BibleProject - Looking Back at 2025 and Ahead to 2026

Episode Date: December 29, 2025

In our next-to-last episode of 2025, Tim, Jon, and BibleProject CEO, Steve Atkinson, review all the resources we released this year, while reflecting on the bigger worldwide movement of people reading the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. The guys then share about some of what’s coming up next for BibleProject in 2026.TIMESTAMPSGratitude for Our Mission (0:00-4:08)New “One Story That Leads to Jesus” Reading Plan (4:08-9:01)A Year Studying Themes From Exodus (9:01-16:15)How the Bible Was Formed and the Deuterocanon / Apocrypha (16:15-17:53)The Bigger Movement of Reading the Bible as One Story (17:53-27:34)2025 Classroom Releases (27:34-30:02)2025 Updates to the BibleProject App (30:02-31:58)Ten Years of the BibleProject Podcast (31:58-33:09)What Are We Releasing in 2026? (33:09-38:38)Gratitude for Our Volunteers, Prayer Team, and Patrons (38:38-45:01)OFFICIAL EPISODE TRANSCRIPTView this episode’s official transcript.REFERENCED RESOURCESSubscribe to the “One Story That Leads to Jesus” annual reading plan on The Bible App by YouVersion.Check out our 2025 collections of resources! Each has a video, podcast series, scholar-written guide, reading plan, and group study.The MountainThe Exodus WayRedemptionThe WildernessListen to the 2025 podcast series How the Bible Was Formed.Watch the 2025 overview video series on The Deuterocanon / Apocrypha.Listen to the 2025 Advent podcast series.Check out OneStory, a creative nonprofit that develops free Bible studies, lessons, and homeschool curricula—all featuring BibleProject resources.See how Streetlights has localized BibleProject videos for their audience.Watch or listen to the final installment of our Genesis Classroom series, Joseph. Also check out the second installment of the Gospel of Matthew Classroom series, The Messianic Torah, which focuses on the Sermon on the Mount.Download the BibleProject App from the iOS App Store or Android Google Play Store.SHOW MUSICBibleProject theme song by TENTS SHOW CREDITSProduction of today’s episode is by Lindsey Ponder, producer, and Cooper Peltz, managing producer. Tyler Bailey is our supervising engineer, who also edited today’s episode and provided the sound design and mix. JB Witty writes the show notes. Our host and creative director is Jon Collins, and our lead scholar is Tim Mackie. Special thanks to our guest, Steve Atkinson.Powered and distributed by Simplecast. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey, Tim. Hey, John. Hi. Hello, Steve. Hello, John. Hello, Tim. Steve. Here we are.

Great to have you here. It must be the end of the year. Yes, it is. That's right. Once again, giving the people what they want. A little bit of Steve. That's right. That's right.

Steve, this is the fifth time you've come and joined us at the end of the year. Yeah. To do this has become quite a tradition. It's what I'm living for, John. Right here, man. I just, I work out all year, trying to get ready for this moment. It's on the list of holiday events that you look forward to. I do.

Actually, I do. I look forward to this as part of our end of the year. No, I do too. I open up presents on Christmas morning, but what I really am excited for is the end of the year drop. I'm right there with you. I love it. Okay. So what we want to do is just reflect on the year and just celebrate all of you who are listening, who've been a part of this, and celebrate what we've gotten to do.

together. Yeah. Because there's so many rad things that have happened. So many. And I mean, we got to make and release a lot of great content

in media. But also, just some really beautiful stories have emerged about what God's doing in the lives of people through the spirit activating scripture

and pointing people to Jesus. But we get to be a part of it because we're making stuff about the Bible and we get to hear all these cool stories. We want to share some of those

too. Yeah, can we start with a patron comment? Sure. Yeah. I get patron comments that will several of us do every morning. There's an email that comes in around 9 a.m. And there's usually 20 or 25 patron comments. And one that came in earlier this year just really jumped out to me because I felt like it's like a composite. Natalie is who sent it in and it captures what we hear from so many people. But this was the way she framed it. I had reached a point where picking up the Bible, felt like picking up a brick. It was so foreign and unapproachable to me. I always had the desire to read the whole Bible, but never knew how. Through the Bible project, God healed my relationship with His Word and gave me a new taste and desire for it. Your videos and podcasts have helped me

understand it and see it in a completely different way now. The hardest thing for me was always reading the Old Testament. But through the podcast series on the Torah, I finished it for the first time, in my 24 years of life. Thank you. Well, thank you, Natalie. Yeah. So cool. Way to go.

