Explore God: 3 Billion Gospel Presentations for 3 Cents Each — Jamie Radtke (Ep. 8)

3 cents.

That's the cost of a single gospel presentation at Explore God (formerly Global Media Outreach) — one of the ministries Tim's team has kept on the ROI Ministry Top 10 for nearly a decade.

Since 2004, Explore God has shared the gospel more than 3 billion times. In 13 languages. Across the poorest and least-reached places on earth. On the smartphones of people in Thailand coffee fields, in Pakistani cities, in Indian villages where it's illegal to share the gospel in person.

In this Partner Highlight episode of ROI Ministry: The Don't Bury It Podcast, host Tim Barker sits down with Jamie Radtke, President of Explore God, to walk through:

• The 2004 founding vision — a former Apple engineer's bet that the internet could accomplish the Great Commission
• The cost-per-soul math: 3¢ per gospel presentation, 46¢ per indicated decision, $3.45 per new discipleship connection
• Why 85% of Explore God's outreach happens in developing countries
• The 2026 rebrand from Global Media Outreach to Explore God — and why the name change is a discipleship bet
• How the gospel reaches closed countries where in-person evangelism is illegal or impossible
• The regional-hub strategy putting online missionaries in Kenya, India, Lebanon, Russia, and Brazil
• How to give to Explore God anonymously through the National Christian Foundation portal on roiministry.org

About ROI Ministry

ROI Ministry is a free resource that reviews 100+ ministries each year and publishes a top-10 list of ministries that beat the best charities in the world on cost per person served — while still sharing the gospel and making disciples. Tim calls it EROI: the eternal return on investment.

Every dollar Tim receives from BOOM goes to vetted gospel + compassion ministries. No fees. No overhead. No skim.

Free resources:
https://roiministry.org/
https://exploregod.com/
BOOM book: https://www.amazon.com/BOOM-What-When-Blows-Around/dp/1646459016/ 

Subscribe and know you're making a difference.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Most giving doesn't produce any lasting measurable fruit. Welcome to ROI Ministry, the Don't Bury It podcast, the show for Christians who measure what really matters. 30,000 times the eternal return on every dollar, every hour, every opportunity, so you know you're making a difference. Because good intentions aren't enough. Wise generosity changes everything. Let's get into it. So thank you for being here today as we go into this next episode with a very special person and a very amazing ministry, Global Media Outreach, which has recently changed its name to Explore God. And you're going to be very excited to hear what Jamie has to share with us today. As we look at all our top 10 ministries, we get excited. But this one in particular has been near and dear to my heart from the day one it's been added to our top 10 list. And the reason is because we as an organization really got started when we found some research at the turn of the century. And this research revealed that $270 billion was coming into the kingdom. And most of it was going back out to preach to the choir, to nations that were reached and were wealthy. And only one third of 1% was making it to the poorest lost people in the world being used for evangelism. And when I open my Bible, it says Jesus came to preach the good news to the poor. And so this was heartbreaking, especially when you realize that there's 6,000 people dying every day that have never heard about Jesus. Now that's the bad news. The good news is the research also revealed that when we do preach the good news to the poor, we show the gospel to people uh to the ends of the earth, you know, basically what Jesus told us to do in the bookends of his ministry, there's a 3,000 times greater response or results from that. In proving that to be true or not, we started to develop a top 10 list and found ministries that were seeing three to 30,000 times greater results. And one of these ministries, again, global media outreach, has been on our top 10 list for probably nearly a decade now. And so with that, I'm very excited to introduce Shamie to tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and then tell us about exploring God, global media outreach.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

Well, I appreciate you having me on your show. I will say it has been a pleasure to partner with ROI Ministries and the work that you all do to try to show people how they can invest wisely in the kingdom. My background is, you know, I went to college, I went to Liberty University because I wanted to change the world. Like that's what I wanted to do. I remember in high school I wanted to start an FCA and I was told I couldn't. And I was like, what do you mean I can't? You know, I just I wanted to change the world. So I went into the government and public policy space for almost 25 years and kind of worked at all levels of government, you know, the U.S. Senate, the governor's office, ran for office. But I just found that I was like preaching to a choir that was shrinking and that, you know, politics and government is a reflection of culture. And if we're gonna change culture, what we really need, people really need is Jesus, not another policy bill. And so I moved into the Christian nonprofit space back in uh 2013. I just remember I was reading the book of Ezekiel where it says this generation has never heard the gospel. And it said, I'm I'm gonna give you the words and preach, you know, preach to this generation and just tell them the truth, whether they listen or not. That's not your responsibility, but share the gospel. And I just kept thinking, really, this these younger generations, no matter where in the world you are, they haven't heard the gospel. We just assume in today's like tech world they have, but they haven't. Most people did not grow up into church in this generation. And so I had had over 25 years using digital media for political purposes of like mobilizing people to polls on election day. And I just got really struck with the idea about like, what if you could do that for the gospel? Like, what if you could talk to people about issues, spiritual issues where they're kind of stuck and they're exploring and they have spiritual questions and mobilize them into faith communities. So that has been a much more pleasant and rewarding experience than my 25 years in my other world. And I'll also say, you know, just personally, you know, been married over 25 years. We have four children, they're all almost grown. My youngest just turned 18. We adopted him out of foster care when he was eight, and my oldest is 24. And so yeah, we're kind of moving into an emptiness phase. So that's just a little bit about my personal background.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

