Fifteen years ago I sent out my first invitation to friends to join an email list. I was full of hope and vision, excited about bringing God’s word to people who had never experienced it before. I had become a Christian fifteen years prior when the Lord had rescued me from death—suicidal tendencies, an atheist community that had no answers for me, and a life that felt like I was feeling around in the dark to figure out what was right. It was scary too because I grew up without a mother, so not only were my philosophies bankrupt, I didn’t have any guidance through the emotional turbulence of childhood or my teenage years. As a young adult I was partying and having a grand time, and also making devastating mistakes that I didn’t even know were mistakes. I was headed on a crash course to destruction and was absolutely bewildered as to why. Atheism doesn’t answer those questions or provide needed support.
When God rescued me, it was like daylight came in my life. I could see and understand the world. I had a friend in my heart who was always there. His ways were always true, and they were dependable. They saved me from chaotic relationships and set me into a house of kindness. He gave me friends, mentors, service projects, and a husband who was everything I’d ever dreamed of—kind, fun, and adventurous.
I looked at the life I’d left behind and felt deep empathy for those who didn’t know that this kind of love existed. I shared what I knew with my friends, but I couldn’t give them what had been given to me. One impassioned speech wasn’t enough to convert them. I realized that even though I was being trained to “share spiritual laws” to bring people to Christ, it had taken so much more to bring me to a place of faith. If it took so much time and teaching for me to come to faith, how could I expect them to come to faith after one conversation?
I had had an aunt who I hadn’t been allowed to meet, and had been reacquainted with in my high school years, who dragged me to church and Sunday school, I was given the knowledge of God and regular teaching over five years. And later, after all that, when I reached out to him, he changed everything.
Five years after his light came into my life, I offered my work up to him. I asked him for vision. I laid my life down as a sacrifice and asked him who he wanted me to be. He gave me a vision and a preliminary timeline. Ten years and lots of prayers later, I was ready to start.
I was surprised at how, even though I had the vision for the entire project, a picture of what it looked like at the end, I didn’t have a vision for how to start. Why wouldn’t God provide guidance for this thing he had called me to do?
So I started experimentally on social media. I spent hours and hours creating beautiful scriptural designs to share, and my work paid off. Facebook was young and eager to add content, so the Facebook page grew to 6,000 followers. But after a year of part time work, building a website and creating Facebook designs, I realized two things—1) I was reaching the wrong audience with my messaging, and 2) Facebook was only sending my work to other Christians—and what do Christians need with more pretty Bible verses? They don’t.
It was then that I looked back at the original vision, and realized that when I had initially prayed over this project, the vision was for billboards. I hated billboards. I grew up in Athens where nature was revered by Christians and Atheists alike. Billboards were a blight on the landscape, and so I resisted. But I started realizing that to complete this project I was going to need paid advertising.
I started talking to my friends and with the help of a dedicated friend and the encouragement of another, I stepped out to start the non-profit. I had plans and I was excited to share them—how we were going to bring Scripture to the public on billboards, and share the goodness of God with people who didn’t normally encounter scripture. It was a big job to write a business plan, rewrite the messaging, and redo the website.
I was hoping for help. I talked about it with everyone I talked to. A few responded excitedly. I will never forget each and every gift I received that helped me start this project. Some came from estates, some personal gifts, and others became regular givers. They were all a vote of confidence and each one gave me incredible joy. The people who gave saw the value of Scripture and believed that God’s word would not return void, that it would accomplish the purpose for which it shared. They were excited about it. But they weren’t excited about any of the giving going to my support. On separate accounts, they all made it clear that they expected my work to be volunteer.
And as I talked about the project, it was only a few who responded. Most people looked at me apprehensively.
With hindsight I know that that’s normal. A certain percentage of people will respond. But at the time, I didn’t know why. They wouldn’t tell me why. Because they didn’t want to be approached for money? Because they were uncomfortable with this type of evangelism? Because they thought it was weird? Because I had been clumsy or expressed it wrong or done something else wrong? I may never know why, but the deer-in-headlights looks shook me up, because my Christian community was second only to God and my immediate family in my mind. I would walk into church and people who had normally greeted me enthusiastically shied away from me. It felt horrible.
Ten years prior, I had left my entire community to become a Christian. Atheist neighborhood aunties who had cared for me, school counselors who had invested in me, and best friends who were my confidants— all of these atheist loved ones now saw me as the enemy, they saw me as a person who had rejected all sanity in my life to devote myself to an imaginary fairy tale. I lost them all to follow Christ.
My Christian family was my refuge and my acceptance. They were a home. So to feel “called by God,” so definitively, and yet to experience such vast rejection—people who loved my friendship prior to this, avoided my gaze at church.