Yeah. It's no small feat to read through the Old Testament. What I love about Natalie's story is it's similar to my story. It's like I think there is what I've experienced is there people have a felt need to want to understand this book. And yet trying to do it on your own can be so challenging. Yeah. And the gift for me of being a part of this project is being able to live out our mission statement

where I feel like I'm experiencing the Bible. It's a unified story that leads to Jesus that was so foreign to the tradition and the way that I was raised. Yeah. You know what's funny is our mission statement is to help people and you really like the word help in there. I do.

And I stopped saying it in our outros because of your sentiment right there, it's like, I'm actually experiencing the Bible. Oh, right. And I want to emphasize this, like, we're doing it together. So I just started saying to experience the Bible as Unified Spirit. And you brought up like, the help is important. And it made me wrestle with that and be like, yeah, you're right.

That helps us stay focused. Yeah. But I like what you just said, which is that's how I'm experiencing it too. Yeah. We get to help, but we get to also join in. Oh, that's, you know, we said we had our staff retreat in September. And I remember talking to our team and saying, hey, it is amazing that we get to be a part of something. that is not only helping people out there,

but it's helping us. It's like we're working on something that's working on us. Yes. That is so amazing. 100%. It's really cool. One thing we could then talk about

is the new reading plan that we have. Speaking of reading through the Bible. I think this is a big news. So let's up top talk about it, which is we have a through the Bible reading plan that's been on you version for years. and a lot of people have done it and we have a number of plans

on the U-Version Bible app but then we have one that has been like read through the whole Bible like go for it's the one story reading plan exactly the one story reading plan and I think every week we hear from someone who said I did it and thank you

and that was kind of their entry point into knowing what we're up to that's right because it's a reading plan but has both like commentary and our videos interspersed so you're never just alone with some weird passage. In the book of Jeremiah or Ezekiel,

there's always something there to help you understand and move forward. And the one story reading plan that had been on you version for a long time, and our scholar team just spent almost the entire year, at least half a year. I think more than a year. Yeah. More than a year. Yeah, a number of my colleagues on the scholarship team took it on as a project

to rewrite the whole thing and really beef it up more substantially. So that it's kind of like having a Bible nerd that you're reading the Bible along with helping you through literally every part of every book of the Bible with videos and like short form commentary. So it's a whole new one-story reading plan that's released. I think it's available now. It's up on U-Version. Brand new. If you want to read through the Bible with us, it's awesome. It's fantastic.

And U-Version has, it's a great app, and it allows you, you could actually do it with a group of people. where you can have friends and connect with friends. Yeah, they're sharing and collaborative reading. It's like having an online group that you're reading through the Bible with. That's helpful for me, knowing there's other people going through it. So there's a group of us in the office that have all said, hey, let's do this. It's like, John, a couple years ago, you and I were going to do the sermon on the mount.

The playlist. Weekly playlist. Yeah. One of us completed it. One of us made it. So I guess in a way, we both did it. But it's so encouraging because, you know, It's hard to do by yourself.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think part of why we're excited about it is the podcasts and the videos that we make. The ultimate goal isn't just the people watch a video or listen to a podcast. We really want ourselves and help y'all actually read scripture for yourselves with greater wisdom. And so we're excited about a Bible reading experience that can hopefully help a lot more people. With a scholar in your pocket. A little little pocket scholar. A little Bible nerd in your pocket.

It's funny to me that reading through the Bible in a year has become such a thing. Isn't interesting? Yeah, because a year. Yeah. Why a year? Why a year? I mean, it's great because a year is such a... It's mental.

Yes. It's like we live in years. But dividing the Bible into sections... It's a bit artificial. It's completely artificial. It is. But it's like running a race. It's nice to know when you have a start.

Yes, it's the pace. That's right. That's what it is. I think it just creates some guardrails for people, and it helps them. It's like focuses. But I think when you read it through completely, I think you begin to see, you know, like as Sally Lloyd-Jones says, every story whispers his name. And then when you can read it at a different pace and marinate in it for longer periods of time,

it's helpful. But I think it's fun. I don't, Bible wasn't designed to be read the year, but it's not a bad thing to do it either. Yeah. Yeah. And you will find that on the U-Version Bible app. So if you don't have that, be sure and get it and you can go there. If you don't have the Bible app, I mean, don't they have like a billion downloads now? Wonderful. Yeah. They're over a billion. Yeah. Yeah. One-stop shopping center. And is it true? I think we have a guarantee that if you read through the Bible in a year with us, you will have zero questions afterwards. I think so. That's our Bible Project guarantee. It is. The Bible Project One and Done is what we're calling it.

