40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Fueling the Mission: Supporting 1517 to Proclaim the Gospel

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

Support 1517 This Giving Tuesday This is Caleb Keith, director of the 1517 Podcast Network. Today, as many of you may know, is Giving Tuesday. On this special day, I have a question for you: Does this podcast bring Jesus and His Gospel of peace into your life on a regular basis? At 1517, our mission—and the mission of the 1517 Podcast Network—is to declare and defend the Good News that we are forgiven and free through the death and resurrection of Christ alone. Because of Jesus, God has made peace with you and continues to actively give you His peace. You can give by visiting 1517.org or by following the link in the show notes.

Well, hello, everybody listening to their 1517 podcasts. Your feed has been hijacked. This is not your regularly scheduled podcast, no matter which one you're listening to this week. This is a special giving episode, generosity episode recorded by myself, Caleb Keith, director of the 1517 Podcast Network with some guests from across our podcast network, including Chad Bird. How you doing, Chad? Good, good. Good to be here. And Price is with us. What's up?

And our executive director, Scott Keith. How you doing? I'm good. I am the only person here without an exegetical podcast on the network. So you guys all know the bible and i'm not quite sure what i know i'm a student i study under dan are you sunny i heard dan who taught you the new testament dan damn it yeah so but today um is cyber monday to give people uh an inside look here and tomorrow is the day that you can cleanse all of your shopping sins your black friday aggression your cyber monday uh gluttony and you can cleanse all that by giving your money to various charities tomorrow on a new secular uh thanksgiving

extension called giving tuesday which 1517 has uh used as part of a end of your giving campaign i i mean i think for like six years i think we've oh we've been doing it longer than that we've just been more successful at it for six years. Yeah. Six years. So we we've hopped on this giving Tuesday bandwagon, uh, mostly because it is a time when people are thinking about giving, uh, the, the Tuesday aspect, uh, is a take it or leave it. But certainly the end of the year is when philanthropy, uh, increases, people have to, uh, sort out their taxes before the new year rolls over and any of that implication. And so we hop along that. But outside of this sort of secular, I'm going to say, cleansing that people do to do this, whether it's for your taxes or

to counteract your selfish spending, giving is an essential part of what keeps nonprofits like 1517 going. And more historically for the church has always been a big piece of how churches stay open. Churches and the gospel are not a product that can be put on a shelf and purchased and marketed, or it's not part of the free market. The gospel isn't part of the free market, they would say. And so it's always had to be supported by those hearers and receivers of gospel. We have stories throughout the New Testament of this, with the apostles and with Paul, of people's ministry having to be supported or churches having to come together to fund various things or even support one another and things like that, members and body of the church.

But this is extremely important to an American Christianity because there is no state support for religion. And that's probably more and more common across the world, especially for Orthodox Christianity. And so it's an essential piece of every Christian ministry. Any Christian ministry that you as a listener have been a part of, whether that's your church or other sort of extra things like 1517, those have been supported by donors, by people who have benefited by that in order to keep it going. And so 1517 is in need of your support this Tuesday. This is Giving Tuesday, we have $150,000 match today, and then we have another $300,000 goal after today heading into the end of the year. And so if you have benefited from that, I do ask that you consider

giving today and then sort of enjoy some more of this conversation as we move forward. So I guess the question is, that kind of hits in my mind when an organization that is so focused on the freedom of the gospel and the free nature of the gospel and earning is then you sort of ask people to give now to do something or to sort of earn or to merit 1517's existence maybe i just got your phrase that how do you how do you you know like balance that this is a free product and that it's something that you're not really it's the gospel it's not a product that we are putting up for sale in order to all profit off of but then we still have to ask people for money what's the sort of balance there or what's the goal uh well we could the funny thing is is

that i think we produce um products that are quality enough that we could sort of maybe go down the road of either model um of saying okay we have certain things that we produce say like the academies or um even certain of the the podcast um that you could you could do on a subscriber model and you know who we don't really we don't we didn't really build 1517 on that model so we don't know exactly what kind of support we could get that way um but from the beginning we've tried not to do that because we know that we want this message of the gospel to go out to so to as many people as possible which would used to be part of our old um mission statement and not all of those people can afford to support it or at least they can't afford to support at a

level which would keep it keep the organization going in a way that it can do what it's doing and so the model has always been to do everything we can for free with the exception of the conferences and the books do everything that we can for free and then ask those who do have the means to support the mission and the ministry to do so financially um this sort of allows those that can help to various degrees and some people can help a little and some people can help a very lot um but some people can't really help much you know they can't give that much at all but it still gives them access to the resources and to the message of the gospel through 1517's ministries Yeah, I think it's safe to say that this stuff, everything has to be paid for one way or another.

