the rightmixture.
So our goal is going to givepeople as much control over the
platform to let them figure itout.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Let me go to the nations.
So we are the Unreached Podcast.
We've talked a lot about local.
Let's talk about global Usecases that I see.
A lot of us supportmissionaries directly.
Right, we're part of thefunding team that supports a
missionary and we may be on aWhatsApp or a Signal group where
that person is sharing backimages and videos and stories
(27:58):
and things that are happening asthey're taking the gospel to
the nations and we're prayingand we're supporting and we're
financially supporting and allthat.
How cool would it be to haveyour own seed Bible within your
small community, which I thinkwould give that missionary a lot
of support as well as somethingto do with a lot of their time.
(28:21):
A lot of times it's a verylonely thing to go do and now
you're giving them a path oryou've created a mechanism for
the support group to themissionary.
So that's one layer, and thenanother layer could be the
mission's team, from the churchto the missionaries they support
.
Another layer could be thesending agency, the pioneers and
(28:44):
ethnos and GSIs and all thosefolks in the world who have 100,
200, 400, 500 teams.
They could have an agency-wideseed Bible or they could have
them to particular regions, theycould have different leaders.
Am I getting all this?
I mean, you could take itcorporate right.
My team could have one at work.
My whole company could have aseed Bible.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Yeah, so you're exactly right, and what I
realized years ago in working onthis project is that every
individual and every group isits own context and all of those
things need to exist.
So we started out by imaginingnot what does a church Bible
look like, but what does afamily Bible look like for a
husband, a wife and the kids tohave a Bible that they go
(29:28):
through together.
But then you also want tosubscribe to your local church,
austin Ridge, and you want tosee what content does Austin
Ridge have for me.
But you may also want tosubscribe to a missionary you're
supporting.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
And you may have 10 or 15 or 20 different ones that
you're clued into.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Yeah, and then it just becomes a matter of
filtering, right, and then youbegin to have so many content
layers that then the next thingthat you build is the feature of
turn all that off.
Just be in the Bible only byitself, with nothing else.
Just be in the word.
Just be in the Bible only byitself, with nothing else, just
be in the Word.
And then, after you've donethat, load in the content layers
and see is there content from amissionary that I'm supporting,
(30:05):
that I can be praying for?
Is there a prayer request?
Is there anything that we canbe a part of?
Those are the ways that weshould be able to engage.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
You know what I think of.
I think of like Microsoft Teamsor Slack, where you have
different channels and differentconversations with different
groups, and so, like I log intomy Bible and if I've got
notifications turned on for eachchannel or off for each channel
, then I can see which channelshave had updates, new highlights
, new videos, new things addedand I can go in there and get
caught up with that group.
Is that on?
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Yeah, that is the idea long term.
So we're working towards anearly access this September and
what we're going to start withis simple reading activity and
annotations, because one of ourmain use cases going back to the
sermons being inserted alongwith the scripture one of our
main use cases is also Bibletranslation itself, translation
(31:00):
itself.
One of the things we want tosupport is a team of
missionaries in the fieldsharing for all intents and
purposes imagine a blank Biblethat has no text in it and they
want to all collaborate, withtwo, three, four people
recording audio translations forthe oral mother tongue movement
, for John, chapter one, johnchapter two, revelation, chapter
4, genesis, whatever.
And as they are all recordingaudio, the Bible is updating in
(31:24):
real time and building itselfout with the actual audio
recordings for their targetlanguage, or the same thing for
text.
Maybe you're working on a newBible translation with a team of
people.
Once that translation is ready,you can now share that Bible
translation from the missionaryto that community if they want
to use it, and then you canbegin improving that over time
(31:47):
and that missionary can beworking on a new Bible
translation, also being acontent layer, so people back
home can stay engaged with whatthey're reading personally in
the Bible, and they can alsosubscribe to churches they want
to be a part of.
And you could also have thesending agencies, all these
things.
What all this comes down to isthat every single Christian in
the world is trying to grow inthe word of God.
(32:11):
More useful for every use casetranslation, distribution,
discipleship, evangelism,ministry then we can lift the
global Christian church to doall those things far more
effectively.
We're all trying to tell thesame story, we're all trying to
(32:34):
translate the same story, we'reall trying to disciple others
into the same story, but we'renot creating and sharing
resources that other people canbenefit from, except for our own
selves.
And many people have the heartto do that.
There is YouTube, there arethese things, but there's no
platform that enables me, as aneveryday person, to create
something just for my son thathe can subscribe to and it's
(32:55):
just me and my son, but I canalso subscribe to the missionary
, my church and all the rest.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
No, it's revolutionary.
What are the biggest barriersright now?
Speaker 3 (33:07):
There are some huge barriers.
The huge barriers are thechallenges people don't realize
exist and so people aren'tfunding and aren't approaching.
Aren't funding and aren'tapproaching.
Challenge number one is thatthere are, sadly, limitations
(33:29):
from copyright publishers fromcopyright holders, I should say
on what people can do with Bibletranslations.
So most of the popular Bibletranslations you don't have
permission to use them to make aplaylist and share it.
You don't have permission touse them to make a playlist and
share it.
You don't have permission toread that translation offline or
anonymously.
You don't have permission totake Bible translations like,
let's say, the NIV or otherpopular translations, and you
(33:51):
can't just share that Bible withsomeone because they have
restrictions on it.
You can only share 500 verses,but you can't share the whole
Bible, and so, because there arerestrictions that copyright
holders place on how the word ofGod can be shared, there are a
number of Bible translations wejust don't have access to with a
framework that lets people dothat.
(34:13):
So we need to raise awarenessthat Bible translators and
copyright holders need to haveless restrictive Bible
translations so that we canenable people to do all these
things, because we're justholding them back right now.
So that was actually the firstproblem that we had to solve to
even get to the point where wecould do what we're doing today.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Okay.
So if you're listening to thisand you know a publisher or you
know somebody that owns somecontent or has the ability to
influence this space, this mightbe an opportunity for you to
reach out to Craig and connectthem and see about breaking down
a wall.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Yes, please do, because we would absolutely make
that translation a part of ourcore product and framework if we
had permission to, but sadly wejust don't.
For many of the populartranslations, the ones that
you're using in your church, wedon't have permission to use
because there's restrictions onhow they would be used, and
that's tragic, right.
You would think that anycopyright translation holder
(35:14):
would want people to read theBible, but in effect they say no
, we need to know who's readingit, where they're reading it,
how they're reading it, how manyverses they're reading of it,
and if we don't know thatinformation, you can't have our
Bible translation.
So, going back four years agowhen I started on this project
with a whole team of people it'smuch bigger than just me but
(35:35):
when we started on this project,I naively assumed well, if we
can make this framework that cando everything that we're saying
it can do and it will be ableto, then great, that's all we
need to do.
But I realized quickly that wewouldn't get permission to use
any Bible.
So I had to create with ourteam a new service that we could
(35:57):
use but any other person coulduse, and so we made, going back
three years ago, what is nowcalled the Free Use Bible API.
We had defined our owntranslations, we had to source
over a thousand Bibletranslations and we had to put
that in a web service that wecould use or any other developer
(36:19):
could use, and right now it'scurrently the best free-use
Bible resource out there on theweb.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Now I know what you mean when you say people don't
know what problems exist Exactly.