Oh, wow. That went past my editing overview. I'm just happy and excited. You know, and the thing, too, I would just say to people as encouragement, because in the past you may have done these and you may have done it with other people and you can get two or three days, two or three weeks behind and then just say, give up. I would just say pick up where the rest of the group is. Just feel free to.

100%. Yeah. Just let those go. You can come up, pick up those chapters later. other time, but don't be burdened by it. Allow it to be something that it truly is, which can be life-giving. Yeah. Very cool.

Let's talk about what we released this year. We spent the year going through themes that are connected to the Exodus story in a very important way. Yeah, unique themes, the book of Exodus just kind of like comes into its own, as a book with the Bible. These are unique contributions. that Exodus makes to the storyline of the Bible. So we started with the mountain earlier in 2025.

Yep. You know, Mount Sinai, pretty significant. Yeah. There's mountains before Mount Sinai, and there's mountains after Mount Sinai, but Mount Sinai kind of gives you in the fullest form the meaning of the mountain that makes you both read backwards into Genesis and forwards. So that was cool. And I think actually for the podcast, yeah, it was actually.

After Sermon on the Mount in 2024, we actually started the mountain series to kind of end of the year. And then the video came out at the beginning of this year. And then the podcast ended right as the video came out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was so encouraged by that series. But full confession, when y'all told me you were doing a video on the mountain, I was like, oh, my goodness.

We ran out of ideas. We're running out of topics. Bottom of the bucket. We're not making videos on mountains. Oh, no. But it was in a conversation I had with Hakeem, where he talked about the significance of mountains and it's those places where heaven and earth meet. It's the edges. So we talked about also like where the heavens meet the ocean. It's like why are we drawn to looking up at those

places where those edges meet, the heavens and the earth meet and come together? And then also the challenge to be people of the mountain that then go down into the valley and live there. It's just, I was like, oh my goodness, why did I doubt? It was so good. I really enjoyed. And then we did the Exodus Way, which is taking the idea of liberation out of slavery that happens in Exodus and looking that as a theme about really what's happening with all creation. The way out of slavery, the way through the wilderness. And the way in. And the way in to the promised land, to the garden. Yeah, that was satisfying one of the fun project to work on and develop.

But also, that was a video that was on one of the first lists that I brought to you back in 2013. Mountain wasn't on that list. Mountain was not, but Exodus pattern was. I think just I'd have a fondness for how that works. And so it was really fun to finally see that come to fruition. That's great. Video, great podcast series. Love what the studio did.

The kind of the board game. The doodle deluxe is what they called that style. It was so good. The board game aesthetic? Yeah. Because I just see that in my own life. Yeah. And how that over and over again.

Yeah. It's just beautiful. Yeah. Okay. And then we did redemption. Redemption. The theme of redemption. That was heavy.

And then it was kind of heavy video. Yeah. I mean, we're talking about life and death and the meaning of the universe. Yeah. And the character of God. Like, who is God towards pretty... And the death of Jesus. Ruined creation.

And the meaning. meaning of Jesus' death. Yeah, really substantial themes. It was heavy, but it was also there's this element of hope that just was so powerful. Yeah. Yeah. To me, it felt like it just permeated that video and that picture of home and what that can look like. Yeah. The podcast series was amazing. I've recommended it to so many people because, again, it was just such a reframing for me and the tradition that I was raised in and then listening. to it. And when you talked about the repo man, it was like, oh my goodness, I never, I loved it. It was so helpful. Yes. Just realizing repo men, they've got a bad image. But they're really

good people because they're restoring, taking, and putting things back where they belong. Yeah, it's a branding issue for the repo man. But we need to, anyway, it was really powerful. So thank you, guys. That was a great series. That was a great example where I came in thinking I understood what it was. I wanted to share with John and talk through. And it was a much deeper rediscovery and new discovery, so much so that we even shifted the fundamental definition of redemption. In my mind, it was release of a slave from slavery, but that's only one way. It's really about God reclaiming as his own something that has wrongfully left God's possession. And that's the essence of the idea. And slavery is

one way you can go out of God's possession. But, you know, that's sticky. It stuck with me. And it's really became helpful frame to view the whole story of the Bible. Super cool. That was good. And John, you kept pushing. You kept asking the same question over and over again.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. My job is quite simple sometimes. Just keep asking the same question over and over again. You just go full three-year-old. Why? Why? Yeah. I love it.