And so since the goal is to never have money or what place you're in in your life or what part of the world you're in, in the case of 1517, reaching people in very impoverished countries and stuff, perhaps that really can't afford to support it, we never want to have some kind of barrier for anyone to hear the gospel. That would, I think, would be opposed to sort of everything that we sort of believe the gospel is. However, it's not the amount of materials that 1517 produced. There's no way for this to be sort of done on a strictly like volunteer basis or anything like that. You have a lot of people having to put in a lot of work to create these things. uh the the things themselves cost money to make uh and then people uh devoting you know a lot of full-time uh jobs to to doing these things and so uh so you're stuck in this situation where like of course it'd be great if it was just all free to produce and free to consume but it's not free

to produce it is free to consume and that's and that's the way we decided to do it uh because that is what is in step i think with what we we believe about the gospel and so uh what what you're basically doing is you're coming to this like very honestly and practically and just saying that there are bills that have to be paid. There are bills that are due, that sort of thing. And since we don't sell anything, and even the things that we do sell, we take a loss on. I mean, Scott said, you know, hey, you know, you go to a conference, it costs you a little bit. You buy a book, it costs you a little bit. I'd like to tell you that neither of those things make us any money. Oh, yeah. I shouldn't have implied that.

We take a loss on both of those things. And so that's why our books are cheap and why conference tickets are cheap. And there's nothing that we do that make a profit. it. And so this means that we rely on people being generous and saying, I think that what you're doing should continue to be done. I think it's valuable. I think it needs to be in the world and that if you're one of those people who think that you are able to support it, then we would ask that you do that for the sake of us being able to continue to do it, for the sake of people all over the world, being able to hear it, read it, consume it, all of those reasons. And this is not a foreign concept, I don't think, to anyone when you just get real practical with it. In the scriptures, you have this, like ministry has to be supported. But then also in your everyday

lives, you know what this is like. 1517 gets bills the way that anyone else gets bills. And none of the tools that we use to produce this stuff, none of those people are donating. They're not donating their services. They're not saying, oh, you don't need to pay bills like everyone else because you're doing gospel work. They don't do that at all. And so we need support. And we're very, very grateful, of course, to those who do that and have done that over the years and have been doing that over the years. And we ask that you would please continue to do that. And I don't know if you know, but this has also been a rough time for nonprofits because, you know, economically, things have not been great. You're even things like inflation, inflation affects 15, 17, the way it affects everyone else. And so it's yeah, it's it's it's a very practical thing where you say I'd affect us a little more because of scale. not like yeah it affects you more personally because you're talking about buying food and

for your family and stuff like that so i don't mean to apply qualitatively i mean quantitatively the scale is is bigger and so we we really do feel it in in multiple areas yeah yeah so it's so it's it's it's kind of it's kind of simple like that i think uh where you're like hey uh it's not like why does 1517 need a support it's real practical uh if you sit down and think about it for a second just a few days ago i was having a conversation with a couple of guys who are supporters of 1517 and uh they they experienced frustration simply because they're they're always looking for for organizations to support uh and the same time they expressed gratitude because they had found 1517 and the reason they were they were happy that they had found us and could

support us is because well i mean we all know this that you know the the most important things in life uh are as christians we know are the gospel and the grace and the forgiveness we have in christ and so to be able to support that which is not really a product but a gift is something they were they were excited about so anything that we can do uh to to further that as individuals or as the organization or people that support us we're we're furthering that which is of ultimate importance so when i i to speak personally you know once you once you get what the gospel truly is and the free gift that we have there then it's it's definitely worth supporting but not only so that you can continue to hear it but that so that others can continue to hear it as well and uh yeah

thanks be to god for the donors we have and for anyone else who wants to to join up and help us to continue to continue to do that yeah as an organization it means that you know like people probably sometimes wonder and i think giving them as much of an inside look as you can is is beneficial to you know what does the money uh go to well it's like any organization you have to have funds in order to have employees and so for us there's a very vocational aspect of this which is in some ways that is going to you know pay people for that labor that they they do and that it is valuable that if you enjoy things like the podcast or the videos or the conference or you've read a book or you've shared this that there is not just a person but you know a very