I hate to think that somebodythat created a translation did
it with the intent ofrestricting access to it.
That certainly would— I don'twant to assume the worst there,
but probably just because of themechanisms that are in place in
(36:47):
the legal and copyrightstructure.
That's how it came out and ifwe can kindly make them aware of
it, there may be we couldinfluence some change.
But it sounds like you know youjust built another version and
you've got something to workwith now.
But there sounds like you knowyou just built another version
and you've got something to workwith now, but there's an
opportunity for others to unlocktheirs as well.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Yeah, so we actually had to convince—so when I began
this project three years ago,there was not a single—and just
hear me when I say this, becausethis is insane, I didn't think
this was true—but there was nota single quality modern English
Bible translation in a free usestate that we could use to do
(37:29):
what we're trying to do withthis platform.
There was not a singletranslation.
By the grace of God, I got putin touch with an organization
working on a Bible translation.
That's not perfect, but it's onpar in terms of readability and
modern language with the ESVand NIV and other popular
translations, and that Bibletranslation is called the Berean
(37:50):
Standard Bible and you can findtheir website at bereanbible.
The Berean Standard Bible wasput together by the people at
Bible Hub because they had facedthis issue for years, and I
lovingly, in the name of Jesus,harassed these poor people for a
(38:13):
year and a half until theyfinally gave our nonprofit,
unlimited use of theirtranslation and I said that's
wonderful, but it's not goodenough.
It has to be something everyonecan use.
And they released theirtranslation after much
conviction, after much lovingharassment, into the public
(38:33):
domain.
They released it CreativeCommons so anyone could use it
for any godly purpose, with norestrictions, and we took that
translation and we built theFree Use Bible API and added to
that API.
We have over a thousandtranslations and counting and
that is the Free Use Bible APIthat's used today.
So problem number one is goingto lead us into problem number
(38:54):
two that people aren't aware of,but let me just summarize
problem number one.
Problem number one biblicaltexts have limits on how they
can be used digitally and thatprecludes us and forbids us from
sharing a digital Bible thatpeople can use.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
And, to be clear, you're not saying free to use to
go in there and edit and changeScripture.
You're just saying free to useto supply as is but could be
then put onto your platformsupply as is, but could be then
put onto your platform.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
You both saw, I'm actually trying to say both, but
my goal is not to get everyonechanging scripture, but my goal
is to give translators ascripture that they can just
work from and edit and changeand modify for their purposes.
Right, so that's so thatthere's two.
So one of our major partners isE10, Every Tribe, every Nation.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
And there's an absolute authority on this.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Right yeah.
And until we had released,until we had convinced by the
grace of God and it was theirgift to the world, use and go
wow, I can just take this, I canchange it.
I can take this English Bibleand literally change it word for
(40:03):
word into Spanish if I want to,if that's going to get me to a
result, or into any other targetlanguage that's going to get me
to a result quickly.
That then I can refine and honeover time.
So there is a huge need fortranslators to have Creative
Commons, free use, public domainresources that they can just
take and just start translatingwith, without having to jump
(40:24):
through hoops, sign waivers,have red tape.
That's a big need we're tryingto solve as well.
Problem number two is let's sayyou have a text that's public
domain.
That's like having waterwithout a bucket.
That's public domain.
That's like having waterwithout a bucket.
If you have a text but no wayto distribute that text, then
you don't effectively reallyhave much of anything.
(40:44):
So, for example, the entireBible text for the Berean
Standard Bible that came to usin basically a large think of
like a large notepad text filewhere it's just all those words
just jammed together.
It's unreadable.
It's a massive, unstructuredfile.
You can't give that to someoneto read.
You can't read it yourself,like it's just, there's no
(41:07):
formatting.
You just have all these wordsdumped onto a page with no
clarity to it.
How do you take that text andthen share it with other people?
Well, we built our own parser.
We did all that work.
We put that in the API, butthen we had to also make
technology to let anyone elsewho had a Bible text out there
(41:27):
share it with their audience.
So, going back several monthsago, I was talking with a Bible
translator making an ArabicBible translation.
This man is in the field.
He's a missionary working on anArabic Bible translation that
he has and he wants to give away.
But he has basically a Worddocument and that's it.
He can't text a Word documentto someone and let them just
(41:51):
open up the entire Bible.
First of all, it breaks Word.
Second of all, you can't readthe scripture that way.
You need to have a frameworkthat lets you take that and load
that chapter and verse rightLike a traditional Bible
interface.
So we made that framework intothe seed Bible that now any
translator can use, through ourAPI or through their own
(42:12):
resources to distributetranslations.
So problem number two is thatthere's a lot of money flowing
into Bible translation andthat's good.
It should.
Obviously that's a huge need.
But there's not a lot of waysfor translators to distribute
their translations unless youpersonally get permission from
YouVersion or email it toBibleHub.
(42:34):
It's very difficult.
If I'm a translator with a Bibletranslation, it's difficult for
me to share that by myself witha community I'm trying to reach
with that translation.
On a technical level, just toclarify here if there is a
translation, you know, copyrightaside, whatever those issues
are aside people need a way tothen quickly distribute that
(42:55):
over the web to an audience, andso that's what we're trying to
make tools for is for thatpipeline.
If I'm a translator, how do Iquickly get my translation out
to the world?
Because we're trying to solveliterally every use case with
the scripture.
How do you translate, disciple,get community into the word,
share the word with people howdo you do all of those things?
(43:16):
That creates a big problem.
But if we can build tools thataddress those issues, we have a
massive opportunity to leteveryone everywhere do that
today.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Love it, love it.
Okay.
So some barriers there being,kind of copyright issues and red
tape and what's free use andwhat's not, and how do we kind
of break those walls down?
And then, based on the platformthat you're building, there's
going to be a way fortranslators to maybe work
together and hopefully achievean end result faster, more
(43:47):
efficiently, have that endresult be open for free use and
not end up with some kind of redtape.
Is that fair?
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Yep, and we're working with E10 to make that
happen and we're building toolsto support that too.
And so it really is.
Just our goal is to make toolsfor every use case.
Like I said, translation,distribution, discipleship, to
solve content distributionissues and to equip every
believer, every church, everyfamily, to fully live out
whatever God places on theirheart in the Word of God for
(44:17):
others to enjoy and to benefitfrom.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
All right.
So here's the ask to theaudience.
I mean, you know this podcastwill never be monetized either.
We don't have ads.
This is just a gift that Clintand I and a few others really
love to put out there.
But I have no problem askingfor help and support of causes
that we feel really moved by.
And so, craig you, craig we'dlove for our audience to
consider financially supportingwhat you're doing.
(44:41):
We'd love for them to considerreaching out to you if they have
contacts or they have sometalent that they can share to
help move this ball down thefield.
And so, to that end, give themyour website and how to reach
you real quick.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
We would greatly benefit from that.
Our website is helloaoorg andevery month, at the start of
every month, I do a YouTubemonthly update.
There's a video that you canwatch where, if you're like,
what is he talking about?
How does this work?
I'll show you.
There's a demo.
I'll walk you through it.
(45:17):
It's easier to show than tellsome of these things and that'll
all be available for you.
