Update! (8/17/2017): We have reached our goal! Thank you to everyone who helped us reach our goal for this project in such a short time! If you would still like to donate and to receive the outreach gifts mentioned in this article, we are more than happy to send them to you. Just remember to note "Journeys Unscripted" with your donation, and we will make sure you get your gifts. Because this project is now fully funded, additional funds received will be allocated to other needy projects of the ministry. Thank you for helping AudioVerse reach many more souls for the Kingdom!

Ever since AudioVerse launched in 2005, the ministry has been focused on providing Bible-based, Christ-centered, distinctively-Adventist messages online to prepare people for Jesus’ soon return. Today, we have an archive of over 15,000 messages from over 1,000 speakers that have been downloaded or streamed over 22 million times in over 200 countries around the world. Those sound like big numbers, but when there’s a world with billions of souls to win—most of whom are not yet Seventh-day Adventists—we aren’t satisfied.

We want to do better at reaching the rest.

Because AudioVerse’s archive of material is so vast, several problems have arisen that impede that goal. Many of the messages available on AudioVerse are heavy on Adventist topics, so are not geared for the non-Adventist listener, and locating those appropriate messages has become increasingly difficult to do. We have heard from many of our users who wish to simply give their non-Adventist friends a link to our website, but have refrained because of what they may come across.

The AudioVerse team has been thinking and praying about this for some time now, and we would like to share with you our plan for addressing this problem and how we can do a better job of bringing the Everlasting Gospel to the rest of the world who have not heard.

Focusing on the Need

As we brainstormed about the best way to accomplish this, we realized that if outreach was the primary objective, we needed to optimize what we built to be the most effective in reaching the unbeliever where they were, while leaving alone what is currently working for our current audience. To us, that means developing new websites separate from AudioVerse.org that have very clear focuses instead of just another massive library of sermons where the seeker will just get lost. The long-term vision is to create a collection of various outreach-oriented topical sites with different emphases based on the content available in our library and the needs we perceive they can address.

In research for our first outreach site, we looked through our archives and analytics, and it became clear that the most popular and engaging content in our library are personal testimonies. The stories of God’s working in individuals’ lives have a powerful way of reaching hearts that mere sermonizing frequently cannot. Even a hardened unbeliever will find it difficult to deny the testimony of a person’s experience. In fact, we are told that personal testimonies of God’s power in our lives are something “for want of which the world is perishing!” Ellen White says this in The Desire of Ages, page 340:

As witnesses for Christ, we are to tell what we know, what we ourselves have seen and heard and felt. If we have been following Jesus step by step, we shall have something right to the point to tell concerning the way in which He has led us. We can tell how we have tested His promise, and found the promise true. We can bear witness to what we have known of the grace of Christ. This is the witness for which our Lord calls, and for want of which the world is perishing.

With many such stories already available in our archive, the first outreach site we are developing will be centered around personal testimonies and we are calling it Journeys Unscripted.

A Long-Term Soul-winning Tool

Journeys Unscripted will be a new, easy-to-use website that will house many of the power-packed personal testimonies from AudioVerse. In addition to the audio recordings, it will be designed with easy access to Bible studies and additional resources for those wanting to learn more. Behind-the-scenes, we are strategically laying the groundwork technology so that the website is streamlined for easy and low-cost management and also that new outreach sites on other topics can be rapidly built in the future. We are investing in this as a long-term soul-winning tool.