Yeah, don't let everyone know how simple my job is. You know, what I love is the number of people. that will say to me, oh, love the podcast. I don't know how those guys do it. They talk as though it's unscripted. And I'm like, well, it is. You know why it sounds that way? It is.

Yes. I tell people it's unscripted, but it's highly edited. Yeah. So, lastly, we did the wilderness. And for me, actually, maybe because it's the freshest. But I think also because it's so surprising to me in many ways, it became my favorite theme of the year. Why is that?

You know, it feels trite and simplistic to talk about how God could take a bad thing and make it good. And I thought that's kind of a sub-theme we were talking about in the wilderness. But when we started talking about how God's preparing us for garden life and we can prepare in the garden,

like that's a possibility, but that actually might be problematic for us. It actually might be harder. A harder way to learn. Yeah. When there's so much abundance, we actually can't learn how to be the kind of people who trust in God's word. And so God will reclaim this unfortunate tragedy of being in the wilderness as saying, well, this will be the training ground now. So you can be garden people.

So the wilderness is a place that makes us ready. It felt really significant to me. Yeah. Yes. I think where it pushed me was in like the big philosophical questions about the meaning of non-existence which is whatever

like you force me to make all that much more clear and practical and not talk about it all the time which is great but I have every project we do I learn because of just sitting and talking for hours I just yeah I have so many great learning memories from that podcast too.

Yeah. It was great, man. Speaking of learning, one of the podcasts I learned a bunch on was how the Bible is formed. Yes. That was so good. That's right. That was a little mini series. A little mini series in the middle of the year.

And why did we do that little mini series in the middle of the year? Yes, because we wanted to create a video series in read scripture style that we did for the read through the Bible for the in-betweeners. the books that are part of the Catholic Doudro canon or the Protestant Apocrypha These are books that have always been a part of the wider library of the Christian scripture collection and they've fallen out of use in some Protestant traditions in the last 500 years.

We wanted to help course correct on that and introduce our audience to these really amazing Second Temple Jewish texts. So we released a series of videos on those that are on our website And in the app. And on new version. And on new version.

And then we wanted, yeah, to provide kind of a rationale, which was a crash course in the making of the Bible, specifically focusing on where did these wider, where did the wider library of texts around the Bible come from and so on. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. Super encouraging. And then finish the year with Advent. Yeah. The four Advent words.

Yes. Yeah. That was fun too. It was fun. I really enjoyed working on this. Yeah. I guess the main theme is that we're enjoying making all this stuff. but that we're also like learning constantly ourselves and we as you say we are experiencing

the Bible as a unified story the leads of Jesus as we make the stuff that we helps other people do the same yeah it's wild to think all this stuff we get to create however when we think about what we're doing it's not just about what we get to do we do also love to think about we don't have the right language for this, but sometimes we call it a bigger movement. What we're doing is we're saying, let's read the Bible as unified story leads to Jesus. And then this project is us doing it in our way, like with our voice and personality and our creative way of doing that. But that's just one expression of reading the Bible as unified story leads to Jesus. The bigger thing, this idea of reading the Bible as one story, is way bigger than this project. And when people get excited about

what we're doing, we kind of have to remember what they're really getting excited about is the Bible and that it's one story. Yeah. Yeah. And that's unlocking. Yeah. And I think our most enduring legacy as a project isn't going to be all these animations. I think one day, you know, decades from now, they're just not going to be as useful. There'll be something else. But I hope our enduring legacy is that we've brought more language and culture around. on this idea of reading the Bible this way, and people are starting to do it in their own way, in their own communities,

and it becomes a thing much bigger than us, this idea of the Bible's one story. It already is much bigger than us because it's older than us. Yeah. And way more international and cross-cultural than us. So there's lots of cool things brewing that we've gotten to witness or hear about

or link arms with. Yeah. We were just together as a staff and someone from our team made a comment that was really cool about her church. Yeah, so Nita lives in Virginia and was talking about her church is doing a series, The Exodus Way.

And it was really all of the resources we had from when we released the Exodus Way and they were using it. When you said using our resources, like they were using it. They built it like a reading plan and there was, it's like they're going through a series as a church that was focusing on the way out, the way through, the way in. And it was all this stuff.