And right now we're at a pointwhere we have enough money to
get to an early access launch,but by the end of the year we
don't have what we need tocontinue and our goal is because
we're working on the Bibleitself.
We don't want to monetize that.
(45:38):
We just can't be in a positionwhere we're putting monetary
barriers between people andGod's Word itself.
So you know we're dependentupon donors to fund and partners
.
So we're looking to connectwith anyone who has a heart for
that and that's what we'reasking.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Okay, great.
So I'm going to load your 501c3into the NCF National Christian
Foundation Donor Advice Fund soanyone that's an NCF DAF giver
will be able to find you there.
I'm going to work on that thisweek.
If you're a part of another oneof the major platforms, let's
get them loaded up in there aswell.
If you can help, that'd begreat.
I think the kingdom could growmassively through this new
(46:17):
method and just the thought oftaking it home, even my wife and
I being able to curate a Biblethat our kids will grow up with
and we can have for the family.
It's great to have a physicalBible that you can hold and turn
the pages on.
Don't get me wrong, this isn'tgoing to replace that, and
that's fine for Bible readingand quiet time and things like
that.
But to add all these otherpieces and have that be
(46:39):
generational, have that betransformational for your
company, for your team, smallgroup, d group, life group,
church mission organization, etcetera Really special man.
I'm so glad God put this onyour heart.
You know what we do here at theUnreached Podcast, craig, is we
ask the guests to pray for thelisteners at the end of every
episode.
So if you would man let theLord speak through you and lay
(47:00):
it on us.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
Heavenly Father, thank you for the joy that it is
to serve you.
Thank you that you have givenso many people across the globe
talents, passions for creatingresources for sermons, for
knowledge, for new Bibletranslations, for all sorts of
things we haven't even thoughtof or conceived yet.
Father, I just pray that youwould help us to equip the
(47:23):
church with tools to effectivelybe who you've made them to be
all the more, and I pray thatyou would have the global church
be one as you prayed in John 17.
And, god, I know that you don'tneed technology, you don't need
our team, you don't need theinternet, you don't need anyone
to accomplish your purposes, butwe know that you love your
(47:44):
children and that you love towork through your children to do
these things.
And so, father, I just praythat you would do that here and
now, in 2025, as we seek yourwill and seek your face through
our team and through all thosewho are working in this way.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
And amen.
Thank you for listening toUnreached.
Our sincere desire is that whatyou've heard today will cause
you to see the mission of Goddifferently and your role in it
more clearly.
If this adds value for you andwe hope it does would you please
rate and review the podcastwherever you listen.
Also, share with your family,your friends, your church, your
life group, small group, dgroup,wherever you do life, and if
(48:24):
you want to connect with us,find us on Instagram at
unreachedpodcast, or email us atunreachedpodcast at gmailcom.
You.
In Revelation 7, john shares his vision of heaven,
with members from every tribe,tongue, people and language
standing in the throne roombefore the Lamb.
Yet today there are still over7,000 unreached people groups
around the world.
For the last six years, myfamily and friends have been on
a journey to find, vet and fundthe task remaining.
(00:28):
Come journey with us to theends of the earth as we share
the supernatural stories of Godat work for the men and women he
has called to reach theunreached.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Hello friends, dustin Elliott here, your host for
today.
Welcome back to the Unreachedpodcast Really cool episode.
Today We've talked about thisconcept of finding new methods,
finding new ways to reach theUnreached people, groups around
the world, to love our neighboracross the street and across the
ocean, and through those of youthat have been following along
(01:02):
with the pod through, one ofthose new methods being our
friends Scott Eloquin andSwitchboard.
I got pinged, I told y'all,clint and I both set up a
profile on Switchboard and I gota ping from a guy that wanted
to talk about his ministry andwhat he was building, and so I
jumped on it.
I accepted the invitation andmy friend Craig is here with us
(01:23):
today.
Craig Bradley the invitationand my friend Craig is here with
us today.
Craig Bradley.
Craig is with Hello AO or AOLabs and he is building this
integrated tech stack into aBible.
That I wish I could explain,but I don't have to because I
got Craig, so help me.
Welcome, craig Bradley.
Craig, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
Thank you so much for having me, dustin.
Yeah, so AO Lab is the 501c3nonprofit and our website is
helloaoorg.
It's exciting to be able towork on tools today that can
have massive global impact usingthe Roman roads of the modern
world the internet right and soit's all about gospel tech and
seeing what God can do.
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah, incredible.
And so he took me through inthis conversation we had through
Switchboard.
He took me through kind of theconcept, what they're building,
his background, why he has apassion for this, why he has a
skill set for this, and I got soexcited about it.
I called Clint, I called BradThomas, our head pastor.
I told him about it and ourwhole team at the Ridge and
beyond is fascinated by this.
(02:25):
So, craig, why don't you takeus through your story a little
bit, get us kind of teed upthrough how you got into
building this type of tech?
You were doing it on afor-profit side and then you
kind of had a revelation Wait asecond, I could do this over
here as well.
Kind of bring us up to speed.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Yeah, so it's a weird story, but I just feel like God
has led me in a direction for along time without me knowing it
exactly.
But years ago I live in GrandRapids, michigan, so I'm up here
hanging out far north fromAustin, and I was a venture
capital advisor for startups andI was working my way through
(03:06):
helping startups build theirbusiness plans, their models,
things like that, and thispatent attorney kept telling me
about another guy who kepttalking about this weird concept
of augmented reality.
This is back in 2015, 2014.
This is long before conceptslike AR or VR were in the
popular nomenclature and, longstory short, I connected with
(03:29):
another guy who was working onthat core technology and it
happened to be one of the mostinnovative firms in and around
Michigan, and we went on to workwith Google, atap.
We went on to work with most ofthe major players.
I traveled all the world.
I even flew out to Nintendo.
I flew all over the worldmeeting and talking with people
from the tech industry and thatbecame my life from 2016 onward
(03:53):
to the present.
That organization startedbuilding out this new tech stack
for the future that we wereimagining.
That could be pretty compellingand I saw an opportunity to
take that tech stack that wasbeing built and share that with
the world.
So I founded a nonprofit.
With the support and it waseven the idea of some of the
(04:14):
partners of that organization, Ifounded a new nonprofit, put
all the technology in thisnonprofit that was built for
education, but my heart wasalways the gospel.
So I left that nonprofit and Ifounded a new nonprofit and that
was AO Lab, which is a lab forthe Alpha and Omega.
That's what the A and the O arefor, and our whole mission is
(04:34):
to take the tech that's outthere that people don't even
realize can be used, and to makethat freely accessible, free
use, maximally powerful for thereach of the gospel and get that
out into the world.
And that whole tech stack washonestly a revelation as to what
(04:54):
the internet can do.
People don't fully understandwhat the internet is capable of
of and our nonprofit has built alot of core technology and used
a lot of open source technologythat's already out there to
create a new platform that willenable everyone to use the
internet in new ways.
That's a huge opportunitybecause the internet goes
(05:17):
everywhere.
It's globally, on all devicesacross the world, and that's
what we want to do so.
I'd love to unpack that alittle bit more, but that's how
I got here.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Okay, all right, so stay with us.