serious handful of people behind that who make that possible at all and you know you want them and their family to be taken care of so that they can be set aside to do this work, right? So that's the kind of thing here is, you know, could you do some of what 1517 does at a smaller scale with all volunteers? Well, sure. I mean, a lot of us did start podcasts unpaid or something like this, right? But what you do at a scale that reaches more people that has a certain level of quality is you then have to say, we're going to set people apart to do this. We're going to set them to the to do this and so that's what 1517 in many ways is we're an organization we're a think tank who has people that we set aside to create this content and so part of that is is to take care

of them and then another is you need funds on hand and on deck in order to be creative and to keep doing what you're doing right so so part of it is you keep things like 40 minutes thinking fellows going as they are, because it's sort of fundamental and it's part of people's days and week and things like that. But you also want to take those people that you've set aside who are creative, who are well-read, who are smart, who have these various talents that make the organization and give them the freedom to do more, to create a new product, to find another way or another audience for proclaiming the gospel to. And so as we come into 2025, I can think of several new ways where it's taking things that we already do and we're looking to

expand that. Or there have been good ideas from these staff, these people set aside to proclaim the gospel here at 1517. And that requires funding in order to see those visions come to life to see new audiences be approached. And so, for instance, if you're listening to this podcast, a big push for 2025 and for the fundraising we will do next year is to move more content onto video, specifically existing podcast content, because there's a whole audience over there who has been discovering podcasts purely through the algorithms and the discovery methods that are available on video and we think we should be a part of that and that the the content that 1517 has uh should get thrown in front of that audience as well um and so there's there's

going to be a push to do that and there's going to be a push to reach other audiences through new formats and so part of it allows us as an organization to stay nimble as well right the the continual need i've had i've had people ask who don't always understand the giving model why is there a continual need for giving when will you guys when do you stop asking for money and it's if this organization is going to continue to be nimble to continue to create new content and continue to have people who are set apart to do this it's it is perpetual in the sense that until our doors our theoretical doors close um this can't be done without financial support yeah and And I think one of the things you said there, Caleb, too, is important that I know a lot of people connect to 1517 in different ways and maybe even through different people.

And so, like, I know I've had this happen where people have asked, you know, well, how can I support you? I'm sure Chad's had that or Scott's had that. And the answer is always the same where it's, well, you support 1517 and that's how you support me because whatever it is that I'm doing or Chad's doing or Scott or you are doing is we can't do by ourselves. And so when you support 1517, you do then support the thing that is the foundation that all this stuff is built on, right? And so, you know, if you want to support, if there's any particular thing that you just love about 1517, you're like, I want to give to that. I would encourage you just to give to 1517 because there's probably a lot more that goes into that, a lot more people involved in that thing than you would think. and that's what makes that thing accessible to you and great and so the answer to

whatever I love Chad Bird or I love Scott Keith I really want to make sure that he's got his electric bill paid I don't want him to freeze to death this winter well then support 1517 and checks to P.O. Bot

support 1517 that's how that works man that's how that works if you don't like me but you love my kid You need to send me money, you know, because that's and that's how it is that 1517 is the parent in that analogy. And they're going to make sure that the rest of that stuff is taken care of. And so whatever, whatever thing it is that you love about 1517, the way to support that thing is to support 1517. I was thinking, too, as you were talking, Caleb, that people, I think a lot of people don't really know sort of the behind the scenes, how many people work for 1517, you know, what it takes to do things. I think they see, you know, the faces on YouTube, they hear the voices on podcasts and kind of don't really even understand, like even on the blog side, what it takes as far as number of contributors to get the number of articles that we have every week and a number of eyes on those articles to make sure that, you know, they're best that they can be. And the art that goes into it and, you know, what goes into making sure that it can be heard as well as read. And you take that and you extrapolate it out to everything. You know, it ends up being a lot of people, a lot of whom aren't the ones that you hear or the ones that you ever see, really, including people doing graphic design and videography and photography and somebody to manage those people.