And the thing that was so exciting is it wasn't about us. It's about the Bible. There was no mention of a Bible project. So great. I actually got kind of teary-eyed because I thought that's what we've longed for. This idea of people reading the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. It isn't about the Bible project. We've talked internally about this idea of stewarding our moment and then disappearing.

and that that is this idea of the enduring long-lasting legacy is we could see this huge shift on how people make the Bible. Yeah, that a church could use similar language or use the language we were kind of inviting us all to think about Exodus way and the three parts. And to not feel like, hey, that's ours. And if you're going to use it, like credit us. But actually, how cool is it?

It felt like this moment of like it's working. Like the idea is getting in, underneath, and people are embracing it as their own. You know, for people in that church community, they don't hear their leaders saying, here's something that I learned from this thing that's made by these guys who live on the West Coast and it's like people in that church

are hearing their pastoral leaders present it. Like, this is what we're learning, how we're reading the Bible. They're learning from their teachers in their community that they know. And that's how Bible reading has always worked in the history of the Jesus movement. It's about communities of learning in local places. That's so vital to how Scripture does its most powerful work.

It can do powerful work if you're alone in a hotel room, you know, discover the Gideon's Bible. But it's even more powerful when it's a part of a learning community in local church. That's the good stuff right there. And so that's what it is. Every time I read these comments from patrons and it says, you know, I love Bible Project. It's like, I just want to lose the project part of that off of there because it isn't about us.

And Mike, a guy on our team that heads up what we call strategic relationships, he mentioned to me just the other day that his team has identified over 2,000 churches that actually have our content on their website. And so it's like my hope is that just more and more people are beginning to read and are using this content in their own context. Yeah. Yeah, it's wonderful. Another really cool story is two women, Nicole and Amber,

began to write some kids curriculum using homeschool-type curriculum based around really the paradigm. And it was really good. And they then started to just, in earnest, write more and more of this kid's curriculum. And this was happening, and I didn't really know what was going on. And then Amber came and kind of shared what she was doing and this map that she made of... Like a little one-page treasure map. Yeah, of how the Old Testament works.

And what you've called the melody before, she was kind of tracing that idea and how all these stories were connected. It was just a beautiful way to think about the Bible, and it was so much seeing the Bible was one story. But doing it a way that kids could really, like, grasp. It's so cool. And I would love it if they just were like able to keep going. They understand homeschool, but also they have a vision that's bigger than homeschool. They're trying to create curriculum that like the whole family gets developed, you know, gets disciples by reading the Bible together.

But they understand homeschool curriculum. So over the years, so many people have reached out saying, you guys should make kids curriculum. And we've just said that's. Yeah, it's not us. That's not us. That's not what we do. But they get it.

They do. And so people recently, since having met Amber, when they reach out, I'll just send them the link to her website, one storyfamily.org. And these aren't folks that are homeschooling. They're just saying, I want something to go through with my kids. Do you guys have anything? It's like, no, but here we go. And a couple of responses, I've got super encouraged by what they've been able to do with their kids with her resources. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, and it would warm my heart if they got some gifts at the end of the year from people who are like, oh, I believe in that. Yeah. I can support this. Because what they're doing is the same thing we're doing is everything's free, and they just want to, like, give it out for free. She's great. Yeah. Cool.

One of the things that encouraged me this year, it was Melanie from our global team, sharing about some stuff. And she did it in a way where she was sharing with the entire staff. And so my assumption is it would surprise our audience as much as it surprised our staff. But she went through a list of things, and she said, she emailed me the list this morning. And this list said, would it surprise you to learn that a library in Rwanda, one of the largest theological libraries in East Africa, host Kenya Rwanda videos that our team has made? But it surprised you to learn that seminary schools and theology conferences across Pakistan integrate videos into their curriculum and gatherings. pastors from desert, rural, and city communities gather to watch and study them together.

Would it surprise you to learn that a coffee shop in Bulgaria becomes a weekly gathering spot for Bible project discussions? What it's surprise you to learn that our Chinese content is available in mainland China through the We Devote app? What it's surprise you to learn that YWAM school in the Ukraine includes our videos in its curriculum? And the list goes on and on a... Here's a fun one. Would it surprise you to learn that a 15-year-old Norway's Lutheran Church Confirmation program watches our videos? So encouraging to see over and over again. So just thank you to our patron community that allows us to just give all this stuff away and push it out there.