That's wonderful. And not to try to one up you, I got five and my baby is 19.

SPEAKER_01 5:08

So there you go. Yeah. So we're in similar life.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Yeah stage of life. So thank you for sharing that background about yourself, Jamie. And um again, just it's amazing how God will use what we think to be our profession to promote God's kingdom. And I've seen the same thing in my life as a as a consultant for one of the large design engineering firms over the last two decades, and the things that I've learned in vetting contractors and partners and and uh how to manage things, just uh didn't realize that God was gonna use all that in in in serving him. And it sounds like you're in the same exact boat. So let that tell us about uh Global Media Outreach, your new name, Explore God, and some of the changes, the exciting changes that are going on there right now.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Yeah, I've loved working at this ministry. This ministry was started in 2004 by an amazing man named Walt. He worked at Apple for Steve Jobs, which is not was not easy for anybody to do if you read all the things that have been written about Steve Jobs. But obviously the one thing he was known about was innovation. Um and Walt came out of a Silicon Valley out of innovation. He was a former Marine. So when he put his mind on a mission, he accomplished it. And there was nothing that was gonna hold him back. And he started to hear about this thing called the internet that was gonna take over the world. And they were saying, you'll be able to go shopping for clothes on the internet, you'll be able to go to school on the internet, and you'll be able to buy books. And people thought that sounded crazy. But Walt was listening to that. I mean, this is before smartphones, this is before, you know, and and he starts listening to that. And he goes, if all that they're saying about what the internet will be able to do one day is actually true, then that means the Great Commission could actually be accomplished through this thing called the internet. And so he started to cast a vision of could we reach one billion people with the gospel? And at the now in the world of like viral videos and people having hundreds of millions of followers, that doesn't sound crazy. But back in the old days in 2004, that concept sounded absurd. And he went and met with several businessmen who either said he's either absolutely crazy or he has is one of the greatest geniuses I've ever met. And so depending on where they fell, is whether they invested or didn't invest, frankly. But he had great vision and he had great mission and he was resolute in achieving it. And because of the legacy he laid down, we've shared the gospel over three billion times since 2004. And we've received over 25 million contacts where we can follow up with them and answer questions about Jesus. And what that means is that we share a full gospel presentation either on a landing page or in a video on YouTube, on Facebook, on Instagram, on you know, wherever it happens to be. And they can share the gospel and then they can respond by saying that, yes, I believe in this, I want to say this prayer, or they can say, I want to talk to someone. I want to talk to someone, I have questions, and they can be connected with someone we have and that we call an online missionary who will walk them through the gospel, confirm their salvation, and then really help them start strong in helping them understand how to read their Bible, how to pray, um, the importance of being in a faith community. Uh, and so all the things that are important as you become a new believer. And right now we're operating in 13 languages, but we're getting ready to add two new languages here this summer, July and August. So we'll be adding Bengali and Swahili this summer, and we've got a goal to add five more new languages next year. So we're not slowing down by any stretch of the imagination.

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Yeah, that's amazing. So I'm assuming you're focusing on people and language groups that have cell phones or the internet. Is that correct that uh they would be able to find the gospel on on the platform that you're using?