And even at that, I'd say we have a very low administrative overhead for an organization of our size. I think it's the latest number. I think it's down around like 12% of the overall budget, maybe as high as 13 or 14 of the overall budget. I don't remember Erica's thing that she just did on the donor thing, but it was very low compared to other nonprofits. And part of that's because like a couple of our our top level administrators don't just do administration um they do other things too like and i'm the executive director but i host three podcasts currently and write articles and try to write books and actively speak and do those kind of things too as well as dan um we only have one person uh sort of on the administrative side that really doesn't do that

much, but he also manages the marketing department. And it's even funny to call that marketing because we're not selling stuff. We're kind of marketing the gospel. And so what their job is, is to find people who haven't heard this message of the gospel yet and try to get them to come to one of the 1517 resources to hear the gospel. Marketing is a weird phrase for them because it's not like we're making cars and we're having them make commercials so that we can sell more cars you're actually you're out here marketing free stuff yeah well we're marketing a message yeah that's one of the things that makes it um kind of strange to raise money sometimes too i would say that it's i guess i've never done it but i would suppose it's easier to raise money for

sort of digging wells and poor portions of the world or like um you know cleaning up the environment or something like that that seems a little more tangible a little more hands-on than what we do because what we are, we're a message. You know, at the end of the day, that's what we are. That's, um, and we're the message of the gospel. And so on the marketing side, we try to find people who haven't heard the gospel on sort of the video production side. We try to make it so that the videos are good enough that they're not distracting from the message of the gospel that you're not going, Oh, I can't hear it. I can't see it. That background's awful. The thing in the corner is really distracting me. I wish it wasn't there. It's all I can focus on.

Try to sort of get people that are good at that so that none of that exists. I mean, sometimes when I talk to people and I say thought goes into every detail of that, or at least we try to, they're kind of blown away. I remember a conversation I had years ago with our creative director, who was one of our first sort of outside the original founding group employees that we hired about books. and how important it was that I thought how important it was that our books, not just from the theological or the message side, were pointing in the same direction, the defense and proclamation of the gospel, but that even down to the way they were presented visually

and the way that the typesetting and the print was easy to follow so that it wasn't distracting. We had conversations about all of this. And then when you try to enact that, That all takes people, which means you're sort of supporting, supporting people, um, which weighs on my mind all the time. And then that requires raising money essentially so that those people can do their work. And what you, the part of that, that people see, you know, it's like, is what Chad does. You know, when he gets on, on camera and does and hosts one of his many projects or writes a book, you, that's the part that people see.

but they don't see all the stuff kind of behind that um even the people that like help edit the little video shorts and stuff like that yeah i was gonna say i mean just take that one example i have daily videos that come out but i'm just recording the videos i'm not editing the videos i'm not posting the videos all of that's taken care of by two of our other employees and same with it with the other podcasts i mean just what i do my online activity there's half a dozen to 10 people who are behind the scenes working on these various aspects of just what I do that make it make it all possible I think it's worth mentioning too I mean the the impact that this is that this is having that people don't always realize and we had a message the other day from

a guy overseas who had been an atheist for years but had begun to listen to one of our podcasts and the next thing you know I think much to his chagrin he was actually reading the bible and was considering going back to church. And all of this was possible only because of the podcast. But the podcast was only possible not just because of those who were on it, but everybody behind the scenes, the entire organization. And that's just one example among countless examples of people who are in the church that are benefiting from it,

people who are kind of maybe on the edge who are benefiting from it, as well as those who were trapped in the darkness of atheism who are hearing the gospel and being brought over into into the faith so the impact is is definitely there and it's not just in the united states it's it's worldwide yeah well scott you were talking about the the maybe a little easier to ask for support for something tangible and and proclamation isn't tangible until it is uh and until until you have a conversation with a person and you realize what has happened through that proclamation. And we have loads and loads of those stories. And so the actual act of like, we're going to proclaim this message out

maybe is not as tangible as some other things. But when you see people come to faith, when you see people come back to the church and stuff, that stuff is very tangible. In fact, it's very flesh and blood and uh and i can assure you uh that that is happening over and over and over and over again through the through the work of 1517 uh in the in the most tangible way uh where it's where it's actual people yeah i mean we you know it's it's definitely um one of the goals of you know to give people uh some insight to we're using we've been using new technology recently to record the podcast uh it's something that costs more money than the previous method that we used uh every year but it's something also that we've now been able to use to um video sessions with