We're not having to sit and think about licensing agreements or any of that. It's just we can scatter the seed everywhere, whether it's one story or it's folks all over the world as our global team gets these. We're over 55 languages, streetlights, localizing our videos to their audience. And just all of that that you have made possible that we can just give it away. and so exciting to see and so encouraging. Yeah. I am regularly at a loss for words when I sit back and think about the scope of where all this is gone.

And I think it's just a testament to when who Jesus really is is on full display through Scripture and people are encountering Jesus the way scripture really does, on its own terms, present him. It's flabbergasting. It's like the most beautiful thing in the world. And it just is its own, I don't know, it's its own momentum. And I feel like that's what we're getting to get a front seat to witness for this season of the project.

And it's just such a great privilege. And it is because of the generosity of all of the thousands of people who have come around this project. thanks to be to God for that. It is so cool. So cool. A couple of things that have been going on that maybe people aren't aware of. We have classroom classes.

Yeah, there's more. There's more. And we released two classes this year. One on the story of Joseph. Joseph and his brothers. Oh, my gosh. So good. So good.

That wraps up a whole... six classes on the book of Genesis. Yeah, you taught through all of Genesis. So rich. Yeah. So rich. One of the great privileges of my middle-aged adult years was just sit in Genesis for years crawling through with students. Yeah.

Lots of people are taking it and finding it so valuable. Yeah. And also, we are beginning a long multi-class series through the Gospel of Matthew. We thought we'd take the first book of the Old Testament, and then we're starting to release what will eventually be seven classes on the book of Matthew. So class number two came out, which is on Matthew 5 through 7. Sermon on the Mount, we called it the Messianic Torah. Yeah. So if you haven't gotten enough sermon on the Mount, there's another way.

Here's another way to go through it. Classroom setting. Can you ever get enough of the sermon on the Mount? No. Is there a point where you'll go? I'm full. No more sermon on the Mount for me. No more sermon.

You know, speaking of classroom, super encouraging too, and we may have mentioned it last year, but it just is growing and growing, is there's an organization called Pando. I think they make a tablet that they get into prisons across the country, and some folks that are incarcerated that were watching our content asked if we would put the classroom videos on there. And so there's folks that are incarcerated that are going through the classroom. classroom classes, some of them doing it in groups so they can go through together. And a patron comment I received earlier this year was from a woman named Rachel, and she said, oh my goodness, I watched your content, your videos in classroom when I was incarcerated. I didn't know you were out here in the free world, and I wanted to support you, and she thought that we were strictly a prison ministry.

That's awesome. Yeah, so encouraging. She said, you have no idea the difference this kind of. content is making for folks that are incarcerated. Wow. And so, so encouraging. Wow. That's cool.

Yeah. We should also just mention we have an app and we've never spent a lot of time like advertising our app and just we keep tweaking it, making it better. And it's got to a point where it's like, oh, this is actually cool. Like people are using it, hundreds of thousands of people every month. I think it's a great way to listen to our podcast. It's a great way to do classroom. Yeah.

You can take classes and listen as if it were a podcast. Yeah. Yeah. On the audio-only mode. Yep. Yeah. You could find our resources in a couple different ways through like a catalog in there, but also like each chapter of the Bible has resources that we have connected to that chapter.

And then there's also we have these like collections. Like when we go through the mountain, for example, it's like there's a lot of stuff we make. We make the podcast. We make the video. We have articles. We have discussion questions. questions, that puts it all in one place so that you can kind of choose your own adventure and build out like the way you want to study it. Yeah. No, the team has then a great job this last

year of really focusing on more coordination as we release all of this content at one place. And the app is a great place to get that where it has that. So like a study guide that you can go through with a small group or individually. And it's all there on those top cards on the app. Yeah. Yeah. I think like our core audience, the people who are like in this with us are finding it useful and using it. It's probably the easiest place to go through the maze of all of our library. Yeah, that's definitely. And I think we're getting better.

Early days of Bible project, I remember somebody said to me, you have amazing content. It's just like going into a library with no shelves and all the books are on the floor. And so as we continue to grow and mature as an organization, our team is really finding ways to make everything more searchable and allow people to find it. But it's the one place that you can. go that has everything and it's all right there yeah perhaps last but not least is the very way that we're talking to y'all right now is on the podcast oh yeah and uh this was a milestone year

for the bible project podcast we've been doing this podcast for 10 years now this is our 10th year as a podcast that's ancient that's ancient for podcasts we're like podcast like dinosaur that's to say. Grandpas. A grandpa. The grandpa sounds better. Yeah, okay. So, yeah, somewhere near the end of 2025, you know, we released our 500th hour of talking together.