Stay with us.
If you don't understandeverything that was just said,
we're going to take this downinto terms people like me can
understand for all of us.
So I think of what you'restarting, or what you're working
on, and similar to like a Bibleapp, so you have access to the
Bible and you can get in thereand you can read it in different
translations if you like, andright now that exists, and it
(05:52):
exists in the context of I canhighlight and I can share, and
there's some limited use, butit's nice.
It's been a great tool and oneof the most popular apps ever
with YouVersion and CraigGroeschel and their team, and so
when I brought that up, youwere like yes and yes and yes
and so tell us about the ands.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
Yeah.
So there's a huge—the problemsthat we're trying to solve are
so big.
People don't realize theseproblems exist in a lot of ways,
and I can say a lot ofsentences that require
explanation, because peopleassume the Bible is so much more
accessible and more useful thanit is.
And until you actually try toapply the scriptures to some
kind of ministry application,only then do you hit a massive
(06:36):
barrier between what you'retrying to accomplish with what
God has laid on your heart andwhere the industry currently is.
So that gap is what we'retrying to solve and that gap it
looks like a Bible frameworkthat is useful for any ministry
purpose.
Youversion can't do that rightnow as much as they would love
to and I spoke to them aboutthis years ago because of the
(06:56):
copyright restrictions thatthey're under and because of the
tech stack that they've built.
So our heart is to see adigital Bible that every family
can own, every church can ownand every ministry can own, that
they can customize with studyresources, that they can
customize with tools for theiraudience and that they can
(07:17):
deploy on demand, online oroffline, all across the world.
And some specific examples ofthis would be, for example,
let's talk about a playlist.
You know, a playlist is an easything that most people can
understand.
If you go to Spotify or any, oreven a YouTube playlist, you
(07:39):
can find a playlist of songs ora playlist of videos that
someone can make.
But there's no tool right nowthat is a Bible that you can
make and share a playlist ofscripture.
If I could open up a Bible, makea playlist for tackling anxiety
, or let's say I'm a ministrythat's targeting a children's
(08:00):
ministry and I want to have, forchildren specifically, a
playlist of verses that aregoing to take that children's
ministry through lessons thatI've pre-planned, and I want to
have, for children specifically,a playlist of verses that are
going to take that children'sministry through lessons that
I've pre-planned, and I want toinclude in that links to videos,
links to articles, links tosongs, even and I want to text
that to somebody.
There's no tool that lets me dothat right now, today, and so,
having the ability to take aplaylist, put all that into a
(08:21):
single link that I can text tosomeone.
They can open that up and thenit opens the Bible with them.
That capability, right there isa simple tool and it's one of
many kinds of tools that we'reworking on.
That suddenly puts the abilityto share the Scripture and
Scripture resources into asingle text and it's just a link
.
You can share that anywhere.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
So I could take a concept or a topic.
I could walk through the sevendeadly sins and I could go and I
could find scripture relativeto greed or envy or lust or
whatever the rate I could go in.
I could create a playlist ofthe relevant scriptures through
the Bible.
Then, within each verse, when Igot to it, or my constituents
(09:00):
or my group got to that verse,then it would open, next to that
verse, videos that I included,links to articles, links to
other commentaries around thattopic, so they could dive deeper
into really understanding whatI've curated for them on that
topic.
Is that fair?
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yep, exactly, and so we're building use cases and
tools like that for a whole hostof audiences.
Let me just run through thoseaudiences and then we can unpack
that in a lot of ways.
But we're building tools forBible translators that are
trying to actually create newBible translations.
We're working with E10, everyTribe, every Nation and their
innovation lab on that.
We're building tools forpastors.
We're building tools forfamilies to collaboratively
(09:44):
experience God's word together.
We're building tools for contentcreators, so Christian
evangelists that are going onYouTube making videos.
They want to share a playlistof follow on scripture for
people to go explore on theirown.
And we're also making tools forany developer out there that
has something that God has laidon their heart that they don't
(10:04):
have a way to do that.
We're making tools to help themput their dream into action,
and everything we're making is100% free use.
There's no strings attached,there's no monetization strategy
, there's no gotcha, there's noads involved, there's no data
harvesting.
It's very much open-handed.
What can we do for the globalChristian church that can really
(10:27):
make an impact and equipeveryone with new tools to live
out the gospel?
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Love that.
And one other thing I was goingto add that you told me I think
was possible is I couldactually even record on my own
phone myself talking about thatverse and then I could put that
into the playlist or into thefamily Bible or the group Bible.
And one thing that just grippedme was this could be a family
(10:55):
Bible that's generational, sograndma and grandpa can go
through the Bible, highlight,make notes, talk about what's
relevant to them, shoot a littlevideo, even talk about what
that verse has meant in theirlife, talk about you know, this
was the verse we were prayingover your mom when she was in
your grandma's womb.
This is the verse that wetalked about when we lost your
uncle, so-and-so, and this iskind of what was going through
(11:17):
our minds.
And so then that family Biblebecomes something so powerful
and so generational that yourgrandkids and great-grandkids
could even connect back tograndma and grandpa, et cetera.
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (11:29):
That's exactly right, and the challenge here for
years was working on how do wecreate and we don't have good
language to describe thisbecause we think about the word
Bible in a certain way but howdo we create a Bible that is
useful for all of those usecases?
(11:50):
So how do we make a Biblethat's useful for building a
legacy as a family?
How do we make a Bible that'suseful for immediately sharing
the scripture with someone thatyou maybe don't even know or you
haven't even met yet, like acontent creator putting video
out there for the internet?
How do we make a Bible that'suseful to explore content in 3D
(12:15):
and we have a whole game enginein it.
So if you want to exploresomething like the tabernacle,
or you want to know you knowwhere is Jerusalem as it relates
to, or you want to know youknow where is Jerusalem as it
relates to Shiloh or Bethel whatdo these words mean in context?
And so going all the way backto how I began this journey is
it was really a quest todiscover what are all the ways I
(12:36):
could ever imagine myself oranyone else I know and love
using the scripture, and how canwe make a framework that makes
it easy for anyone to accomplishany of those purposes, and how
do we make a framework thatmakes it easy for anyone to
accomplish any of those purposes, and how do we make it simple
and accessible?
And even if we made that, howcould we share that with anyone?
Those questions led us to a fewanswers.
Answer number one is we had tomake all of our technology
(12:57):
web-based.
It can't be something that youhave to download, because
downloads take a long time andnot all devices share the same
hardware, and even if they doshare the same hardware, you
know, if I want to give yousomething that's, you know, 10
gigabytes to download, it'sgonna be impossible to use in
places with low connectivity.
So I had to work offline, andso this is another revolution
(13:21):
for people to even consider, butyou can actually make web-based
internet solutions that workoffline.
That's what we've been workingon, and it has to also be
something that can be useful in2D, in a traditional Bible
setting, or going all the wayback to 2015, 2016,.
(13:44):
When I started thinking aboutthings, it had to be something
that could work in augmentedreality.
If I wanted to walk through theBible with my son, with my
family, I wanted to have a pathto be able to get all the way
from traditional problems tothat future state, and so
working on a tool set that couldaccomplish all those things
(14:05):
without overcomplicating thatwas a real challenge.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I can imagine.