SPEAKER_01 9:19

No, that's exactly right. Like everything we do is reaching people on the internet. But you know, one of the things that surprises me is last year I was in South Korea, I was in Thailand, I was in Japan. I mean, obviously in Korea and Japan, you know people have smartphones, but I'm in I'm in Thailand and I'm in the I'm like in the middle of nowhere. Like I'm in a I'm in a in a coffee field where the only thing people have are mopeds. And they're and they're in homes that are on stilts with an open fire that they're making their fire, they're making their coffee, they're drying their laundry out on a line. They don't have central air or cooling, they just have open, like their windows are just open holes, no actual windows. This is a very, very poor part of Thailand. And I kid you not, they all had a smartphone they were scrolling through. And they didn't they didn't have windows, they didn't have running water, but by golly, they had a smartphone, and they were sitting there scrolling for hours on Facebook. And then this is the thing I tell people about the power of the internet is that people may not be able to have a washing machine, but they have a smartphone, and it is the most powerful tool for the gospel. And not only in poor places that may not be able to have all those things, but also in places that aren't safe. Like we're reaching people in places like you know, Pakistan and and Yemen and Syria and Iraq and Iran, you know, places that you know you're not passionately wanting to send missionaries to right now.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

Nor would they give you a missionary visa. So right.

SPEAKER_01 11:03

Right. But the gospel is still open over the internet, and that's the beauty of it. You know, India, for example, is one is like one of our last year it was one of our top countries that we reached with the gospel. I think we had almost 45 million people who saw gospel presentation in India. And what's fascinating to me is in India they have anti-conversion laws. It is illegal to share the gospel in person in India, but you can share the gospel on the internet. I mean, this is the beauty of a technology kind of crosses over those political boundaries in many ways.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

Yeah, that's that's amazing. I um I love that. And so what what what are there a particular set or maybe one Bible verse that really speaks to you or your team or explore God as far as as uh as a key verse for your organization? Or I'm sure there's probably several, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Well, the the mission verse for us has always been Matthew 28, 19 about the Great Commission to go ye and make disciples of all nations. And so I think that that is one of the reasons why we've really been focused not only on sharing the gospel, but are we making disciples? That's why there's been quite a big shift. It um now, as you were saying, we're now explore God, changed our name, is because we know that exploring God is a lifelong journey and that we want to really make sure that we're making disciples. They talk about casting seed on rocky soil, on in weeded soil, on fertile soil. And for us, we feel like we have a obligation to not only share the gospel, but actually make disciples, making sure they understand the decision they made and making sure that they have the tools, no matter where they live, if they're in the you know jungles of Thailand or in Yemen, that they have tools they know to how to pray, how to read the Bible, how to be in community. And so that's been one of our, I mean, it has been our core verse for this the length of this ministry.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Yeah, and I'm very excited about that direction that you're going. I know we talked earlier before we started recording about how there's going to be some changes from more of just an indicate decision, but a a growth track into discipleship. And so your impact per dollar is going to change, but we're excited about that because we are called to make disciples, not just to seek indicate decisions. But we do know that's the starting point. You don't have one without the others. Right. So we're very excited about that. The Greatest Commission speaks to going to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Where are you seeing your greatest responsiveness? In our Jerusalem, in our Western nations or the Judean Samaria, maybe different cultures, maybe uh nations adjacent to us or or or different regions of the states or Europe, or at the ends of the earth, where are you seeing the greatest responsiveness and as far as what you would say the best bang for your buck as you invest your resources to focus on sharing the gospel?

SPEAKER_01 14:02

So 85% of our outreach is helping and is happening in developing countries. So they're not happening in your first world western countries, they're happening in developing countries. So in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, in the Middle East, the global south for us is just exploding. The hunger and the interest in the global south and and and and then uh the Middle East. You know, I think our our top countries last year were like India, Indonesia, Venezuela, Algeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Angola, Nigeria, you know, those are the places. And we we spend accordingly. Like that's very intentional. So what we do, how we plan our outreach is we look at where the world population centers are and we're spending per capita. So, you know, the United States only has 350 million people. There's a billion and a half in India. And so we're being very strategic about how we're investing and making sure we're investing in the places not only that are the most unreached, but also the places where they're the the large population groups are. And as you can imagine, advertising in the Western world is about ten times the price as well as appearing to other places.