That is 500th episode. Yeah. So wild. So wild. So imagine. But that happened. And some people have listened to all 500. It's so wild.

It's a lot of spending time with us. Yeah. So I'm sorry and you're welcome. it's my companion every Monday morning when I take my walk I enjoy it it's great some people might think hey as the CEO are you not listening to these before we send them out to the wild but no I'm right there with all of you hearing it when it comes out it's great yeah and so what's coming out next year on the podcast that's going to turn in all sorts of resources well I guess we're not yet going to wave goodbye

to Exodus we've got one more Exodus kind of theme Ah, like a capstone theme to Exodus in a way. We're going to do a whole video series and podcast series on your favorite page of the Bible and mine, The Ten Commandments. Wow. From Exodus chapter 20. All ten. We're going to do all ten. Yep.

Yep. All ten. Yeah, complete it. And I think I'll just say I was surprised as we started to work on it. how much more excited I got about the Ten Commandments than I had been before. Yeah, while doing it.

While doing it. Yeah. Yeah. I felt the same way. Yeah, it was so fun. Both the conversations, you know, that the podcast will be, but then the videos.

Yeah. It's so surprising. Yeah. I think that's all I want to say. It's going to be a big series because there's going to be like an intro video. Yeah.

And then a video for every one of the commands. Yeah. Big series. And so, yeah, it's going to be a big series. a lot of content and animation studios are just such a cool so amazing really are that i keep finding myself walking around the animation studio a little more these days looking over people's yeah and having seen some of the early stuff that they've been working on yeah so encouraged and surprised i mean i'm old you hear ten commandments you think charlton heston you know

on that movie that would play every easter and uh oh my goodness i think our yeah i think y'all will be so encouraged by this series. Yeah, that's next level. Before that, a little kind of detour. Yeah, a little mini-series. A little mini-series that isn't going to have any other content associated with it. It's just going to be a little podcast-only, little exploration. Yes, on the Letter of Jude.

The Letter of Jude. Half a page in most of our Bibles. And how long is the podcast series going to be? Like six episodes. Okay. Yeah. But it could have been easily 10 episodes. Yeah, but...

I bet we could have done like 20. Yeah. Okay, so backstory is when we did all the read scripture overview videos, the letter of Jude, I gave myself like two weeks to just immerse myself in all things Jude catch up from all my learning in the past, read a stack of books, write the script, draw the poster, draft to give to Everett who drew the final poster. And it just stuck out in my mind as like, whenever I get time. I want to come back here and spend a whole lot more energy and time. And then 10 years went by. Yeah. And so I had the study break plan for earlier this year,

and I got the choice to like, what do I get to do on the study break? And I was like to just only eat, breathe, sleep, and think about Jude and everything that Jude's connected to. I had so much fun. Yeah. Can't wait. So the podcast series is so wild. Jude's wild. Jude is wild.

It's a wild ride. It's surprising it's in the Bible. Wow, really? I think. You know, it's funny is I, you know, famously show up unprepared for the podcast. And part of my comfort level with it is we usually are talking about some like Old Testament passage that I just know no one's familiar with. Oh, sure. So like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's fine. I don't need to be prepared. Yeah. But for some reason, because I was like, oh, this is a New Testament book. I almost felt like I should probably have read it recently. and so it was the like night before we were going to start and I read Jude yeah and I realized it's like five minutes right it took you yeah yeah yeah you can read it yeah it's 25 verses but I ended up reading it many times over yeah and um it's so confused and I just occurred to me like

I don't think I've read this for 20 years yeah yeah and like I kind of forgot this was in the Bible yeah so yeah there's a lot of really strange wild stuff Jude. And what I think you really loved about it that you kept talking about is it's such a unique window. And to a early form of Christianity, it's different than like Paul's church planning movement. It was separate from that. It was like a Jewish messianic movement in Galilee in Jerusalem. And it was founded by the brothers of Jesus. Jude and James and that crew. And the way that they read the Bible as like Jewish kind of Tanakh nerds, it just is like hyperlink heaven. Wow. I think, you know, I don't know anything about Jude. I think I've always just seen

it as the on-deck circle for as I try and gear up to read through Revelation. It's like, yeah, let's get a little confused before we get really confused. And it's 25 verses, so you plow through it and go chat an entire book done. More than any other book is where I'll read a verse in Jude, and I'll be like, yeah, I don't get it, and I don't have time to get it. I got this big book called Revelations staring me in the face. I'm just going to blow through this, yeah. So, that's great. That's going to be awesome.