Speaker 3 (14:10):
Yeah it was.
And long story short.
You know we've accomplished thecore goals and we're looking to
be in early access thisSeptember, but everything we've
been making is all in public,and before I talk more about
what the product and what theplatform is, I'd like to talk
about how we do it.
If that's okay, yeah, come on.
(14:32):
So because the things we wereworking on were so ambitious
that I wasn't sure it was evengoing to be possible, I decided
I would make the ministry aministry, and so what I did is I
went online.
I didn't have any money.
I had to self fund basicallyeverything, and we've been on
small budgets ever since day one, very small budgets, and so the
(14:54):
only thing I could afford wasdevelopers that were three to
five dollars an hour to start,and so I would go on Upwork or
Fiverr or forums anywhere, and Iwould just do anything I could
to find developers anywhere, andI was committed to trying to
find non-Christian developers,so Muslims, hindus, agnostics,
and that's what we did.
(15:15):
We built a team ofnon-Christians and we built a
Discord community where we allworked together, and for three
years we just worked day in andday out on these tasks and I
told everyone I was hiring.
You're joining a Christiannonprofit.
I am going to try to evangelizeyou at some point.
Just know that it's coming.
You don't ever have to acceptit, you don't ever have to
(15:37):
believe.
We'll always work together.
You'll still get paid, but it'sgoing to come for you.
Just by doing life working onthese tools, two of our
developers have becomeChristians Wow, and we still are
doing active evangelism to thedevelopers working on these
tools.
Most of them are agnostic orMuslim, or now we have a few
(16:02):
Christians that have becomeChristians, and so even the
process of creating these toolsfor me had to be a ministry,
because I wasn't sure if wewould even succeed.
But we're moving in a gooddirection, doing good while
doing good, yeah, well, and it'scritical.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
It's critical right.
We're not called to justdisciple on Sunday mornings or
just disciple our kids or justour life group, et cetera.
I mean, we're called to makedisciples of all nations.
It's very clear, and you got todo that through how you work
and why you work and when youwork and who you work for right.
So it's beautiful to hear yousay that.
(16:37):
I think that a lot of ministriesstart on a small budget.
I think that a lot of peoplelistening to this can certainly
relate to that concept, and alot of it gets built out through
sacrifice, and sacrifice beingone of the greatest tools for
advancing the gospel ever, be itthrough the persecuted church
or through the own personalsacrifices that we make to give
our life to God's will and Hismission.
(17:00):
And we talk about it a lot.
Right, you don't wake up in themorning and think, what am I
going to do with my day?
You wake up in the morning andyou ask God, what do you want to
do with your day?
And you're aligning your lifeto God's will.
And, craig, you're certainlyliving that out.
I'm thrilled that you foundSwitchboard and we got connected
and had a chance to get to knowyou and understand this
ministry a little more.
Let's talk about more use cases.
(17:21):
So our church here at AustinRidge exegetical teaching right,
we're going to start at thefirst verse of a book of the
Bible.
We're going to work all the waythrough it.
In fact, we were just in Actsfor 15, 16 months and now we're
in Revelation.
We'll be in Revelation all yearand when we're teaching through
these books, be in Revelationall year.
And when we're teaching throughthese books, there's going to
(17:42):
be, you know, six or eight orten probably verses per Sunday,
but then there's going to be aton of references back to the
Old Testament, new Testament,other places.
Where did this come from?
Where was the prophecy firstsaid?
Now we've seen it fulfilled andhere it is in Revelation, etc.
And so I think of your conceptin this Bible and there being a
version for our church and Ithink of our pastor's ability to
go in, do his sermon notes andeither him or someone on the
(18:05):
staff can tag those other verses.
You can upload the sermon video.
You could probably use somesort of AI to generate sermon
notes and you could createsomething far beyond just a
video series that lives online,but it would be a whole teaching
component to go with it.
Is that fair?
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Yeah.
So let's unpack that, becausethat's a great example, and
there are so many—I've neverattended Austin Ridge—but there
are so many use cases for achurch body like Austin Ridge
that are opportunities for theglobal church to benefit from
and to also follow that model ifthey want to.
So for starters, the goal wasto imagine what would a Bible
(18:48):
for a community look like, andthis is going back to the core
challenge of what's limiting theglobal Christian church today
as far as technology goes.
Our technology is inherentlyisolating for the most part.
You know you have a Netflix appis for streaming movies, many,
(19:08):
many different shows just to youor Disney Plus, or we have
social media like, let's say,Facebook or X or you know,
TikTok.
That's for creating a singlepiece of media and pushing that
one piece of media to manypeople.
But what not many people haveattempted to solve is how do you
do many to many, how do you geta community of people all
(19:29):
creating and sharing contentwith each other in a way that
are going to actually facilitatediscipleship, growth and doing
life together?
And one of the ways that youneed to begin that process is by
giving a church a space that's.
Think of it as in the marginsor that study notes section of
scripture that is alongside thescripture, so that the content
(19:50):
you're making is in context withthe scripture.
So, going back to what you'resaying, Revelation your pastor's
preaching through Revelationand there's a sermon now in
Revelation 2, verse 4.
Well, three years from now,whenever there's a new church
member that's studyingRevelation, they want to know
hey man, I love this church, Ilove this teaching, I'm hungry
(20:11):
for more.
And in Revelation, if I want to, I should be able to look at
Revelation, chapter two, and seeoh, there's the highlight there
.
You know, so-and-so preached onthat two years ago.
Let me go up three years ago,whatever it is, Let me go back
and listen to that and find thatover time.
That is one of many examples,and so what I'd like to unpack
(20:33):
are a few different types ofcontent that if we could start
thinking about as a globalchurch, we could see how much
opportunity we're missing.
So one of the features in whatwe're working on and I'll talk
about the name of it right nowit's called the Seed Bible.
The Seed Bible is a platformdesigned to help any community
plant and grow a community Biblefor their community.
(20:54):
So one of the features we'retalking about is a layer.
So a layer is something that isgoing to be content specific
over the whole Bible.
So, for example, sermons.
Sermons are a layer of contentwhere, as a pastor, you may have
many different sermons on manydifferent passages, maybe even
(21:14):
by many different pastors ifyou're a large church.
Different passages, maybe evenby many different pastors if
you're a large church.
But another layer that peoplemight be interested in is arts
and crafts.
What if I'm a Sunday schoolteacher and I want to know hey,
Timothy is coming up.
Are there any arts and craftsthat our ministry team has put
together for kids to use forunpacking Timothy?
(21:37):
Or are there video resources, orare there recommended sources
that the people want me to go tofor preparing some kind of
lesson?
And if you think about how manymoms out there are
homeschooling, if you thinkabout how many families are
trying to engage their childrenwith the Bible, if I'm a family
that just attends Austin Ridgeand I want to be able to do some
(22:00):
kind of activity with my kidsin Austin Ridge just by being a
church, having their ownchildren's ministry, creating
resources, if they're justputting those resources in a
community Bible for families todiscover later, well, suddenly
we just create this contentlayer of arts and crafts or kid
engagement or whatever you wantto call it over time that
(22:20):
everyone can benefit from.