However, we are not stopping at building a new website and then simply waiting for people to find us. We believe we must go out to find the lost sheep where they are, and that is why the bigger part of Journeys Unscripted is the marketing plan to reach the people who have need of these messages. The target audience for this new initiative are unbelievers who have never heard of AudioVerse, and so we need to invest in ways to find them. A few of components of this plan currently include:

• Online Promotion. We will run online promotion campaigns through various advertising and social media channels that specifically target topics and needs that the stories on Journeys Unscripted address. Some may include addiction recovery, finding God’s will for one’s life, discovering the existence of God, suffering and healing, and many others.
• Broadcast Promotion. We have begun conversations with other media outlets such as radio and TV stations who may not be as comfortable with promoting the existing AudioVerse site, with all the overt Adventist topics, as this new site.
• Sharing Tracts. We are developing a line of tracts based on some of the testimonies that will be featured on Journeys Unscripted. These tracts, which are the same size as a GLOW tract, will serve a dual purpose of being Truth-filled literature for sharing, but also an easy way to tell others about the new website. With many AudioVerse users already actively using GLOW tracts as an outreach tool, we are simply adding a new option to their literature evangelism toolkit. We are hard at work on these tracts, and will share what we’re working on with you as soon as they’re ready!

We Need Your Help!

In order to fully realize this vision, we will need a total of $40,000. That is why we need your help today!

A small portion of this amount will fund the development of the Journeys Unscripted website and the groundwork for future sites, but the majority will go toward the effort of getting the attention of the greater non-Adventist online community.

A Double Blessing

A generous supporter has already pledged to match every donation dollar for dollar up to our target of $40,000! So your gift can go twice as far! That’s right, your gift of $25 will be worth $50, your gift of $100 is worth $200, and $1,000 is worth $2,000!

But we don’t just need your financial support, we need YOU to help spread the word about this new website! To make that as easy as possible, for your gifts in the following amounts, you will receive our brand-new sharing tracts along with the additional gifts associated with each tier:

• For gifts of $25 or more: A pack of 100 sharing tracts
• For gifts of $50 or more: 2 packs of 100 sharing tracts
• For gifts of $100 or more: 3 packs of 100 sharing tracts + Journeys Unscripted window decal
• For gifts of $250 or more: 3 packs of 100 sharing tracts + Journeys Unscripted window decal + Journeys Unscripted t-shirt
• For gifts of $1,000 or more: 3 packs of 100 sharing tracts + Journeys Unscripted window decal + Journeys Unscripted t-shirt + Fountainview Academy Orchestra and Choir “Help in Daily Living” Sharing DVD

How to Give

To make your donation toward this new AudioVerse outreach initiative, you may give now on our AudioVerse online donate page or you may send a check to our address below. However, to ensure that your donation is applied to this project and that you receive your gifts, please include the note “Journeys Unscripted” in the memo of your check or the comment box on our donation page. This is very important! Donations without that note will not be applied to this project and will not receive the listed gifts. You can expect to receive your gifts shortly after the official launch of Journeys Unscripted, which we are targeting for the end of this year.

GIVE NOW

Jesus is coming soon, and we are committed to getting the word out. We hope you will join us in this exciting new initiative. Our team has already begun working on this new website, and we look forward to launching it before the end of the year. Come back to this page to keep track of our donation progress and to stay tuned for updates!

Yours in the Blessed Hope,

Alistair Huong
Executive Director

P.S. AudioVerse is launching an exciting, new website called Journeys Unscripted that will feature powerful personal testimonies as an outreach tool to better reach the non-Adventist community. Alongside the new website will be a line of sharing tracts (like GLOW tracts) based on the stories featured there, designed to be a piece of sharing literature and a way to tell others about the new website. Your support is needed, not just financially but to spread the word about this new website! For your gift of at least $25, we will send you a pack of the new sharing tracts (along with other gifts at greater amounts). Just note “Journeys Unscripted” in your check memo line or the comment box on our donate page to ensure that your gift is applied to this project and that you will receive the new tracts! Thank you for your partnership!

Update! (8/17/2017): We have reached our goal! Thank you to everyone who helped us reach our goal for this project in such a short time! If you would still like to donate and to receive the outreach gifts mentioned in this article, we are more than happy to send them to you. Just remember to note "Journeys Unscripted" with your donation, and we will make sure you get your gifts. Because this project is now fully funded, additional funds received will be allocated to other needy projects of the ministry. Thank you for helping AudioVerse reach many more souls for the Kingdom!

AudioVerse | PO Box 2288 | Collegedale | TN | 37315