Yeah. Yep. And that's just the beginning of the year. Yeah. There's more. There's more coming out. There's more coming out. Yeah.

But we won't belabor this. A few things that I just want to make sure that, please, as we're reflecting on the year, yeah. So encouraged by a group of volunteers that come to our office every Tuesday, there's usually 20, 25, I think we've had as many as 30 people that are down there, patrons, they're addressing envelopes to say thank you to the folks that support this. And they're just there faithfully doing this. And it's so encouraging to see them. And they're just a great group of people. So they're handwriting our thank you stuff. Absolutely. Yeah. So cool. It's, they're part,

I see them as part of our patron care team. Absolutely. To just thank the people that are making this all possible. Because it's so fun to get. an actual hand written envelope, your name handwritten on a thing. And you're like, look at it and you're like, wait, this is actually handwritten. This wasn't like an auto pen thing. This was like someone wrote this. Yeah. That's a great team.

It is. It's just really amazing group of people. And then they do so much more than that too. They just are, they're in it with all of us. They are. And so grateful for that. Also for our prayer team. Yes.

Over 80,000 people receive a monthly people. prayer email. Christopher from our team gathers requests from around the team, puts the prayer email together, and then sends it out. And so we see that as the absolute foundation for what we do. And it's the bedrock. We've talked about over and over again that the impact that the Bible project has had is so much greater than the sum total of all of our very best work. And we just clearly see that God goes before us and it is something he's doing internally we say

that he makes the wave and we just get to ride it and we are so grateful for this season in which we get to ride that and so those things just so encourage me and then lastly is the 50,000 patrons that joined us this last

year and are a part of what's going on here and enable us to really to make the content to scatter these seeds and to push the content out there and to allow it to show up on the U-Version app and allow the folks at streetlights and these 2,000-plus churches that we know of that are using the content and then localize it all of the world. So on behalf of the entire project, I just want to say thank you for being in this with us.

Yes, 100%. Thank you all for your enthusiasm and support for this. and I know why I'm compelled to be a part of it is, as you said, John, I'm experiencing the Bible as a unified story. It's leading me to Jesus, and that's why I give to the project, both energy and financially,

and it's just so amazing. So, yeah, thank you all for doing this with us. It's really incredible. Yeah, yeah. Good word. We have said we really move at the speed of generosity. And, you know, you can hear people say, hey, you know, we couldn't do this without you.

I feel from the very beginning, we really said, we won't do this without you. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That if there weren't a group of people that found value and what we were doing, and if it wasn't having an impact on people's lives, where they were motivated to join us, then does it really need to be done? Yeah.

And so we hear you and we'll continue to make content as long as there's people that have a desire for it. Yeah. So that's to another wonderful year. Yeah. And I'm excited for next year. And I hope that as we all end the year, it's kind of just a moment to reflect on what God's doing in our own hearts and families and communities and spend time with family, start to gear up for like another run at this thing called life. you know like such a weird moment in time

to be like we're going around the sun one more time here we go so it's cool that we're all doing it together it's wonderful to do

with you guys wonderful to do it with our whole team and all of our patrons yeah well thank you guys for inviting us in on this

community of reading the Bible together that you do and grateful for you guys yeah likewise you too Steve Okay, until next year.

Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. I'll let you guys take it for the next 11 and a half months, and then I will come on back. John and Steve, did you know the Bible project is a crowd-funded, non-profit media studio? We are making things to help people experience the Bible as a unified story, Lisa Jesus, and this podcast is one of those things. and it's made by, man, such an amazing, gifted team of people. You should check out the show notes for the podcast. It's all made possible by the generosity of you. And you, and you, and you, and you. I see all of you.

Thank you. And you can find everything on Bible Project app and Bibleproject.com. Hi, my name's Chris. And my name's him. And we are from Indiana. We first heard about the Bible project a couple years ago when we're doing a read-through the Bible in the year program. I used the Bible project for study, and the favorite part so far from the Bible project is the How to Read the Bible series. We believe the Bible is an inside story that leads to Jesus.

Bible project is a nonprofit funded by people like me. Find free videos, articles, podcasts, classes, and more on the Bible Project app and at Bibleproject.com. Thank you. Thank you.