So sermons, study notes, videocontent, podcasts, pdfs of arts
and crafts.
There's songs, worship.
What if Austin Ridge Worshipwas creating songs specific to
scripture, the Psalms, forexample and I'm an attendee of
(22:41):
Austin Ridge, I want to go tothe Psalms, I want to find
scripture that has pairings withmusic that Austin Ridge has
made.
I want to just have access tothat.
So Austin Ridge itself becomesan opportunity for people to
experience the media, all formsof media that Austin Ridge is
generating.
And then, hopefully, phase two,as the congregation gets an
(23:04):
appetite to go wow, if AustinRidge makes a song that I can
open up the Bible and discover,maybe if we made more songs,
more people would open theirBibles, right?
Or if people, if Austin Ridge,made content teaching on these
specific topics.
Let's say RevelationRevelation's a very popular
(23:25):
topic.
If Austin Ridge has a YouTubechannel and puts up a sermon on
Revelation and in the link tothat sermon says hey, if you
want to open up the Austin RidgeBible, you'll open up the Bible
and find other content onRevelation, then suddenly, by
sharing content, austin Ridgecan share the Bible and by
(23:46):
sharing the Bible, austin Ridgecan share content.
And all of this has to besomething that's web accessible.
It has to be performant, it hasto be fast, it has to be cheap,
it can't have ads, there can'tbe strings attached and Austin
Ridge needs to be able to fullyown, completely, with no
licensing agreement, all of thismedia.
(24:09):
So it's Austin Ridge's now andforever, and so that's what
we're trying to work on.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Okay, Now, this is beyond fascinating and it takes
me in a lot of directions, butlet's just let's go to the least
fun of the directions for amoment, which is who gate keeps
it.
So you talked about it likelayers, right?
So there's I'm assuming there'slike the A layer, or whatever
you want to call it of thepastoral leader of the church,
(24:35):
and then maybe the B layer couldbe the other pastors that are
the heads of the premarital orthe special needs ministry or
the addiction ministry or thedivorce ministry or the business
ministry or whatever, and theycould then put their notes in
there or they could tag thosefor part of what they want their
people to connect with.
And then you've got anotherlayer that could be community at
(24:56):
large, right, Just the folks inthe seats, and they may be
putting comments in at differentlevels of maturity, and some
may have eyes to see and ears tohear, and some may not.
Some may say things that areinappropriate.
How do you handle?
Speaker 3 (25:12):
all that.
So the answer to how we handleall that is we just leave it up
to the churches as to what theywant to allow.
One of the things we, if achurch wants something to be,
you know one directional wherehey, only approved people can
post resources, PDFs, links,whatever.
Then that's all that exists,and that's wonderful.
(25:33):
If the church wants to open upto a wider community and let
everyone participate, they'rewelcome to do that as well, and
the answer is that everyone canset their own boundaries and
will support that and buildtools to undergird that.
What I'm most excited about,though, are for churches to have
an appetite to figure out whatdoes it mean to be a community
(25:56):
of people in the Word of God,and if we were, what sorts of
opportunities might emerge?
Let's talk about a few more usecases to tell that story.
Going back to your Revelationseries, let's say the pastor is
preaching next week onRevelation chapter 10, and they
have a path through the Biblethat everyone can see that says
hey, next week is Revelationchapter 10.
(26:18):
So, hey, anyone in thecongregation let's call it the
Austin Ridge Bible Go to theAustin Ridge Bible, Go to
Revelation chapter 10 and putquestions.
You have right in there, thepastor will see them and on
Sunday we can go through it andwe can answer questions the
pastor wants to call out and wecan answer questions the pastor
wants to call out.
(26:38):
And if the pastor wants to thentake that sermon, that whole
moment on Sunday morning, themessage, the questions that were
answered, and then put that asan annotation in Revelation
chapter, whatever it was, thenthat's there for the future.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Well, you could do it live, or you could do it after
or before.
You could pre-record answers oryou could post-record answers
to the questions and add that assupplemental content.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yep all of the above and two weeks later, the church
might have questions on apassage that you just spoke
about that you want to go backand comment on, absolutely, and
so we're going to make tools tosupport all of those things.
We're going to make tools tosupport all of those things and
then we don't know currentlywhat the right mixture of
leadership activity and anaudience participation or church
(27:27):
participation is the rightmixture.
So our goal is going to givepeople as much control over the
platform to let them figure itout.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Let me go to the nations.
So we are the Unreached Podcast.
We've talked a lot about local.
Let's talk about global Usecases that I see.
A lot of us supportmissionaries directly.
Right, we're part of thefunding team that supports a
missionary and we may be on aWhatsApp or a Signal group where
that person is sharing backimages and videos and stories
(27:58):
and things that are happening asthey're taking the gospel to
the nations and we're prayingand we're supporting and we're
financially supporting and allthat.
How cool would it be to haveyour own seed Bible within your
small community, which I thinkwould give that missionary a lot
of support as well as somethingto do with a lot of their time.
(28:21):
A lot of times it's a verylonely thing to go do and now
you're giving them a path oryou've created a mechanism for
the support group to themissionary.
So that's one layer, and thenanother layer could be the
mission's team, from the churchto the missionaries they support
.
Another layer could be thesending agency, the pioneers and
(28:44):
ethnos and GSIs and all thosefolks in the world who have 100,
200, 400, 500 teams.
They could have an agency-wideseed Bible or they could have
them to particular regions, theycould have different leaders.
Am I getting all this?
I mean, you could take itcorporate right.
My team could have one at work.
My whole company could have aseed Bible.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Yeah, so you're exactly right, and what I
realized years ago in working onthis project is that every
individual and every group isits own context and all of those
things need to exist.
So we started out by imaginingnot what does a church Bible
look like, but what does afamily Bible look like for a
husband, a wife and the kids tohave a Bible that they go
(29:28):
through together.
But then you also want tosubscribe to your local church,
austin Ridge, and you want tosee what content does Austin
Ridge have for me.
But you may also want tosubscribe to a missionary you're
supporting.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
And you may have 10 or 15 or 20 different ones that
you're clued into.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Yeah, and then it just becomes a matter of
filtering, right, and then youbegin to have so many content
layers that then the next thingthat you build is the feature of
turn all that off.
Just be in the Bible only byitself, with nothing else.
Just be in the word.
Just be in the Bible only byitself, with nothing else, just
be in the Word.
And then, after you've donethat, load in the content layers
and see is there content from amissionary that I'm supporting,
(30:05):
that I can be praying for?
Is there a prayer request?
Is there anything that we canbe a part of?
Those are the ways that weshould be able to engage.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
You know what I think of.
I think of like Microsoft Teamsor Slack, where you have
different channels and differentconversations with different
groups, and so, like I log intomy Bible and if I've got
notifications turned on for eachchannel or off for each channel
, then I can see which channelshave had updates, new highlights
, new videos, new things addedand I can go in there and get
caught up with that group.
Is that on?
Speaker 3 (30:35):
Yeah, that is the idea long term.
So we're working towards anearly access this September and
what we're going to start withis simple reading activity and
annotations, because one of ourmain use cases going back to the
sermons being inserted alongwith the scripture one of our
main use cases is also Bibletranslation itself, translation
(31:00):
itself.
