Meat in Due Season
November 10, 2022

Meat in Due Season

Personalizing the Delivery of the Truth
5m read

Dear AudioVerse Friend,

Did you know that the AudioVerse archives now contain 30,000 recordings? In fact, we are on track to release over 6,000 messages in 2022 alone! While exciting, this quantity of content has introduced the challenge of navigating and finding relevant messages for our users. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack! Yet, our extensive library also opens up some exciting new opportunities.

Challenges and Opportunities

Imagine if we could…

  • Curate the content archive so users get what they need as soon as they open the app?
  • Quickly identify content optimized for evangelistic outreach?
  • Dynamically create relevant playlists on topics to aid in a Bible study?
  • Improve search results to pinpoint specific sermons that address specific questions?
  • Personalize recommendations of messages to meet people’s particular interests and needs?
  • Create tools for Bible workers to easily find and share sermons for their Bible study contacts?
  • Locate sermons on specific Bible passages we are studying?
  • Engage those growing in the faith with appropriate teachings tailored to advance them in Present Truth?
  • Customize the AudioVerse experience to be best suited users according to their spiritual maturity?

What if we can not only make it easier for our users to find content in our archive, but also build intelligent methods where the most appropriate content is able to find the user? Not only do we believe that this is possible, we believe it is a reflection of the ministry of Jesus.

Personalizing the Delivery of the Truth

During Christ’s ministry on Earth, His teachings were always custom-tailored to His audience and delivered exactly at the right time. Jesus did not give the same rote presentation to Nicodemus, the woman at the well, or to Pilate. He was able to share the Truth in a personalized way for each of His listeners. This is the model we wish to follow in how we serve our users on AudioVerse, and this is the heart of what we are seeking to do: To follow Christ’s example of giving meat in due season by personalizing the delivery of the truth for our listeners. But how can we do this?

Data, Algorithms, and Technology

Our first limitation is the lack of deep insights into our content. What this means is that while we have tens of thousands of recordings in our archive, we have no easy way to categorize messages by topics, doctrines, Bible references, etc. Since having a human listen to the full archive to transcribe them and take notes is resource prohibitive and inefficient, we need to devise ways to accomplish this task through technology.

Even once we extract this data from our content library, there are still multi-step processes to refine that information to make it relevant and useful. After that is done, intelligent algorithms will need to be written to leverage that data to match the preferences of our users. And finally, it will need to be integrated into the AudioVerse website and app for a seamless experience for our end users.

Accomplishing this will be an ambitious multi-year undertaking that won’t result in immediate changes, but we believe the results will be worth the investment. Our goal is to lay down the foundational building blocks in 2023, with some of the initial features ready to launch sometime in 2024.

With this project, we are launching into uncharted waters. This level of data science is not common in the ministry world, which means we are pioneering the way where few others have ventured. This means that the final outcomes are difficult to forecast precisely, and there may be unexpected detours along the way. Nevertheless, we are confident that this endeavor will yield incredible value for God’s work and there may even be unintended benefits that result.

What We Need to Get There

Large companies like Google and Facebook invest billions of dollars into technologies like this, but they pay for it through advertising and the selling of their users’ data. Of course, we don’t do that, so we rely on God’s blessing through supporters like you to help us invest for the future.

Because of the intense technological work required, we anticipate this project requiring $550,000. But some generous donors have pledged to match each gift toward this project, dollar for dollar! That’s right, every dollar you give will be worth TWO! $100 becomes $200, $1,000 becomes $2,000, and $10,000 becomes $20,000!

The match expires at the end of this year, so there’s no time to waste. Be sure to take advantage of this opportunity to DOUBLE your gift before December 31!

As we enter the final months of the year and are considering our year-end charitable gifts, I ask that you prayerfully consider whether the Lord may be moving upon you to give a bit more than in previous years. This work is possible only with your support, so thank you for being an essential part of our team.

To be sure your gift is applied toward this project and matching funds, be sure to select or note “ Meat in Due Season ” with your donation. (Whether in the memo of your check, or in the comments when you donate digitally.)

You may give by check at the address below or via our donate page . If you are considering a gift by credit card and are concerned about the transaction fees, you may consider using PayPal Giving Fund which eliminates the credit card transaction fee entirely. You will find the relevant links at our donate page , and you can keep track of our fundraising progress there as well.

As we deliver the 30,000 messages in our archive to our listeners, thank you for helping us ensure that each message is the one most able to lead that person to Jesus.

Thank you for your partnership!

Alistair Huong

Executive Director

P.S. With 30,000 messages in our library and counting, it has become a real challenge to navigate. So AudioVerse is seeking to follow Christ’s example of giving meat in due season by personalizing the delivery of the messages to our listeners. This ambitious project involves deep data science work that requires significant investment. We anticipate needing $550,000 for this project, but some generous donors have pledged to match your gifts dollar-for-dollar! So you can DOUBLE the effectiveness of your donations! This matching offer expires on December 31, so there is no time to waste! Thank you for your support!

AudioVerse | PO Box 2288 | Collegedale | TN | 37315