donors uh and that we can do with to touch people or to capture some of these stories right so we will hear anecdotes of this and i do think it'd be good for more of the supporters more of the listeners the podcast to be able to have access to this too because you know we we get to hear about whole families, for instance, that get baptized after being exposed to the gospel and then finding a church, finding a home where the gospel is preached regularly to them and they can receive the sacraments and then bringing their whole families to the faith. And that's a tale as old as the church, right? That is a huge portion of the epistles and the story of the post-resurrection church is the gospel going and bringing people together, bringing people to be

baptized, bringing people into the church to where Christ has promised to be present. And I think we get to see that that truly does happen. And so coming into 2025, more of you will get to hear some of those stories, I think, as well, too, in our effort to show that it is tangible, that it is uh flesh and blood uh and and the same thing goes for marketing too i get you know maybe there's concerns about spending money on marketing but when you're doing this content right one of the benefits of of us not being a brick and mortar church building um right is that the audience to whom we can try to capture and and bring in to hear that message is wide and you make things look good not um because you have pride in the message because the gospel deserves to look uh

good because like chad said it's it's a thing of first importance and so i think there's a aspect in which honoring that message with doing your best work uh is necessary but also because that's how you find that next audience is to to um make it something worth clicking on to have titles or topics that are interesting and are interesting to more than just christians like you said chad there's somebody who these titles are intriguing enough to get somebody who's been out of the faith for years to at least give it a go and see what it is and so it's just continuing to do that i think is what some of the support goes is that we are always searching for that next audience, for that next group of people who are in need of the word. And there's a lot of work

that goes into that. And we're thankful to be freed up to do that. Because I think that's, for me, the huge part of this is when people give, they are freeing other people up to do that. So, you know, giving comes from your own sort of sweat and blood at work, right? The money doesn't just pop up out of the ether. This is people sacrificing a portion of their time and effort every year. Stuff that, like Dan said, when the economy is hard, it's probably a tough decision to make because I know that each and every one of your families could use it in another way. And when you do that, I'm thankful and I'm sure all of us here at 1517 are thankful because it goes to free somebody up to a different labor, which is the labor of getting this message of

gospel out to as many people as possible yeah so so people want to want to jump on board caleb what do they got to do 1517.org donate our page has uh our giving page today this is giving tuesday we if you're listening to the day that we hijacked the feeds has been taken over by that so your gift if you give today will be matched uh which is always a great thing it's sort of a double effect of giving. Um, and I think a very timely thing for people too, who are considering giving at the end of the year. And then if you are listening to this a little bit later, um, do not fret. We have a campaign that is going through the end of the year. We do have, that is a real need to raise another $300,000 after giving Tuesday through the end of December. Um, and so if you, if you missed

Giving Tuesday, you can still donate. Again, that's 1517.org slash donate. And there are links in the show notes, which is the description of this episode. There you can also if you just want to make your way to 1517, there's a donate button there. Like I said, those pages will be kind of taken over and look different than they do normally through the year. There's a bit of a progress bar that you can keep track of to there as we as we tidy things up. And yeah, we appreciate your consideration and your support awesome yeah get out there and do it guys let's let's uh let's get it funded well let me just say this um if you haven't donated before we'd really like to ask you to consider donating now there's really not a better time with the matching uh gift portion

of that if you are a current donor i think it's important for us to ask to if you could prayerfully consider to advance in your ability to give to see if you can increase that donation this year or next year, to be honest with you. That's one of the things that we'll be sending people out to discuss with donors in 2025. And maybe consider that if you really benefit from what we do, or if you'd like to see what we do in the proclamation of the gospel through the ministry of 1517, reach people who maybe can't afford to do that. Think about helping in that way too. There's also people on staff now who are available to talk to you if you have questions about giving, if there is a particular interest or project that you would like to support or you

think needs support or you have questions about why it needs support and things like that. So we now have that. You can reach out to us via the contact page at 1517. So it's just at the bottom footer of every webpage. And if you have questions about giving, there are people who are happy to talk to you about our need and about what happens with your gifts. All right, guys. Well, thank you for listening to this hijacked episode of whatever your favorite podcast is. I think we hit at least a third of the shows on the network with the various hosts. So that is good. If you enjoyed this episode, and maybe these aren't your usual hosts, maybe consider subscribing to some more shows on the 1517 Podcast Network.

You can go to 1517.org slash podcasts to see all of those shows that we produce and that we partner with. Thank you for listening. Enjoy your next episode. We'll catch you next time. Bye.