One of the things we want tosupport is a team of
missionaries in the fieldsharing for all intents and
purposes imagine a blank Biblethat has no text in it and they
want to all collaborate, withtwo, three, four people
recording audio translations forthe oral mother tongue movement
, for John, chapter one, johnchapter two, revelation, chapter
4, genesis, whatever.
And as they are all recordingaudio, the Bible is updating in
(31:24):
real time and building itselfout with the actual audio
recordings for their targetlanguage, or the same thing for
text.
Maybe you're working on a newBible translation with a team of
people.
Once that translation is ready,you can now share that Bible
translation from the missionaryto that community if they want
to use it, and then you canbegin improving that over time
(31:47):
and that missionary can beworking on a new Bible
translation, also being acontent layer, so people back
home can stay engaged with whatthey're reading personally in
the Bible, and they can alsosubscribe to churches they want
to be a part of.
And you could also have thesending agencies, all these
things.
What all this comes down to isthat every single Christian in
the world is trying to grow inthe word of God.
(32:11):
More useful for every use casetranslation, distribution,
discipleship, evangelism,ministry then we can lift the
global Christian church to doall those things far more
effectively.
We're all trying to tell thesame story, we're all trying to
(32:34):
translate the same story, we'reall trying to disciple others
into the same story, but we'renot creating and sharing
resources that other people canbenefit from, except for our own
selves.
And many people have the heartto do that.
There is YouTube, there arethese things, but there's no
platform that enables me, as aneveryday person, to create
something just for my son thathe can subscribe to and it's
(32:55):
just me and my son, but I canalso subscribe to the missionary
, my church and all the rest.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
No, it's revolutionary.
What are the biggest barriersright now?
Speaker 3 (33:07):
There are some huge barriers.
The huge barriers are thechallenges people don't realize
exist and so people aren'tfunding and aren't approaching.
Aren't funding and aren'tapproaching.
Challenge number one is thatthere are, sadly, limitations
(33:29):
from copyright publishers fromcopyright holders, I should say
on what people can do with Bibletranslations.
So most of the popular Bibletranslations you don't have
permission to use them to make aplaylist and share it.
You don't have permission touse them to make a playlist and
share it.
You don't have permission toread that translation offline or
anonymously.
You don't have permission totake Bible translations like,
let's say, the NIV or otherpopular translations, and you
(33:51):
can't just share that Bible withsomeone because they have
restrictions on it.
You can only share 500 verses,but you can't share the whole
Bible, and so, because there arerestrictions that copyright
holders place on how the word ofGod can be shared, there are a
number of Bible translations wejust don't have access to with a
framework that lets people dothat.
(34:13):
So we need to raise awarenessthat Bible translators and
copyright holders need to haveless restrictive Bible
translations so that we canenable people to do all these
things, because we're justholding them back right now.
So that was actually the firstproblem that we had to solve to
even get to the point where wecould do what we're doing today.
Speaker 2 (34:36):
Okay.
So if you're listening to thisand you know a publisher or you
know somebody that owns somecontent or has the ability to
influence this space, this mightbe an opportunity for you to
reach out to Craig and connectthem and see about breaking down
a wall.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Yes, please do, because we would absolutely make
that translation a part of ourcore product and framework if we
had permission to, but sadly wejust don't.
For many of the populartranslations, the ones that
you're using in your church, wedon't have permission to use
because there's restrictions onhow they would be used, and
that's tragic, right.
You would think that anycopyright translation holder
(35:14):
would want people to read theBible, but in effect they say no
, we need to know who's readingit, where they're reading it,
how they're reading it, how manyverses they're reading of it,
and if we don't know thatinformation, you can't have our
Bible translation.
So, going back four years agowhen I started on this project
with a whole team of people it'smuch bigger than just me but
(35:35):
when we started on this project,I naively assumed well, if we
can make this framework that cando everything that we're saying
it can do and it will be ableto, then great, that's all we
need to do.
But I realized quickly that wewouldn't get permission to use
any Bible.
So I had to create with ourteam a new service that we could
(35:57):
use but any other person coulduse, and so we made, going back
three years ago, what is nowcalled the Free Use Bible API.
We had defined our owntranslations, we had to source
over a thousand Bibletranslations and we had to put
that in a web service that wecould use or any other developer
(36:19):
could use, and right now it'scurrently the best free-use
Bible resource out there on theweb.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Now I know what you mean when you say people don't
know what problems exist Exactly.
I hate to think that somebodythat created a translation did
it with the intent ofrestricting access to it.
That certainly would— I don'twant to assume the worst there,
but probably just because of themechanisms that are in place in
(36:47):
the legal and copyrightstructure.
That's how it came out and ifwe can kindly make them aware of
it, there may be we couldinfluence some change.
But it sounds like you know youjust built another version and
you've got something to workwith now.
But there sounds like you knowyou just built another version
and you've got something to workwith now, but there's an
opportunity for others to unlocktheirs as well.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Yeah, so we actually had to convince—so when I began
this project three years ago,there was not a single—and just
hear me when I say this, becausethis is insane, I didn't think
this was true—but there was nota single quality modern English
Bible translation in a free usestate that we could use to do
(37:29):
what we're trying to do withthis platform.
There was not a singletranslation.
By the grace of God, I got putin touch with an organization
working on a Bible translation.
That's not perfect, but it's onpar in terms of readability and
modern language with the ESVand NIV and other popular
translations, and that Bibletranslation is called the Berean
(37:50):
Standard Bible and you can findtheir website at bereanbible.
The Berean Standard Bible wasput together by the people at
Bible Hub because they had facedthis issue for years, and I
lovingly, in the name of Jesus,harassed these poor people for a
(38:13):
year and a half until theyfinally gave our nonprofit,
unlimited use of theirtranslation and I said that's
wonderful, but it's not goodenough.
It has to be something everyonecan use.
And they released theirtranslation after much
conviction, after much lovingharassment, into the public
(38:33):
domain.
They released it CreativeCommons so anyone could use it
for any godly purpose, with norestrictions, and we took that
translation and we built theFree Use Bible API and added to
that API.
We have over a thousandtranslations and counting and
that is the Free Use Bible APIthat's used today.
So problem number one is goingto lead us into problem number
(38:54):
two that people aren't aware of,but let me just summarize
problem number one.
Problem number one biblicaltexts have limits on how they
can be used digitally and thatprecludes us and forbids us from
sharing a digital Bible thatpeople can use.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
And, to be clear, you're not saying free to use to
go in there and edit and changeScripture.
You're just saying free to useto supply as is but could be
then put onto your platformsupply as is, but could be then
put onto your platform.
Speaker 3 (39:24):
You both saw, I'm actually trying to say both, but
my goal is not to get everyonechanging scripture, but my goal
is to give translators ascripture that they can just
work from and edit and changeand modify for their purposes.
Right, so that's so thatthere's two.
So one of our major partners isE10, Every Tribe, every Nation.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
And there's an absolute authority on this.
Speaker 3 (39:41):
Right yeah.
And until we had released,until we had convinced by the
grace of God and it was theirgift to the world, use and go
wow, I can just take this, I canchange it.
I can take this English Bibleand literally change it word for
(40:03):
word into Spanish if I want to,if that's going to get me to a
result, or into any other targetlanguage that's going to get me
to a result quickly.