SPEAKER_00 15:25

And the the soil is hard. And so it's uh you would want to go where the harvest is ripe and where the workers are few, right? And again, Jesus provides the instructions where we're gonna bear fruit, great and abundant fruit, and we just need to follow those instructions. So I love that. And again, here in Western nations, we get to hear the gospel dozens of times. Maybe I've heard as many as a hundred times a year, whereas there's six thousand people that die every day that have never heard the gospel. And that's just not right. It's not right in any way. And for us as uh followers of Jesus to ignore that is is is the problem, especially when we've been entrusted with so much uh financially. And so I always like to focus on the positive, that it's a it's a great investment opportunity. And I'm glad that in the parables of the Minas and the Talents, Jesus provides us two positive examples. And those are not get rich schemes, they are God entrusting us with resources and us investing them into his kingdom. And when we do that well and wisely, one day we'll hear well done. My good and faithful servant, come share in your master's happiness. So I love that. But for unfortunately, for hard-headed people like me that make a lot of mistakes and are prone to wander and and and fall away and get distracted, he has that one third servant that buries their resources that God's entrusted them with. And a talent, if you convert it into today's dollars, it he was speaking about a talent of gold, and it would be about five million dollars for that third servant today. And so that could represent somebody's lifelong income, or maybe over to five or ten years they were a Christian. And uh Jesus is saying, Hey, you know, what what did you do with that? And if you buried it, if you if you put it towards, I I think even ministries that that aren't fruitful, um, and you have nothing to show for it, it's cast down the darkness where there's sweeping and gnashing of teeth is the reminder I need to to be a better steward with the resources that God's entrusted to me. Sadly, there's about 90 billion dollars that's embezzled each year for Christian causes, and there's about two to three times that amount that go to organizations that cannot show you what resulted from it. New Testament, we hear the word fruit sixty times, the one time we're all familiar with when Paul talks about the fruits of the spirit, but Jesus talks about it 30 other times, and it's in relation to the fruit that that we're to bear from our good works. Not that it earns salvation, he paid that price, but it reveals what we believe by by being good stewards. So just really want to applaud you for that and keeping Jesus in Christianity and in ministries, because there's many out there today that don't share the gospel, and they think um, you know, St. Francis Assisi allegedly said, share the gospel at all times, use words when necessary, which there is no proof that he ever said that, but if he did, there'd be no question who he represented because of the priestly garb he was wearing and the cross on his neck. And and where can I find any research? There's a lot of organizations, a lot of Christians supporting organizations with that approach where they're not sharing Jesus, and they say, Well, our good works speak for themselves. Well, I've never found any research to prove that that's true. So thank you for keeping Christ and Chris Christianity at the forefront of what you're doing. And I'm very excited to have you on today in this podcast. And for our listeners, just so you know, if you find uh Global Media Outreach, which next year will be Explore God, on our website, there is a National Christian Foundation portal so that you can give anonymously. Uh, we don't require that, give directly to uh the ministry. You can find their link on our website and they'll reach out to you and and and talk to you and hopefully follow up with you if it's a larger gift. But we do provide that opportunity. We don't sell your contact information, we don't charge a fee, we don't take a commission, but we truly exist just to so that you know that you're making a difference is is our motto and what we're about. So is there any other final words of wisdom or ways that people can reach out to you or give? I assume that again, National Christian Foundation provides us the opportunity to receive non-cash assets, but I'm sure you have the ability to to to do that also. But Jamie, is there any other final words of wisdom that you would share with us, our listeners today?

SPEAKER_01 20:02

Yeah, I think I would say, first of all, if you want to learn more about us, you can go to explore God.com. We do have our new site up, explore God.com. Given that the name of the ministry or your organization is ROI Ministries, I think it's fitting to end, you know. Last year we shared the gospel for the less than three cents, a gospel presentation. And we had an indicated decisions were about 46 cents. But then the new connection, right? The connection to do the follow-up and to confirm salvation and help them grow and make sure that their seed is being watered so that it's growing was about $3.45. So it's not, but it's not, I would just say, as I would close, it's not just about the ROI, but what's the quality of the ROI? And so for us, that's why we're investing more in regional hubs. We want our online missionaries from those areas communicating who understand the culture, they understand the challenges. You know, so we launched a team in Kenya, we've launched a team in India, we have a team in Lebanon and in Russia and Brazil. So we're really trying to be as close to the community as possible to be able to build those relationships and connect them well. So you want ROI not just on the money, but also on the outcomes and so of the quality of how you're doing things. So we're we're so grateful to partner with you. It's been years and thanks for all that you do.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

Yeah, and thank you. And you're right, we're we're really about the EROI, the eternal return on investment.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

That's right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 21:37

And for $3.50 to not only indicate the decision for Christ, but then it gets somebody on a growth track, disciples, discipleship track, is is very exciting to us. So thank you again, Jamie, for for joining us today and and keep up the great work.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

My pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

You just heard what wise generosity looks like when it actually works. Go deeper with Tim Barker's book, Boom, What to Do When Life Blows Up Around You. A field guide for the moment your money, your marriage, your health, or your calling falls apart. And what to do in the wreckage that actually matters. Every one of my dollars of every copy goes straight to vetted ministries that transform lives. Grab one for you today, hand it to someone in the blast zone, but don't bury what you have heard and know you're making a difference.