That then I can refine and honeover time.
So there is a huge need fortranslators to have Creative
Commons, free use, public domainresources that they can just
take and just start translatingwith, without having to jump
(40:24):
through hoops, sign waivers,have red tape.
That's a big need we're tryingto solve as well.
Problem number two is let's sayyou have a text that's public
domain.
That's like having waterwithout a bucket.
That's public domain.
That's like having waterwithout a bucket.
If you have a text but no wayto distribute that text, then
you don't effectively reallyhave much of anything.
(40:44):
So, for example, the entireBible text for the Berean
Standard Bible that came to usin basically a large think of
like a large notepad text filewhere it's just all those words
just jammed together.
It's unreadable.
It's a massive, unstructuredfile.
You can't give that to someoneto read.
You can't read it yourself,like it's just, there's no
(41:07):
formatting.
You just have all these wordsdumped onto a page with no
clarity to it.
How do you take that text andthen share it with other people?
Well, we built our own parser.
We did all that work.
We put that in the API, butthen we had to also make
technology to let anyone elsewho had a Bible text out there
(41:27):
share it with their audience.
So, going back several monthsago, I was talking with a Bible
translator making an ArabicBible translation.
This man is in the field.
He's a missionary working on anArabic Bible translation that
he has and he wants to give away.
But he has basically a Worddocument and that's it.
He can't text a Word documentto someone and let them just
(41:51):
open up the entire Bible.
First of all, it breaks Word.
Second of all, you can't readthe scripture that way.
You need to have a frameworkthat lets you take that and load
that chapter and verse rightLike a traditional Bible
interface.
So we made that framework intothe seed Bible that now any
translator can use, through ourAPI or through their own
(42:12):
resources to distributetranslations.
So problem number two is thatthere's a lot of money flowing
into Bible translation andthat's good.
It should.
Obviously that's a huge need.
But there's not a lot of waysfor translators to distribute
their translations unless youpersonally get permission from
YouVersion or email it toBibleHub.
(42:34):
It's very difficult.
If I'm a translator with a Bibletranslation, it's difficult for
me to share that by myself witha community I'm trying to reach
with that translation.
On a technical level, just toclarify here if there is a
translation, you know, copyrightaside, whatever those issues
are aside people need a way tothen quickly distribute that
(42:55):
over the web to an audience, andso that's what we're trying to
make tools for is for thatpipeline.
If I'm a translator, how do Iquickly get my translation out
to the world?
Because we're trying to solveliterally every use case with
the scripture.
How do you translate, disciple,get community into the word,
share the word with people howdo you do all of those things?
(43:16):
That creates a big problem.
But if we can build tools thataddress those issues, we have a
massive opportunity to leteveryone everywhere do that
today.
Speaker 2 (43:25):
Love it, love it.
Okay.
So some barriers there being,kind of copyright issues and red
tape and what's free use andwhat's not, and how do we kind
of break those walls down?
And then, based on the platformthat you're building, there's
going to be a way fortranslators to maybe work
together and hopefully achievean end result faster, more
(43:47):
efficiently, have that endresult be open for free use and
not end up with some kind of redtape.
Is that fair?
Speaker 3 (43:54):
Yep, and we're working with E10 to make that
happen and we're building toolsto support that too.
And so it really is.
Just our goal is to make toolsfor every use case.
Like I said, translation,distribution, discipleship, to
solve content distributionissues and to equip every
believer, every church, everyfamily, to fully live out
whatever God places on theirheart in the Word of God for
(44:17):
others to enjoy and to benefitfrom.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
All right.
So here's the ask to theaudience.
I mean, you know this podcastwill never be monetized either.
We don't have ads.
This is just a gift that Clintand I and a few others really
love to put out there.
But I have no problem askingfor help and support of causes
that we feel really moved by.
And so, craig you, craig we'dlove for our audience to
consider financially supportingwhat you're doing.
(44:41):
We'd love for them to considerreaching out to you if they have
contacts or they have sometalent that they can share to
help move this ball down thefield.
And so, to that end, give themyour website and how to reach
you real quick.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
We would greatly benefit from that.
Our website is helloaoorg andevery month, at the start of
every month, I do a YouTubemonthly update.
There's a video that you canwatch where, if you're like,
what is he talking about?
How does this work?
I'll show you.
There's a demo.
I'll walk you through it.
(45:17):
It's easier to show than tellsome of these things and that'll
all be available for you.
And right now we're at a pointwhere we have enough money to
get to an early access launch,but by the end of the year we
don't have what we need tocontinue and our goal is because
we're working on the Bibleitself.
We don't want to monetize that.
(45:38):
We just can't be in a positionwhere we're putting monetary
barriers between people andGod's Word itself.
So you know we're dependentupon donors to fund and partners
.
So we're looking to connectwith anyone who has a heart for
that and that's what we'reasking.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
Okay, great.
So I'm going to load your 501c3into the NCF National Christian
Foundation Donor Advice Fund soanyone that's an NCF DAF giver
will be able to find you there.
I'm going to work on that thisweek.
If you're a part of another oneof the major platforms, let's
get them loaded up in there aswell.
If you can help, that'd begreat.
I think the kingdom could growmassively through this new
(46:17):
method and just the thought oftaking it home, even my wife and
I being able to curate a Biblethat our kids will grow up with
and we can have for the family.
It's great to have a physicalBible that you can hold and turn
the pages on.
Don't get me wrong, this isn'tgoing to replace that, and
that's fine for Bible readingand quiet time and things like
that.
But to add all these otherpieces and have that be
(46:39):
generational, have that betransformational for your
company, for your team, smallgroup, d group, life group,
church mission organization, etcetera Really special man.
I'm so glad God put this onyour heart.
You know what we do here at theUnreached Podcast, craig, is we
ask the guests to pray for thelisteners at the end of every
episode.
So if you would man let theLord speak through you and lay
(47:00):
it on us.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
Heavenly Father, thank you for the joy that it is
to serve you.
Thank you that you have givenso many people across the globe
talents, passions for creatingresources for sermons, for
knowledge, for new Bibletranslations, for all sorts of
things we haven't even thoughtof or conceived yet.
Father, I just pray that youwould help us to equip the
(47:23):
church with tools to effectivelybe who you've made them to be
all the more, and I pray thatyou would have the global church
be one as you prayed in John 17.
And, god, I know that you don'tneed technology, you don't need
our team, you don't need theinternet, you don't need anyone
to accomplish your purposes, butwe know that you love your
(47:44):
children and that you love towork through your children to do
these things.
And so, father, I just praythat you would do that here and
now, in 2025, as we seek yourwill and seek your face through
our team and through all thosewho are working in this way.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
And amen.
Thank you for listening toUnreached.
Our sincere desire is that whatyou've heard today will cause
you to see the mission of Goddifferently and your role in it
more clearly.
If this adds value for you andwe hope it does would you please
rate and review the podcastwherever you listen.
Also, share with your family,your friends, your church, your
life group, small group, dgroup,wherever you do life, and if
(48:24):
you want to connect with us,find us on Instagram at
unreachedpodcast, or email us atunreachedpodcast at gmailcom.
You.
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