I wasn’t someone who grew up in church. I didn’t know or understand the politics or how to get things done. I only knew what God had taught me—how to love people. I thought they would jump at the chance to bring this amazing gift to people who had never experienced it before. But they didn’t. They looked at me scared and apprehensive. I was alone again, and it threw me into a deep depression. Supposedly if I only had God, even if others rejected me, it should be enough. But the rejection hurt so much. I cried to God. No answer. Just a gentle call to keep going.
The feeling of rejection was a lot. I tested the Spirit, “I’m just going to throw the whole thing in the trash.” I was met with a feeling of dread that feels the same as when you see a beloved character about to be beheaded in your favorite series. It felt like death. The thought of throwing it away sapped my strength. I wasn’t allowed. Even the thought of abandoning the project sapped my life of vision and hope.
And that made me angry. Our household budget was painfully constricted. Our door handle broke off our back door, and we couldn’t afford to replace it. For a month until we had the money we held our back doorhandle in place with a pair of clamping pliers. Our dryer broke and it felt like the end of the world. Joe Boyle went downstairs to take a look at it, and relief flooded my heart when he walked into my dining room and declared, “It’s fixed!” I cried. Over a dryer.
My husband said, “You have to go to work. We can’t support this any longer. You need a job.”
Practicality warred with the calling inside me. Hadn’t God told me so many mornings as I knelt in prayer, “It’s going to be fine.”? But it wasn’t fine. And that tried my faith. I knew that to not get a job would be to defy my husband and the well-being of our family. I’d seen ministry families torn apart by the strain of ministry, and that year had been such a strain. It felt like utter defeat. I also knew how much work it entailed. People don’t realize how much time writing and design takes, but it’s incredible. I needed to work on it at least part time to make any headway.
I took a freelancing gig for a business consultant.
The first presentation I designed for her was a formula for creating financial sustainability in your endeavors. As I designed that presentation, and as the knowledge that had eluded me was handed to me over three days of designing, tears began to fall. I finished that presentation with tears streaming down my face. It felt like a cruel irony that I was being handed the keys to monetizing this project at the same time that I no longer had the time to work on it.
That job was an intense four years. I was immediately promoted to Creative Director, and my salary was increased. I worked hard and fast designing her platform, and then leading other designers to build out multiple websites, membership groups, and curriculums. On lunches and breaks I would walk and pray, crying and feeling very alone. I had no time to build the Wisdom of God project. And I had no help.
I never wanted to build this alone. I wanted others to help write, help design, take photos, fundraise, and work as a team. I knew I didn’t have all the skills I needed to accomplish this. My background is in education and graphic design. Rallying support and networking is something I really struggle with. Writing is something that comes hard for me. In Athens I had been part of an amazing media team at our church that worked together to pull together designs each week, and I truly believe that messaging is stronger when done with others. It was wild how doors slammed hard in my face as I tried to bring others in.
Why couldn’t I inspire people to join? The more rejection I felt, the more bitterness seeped in. My enthusiasm was replaced by resentment. And I started giving God the silent treatment. Had I misheard him? Did God even speak? He was supposed to be my Father, my brother, my friend, and my counselor. All highly communicative relationships. If I couldn’t hear him, then everything I believed was a farce. I nearly lost my faith. I could feel God holding me from utter darkness by a thread, and that thread was all that was keeping me from throwing my faith, the project, all of it away.
And I hated it. Nothing else I did in life worked like this. At work, people praised my abilities. I didn’t falter. I got things done. I built websites quickly and efficiently. But this was different, bigger, harder, slower, and somehow incredibly discouraging. I cried out to God. I thought the hardship was a sign that it was wrong or bad. But as soon as I started thinking that, I was reading through the Bible, and in my reading I was at the story of David hiding in caves. God showed me that things can be bad for a time even within his calling.
After four years, our CEO’s entire platform was built, and the whole team was laid off. I was worried, I was relieved, and I was kind of excited because it was just in time to plan my daughter’s wedding! I wedding planned, job-searched, worked on Wisdom of God again, and did freelancing. I didn’t want a job. But freelancing is a feast or famine game, especially if you’re distracted by other projects. I dove into course-building spreading myself even thinner, in hopes of getting a secondary income to support myself so I could do the project.
A dear friend stepped forward, after hearing about my challenges, and offered to support me part-time. After 13 years of striving, this was a monumental opportunity! Two other freelancing gigs made it possible for me to work on the project so much! I got to redesigning the website—again, and producing designs for the billboards.
The focus clarified to a purpose that I am the most excited about since the beginning of the project. Website 4.0 is about exploring scripture in freedom.
We promote Biblical literacy, inviting people who have never encountered the Scriptures to read it for the first time.
“Explore Scripture in Freedom.”
Freedom from pressure, freedom to just learn.
Freedom to learn is something that I had needed when I was first learning Christianity. There was so much pressure to “accept.” “Accept or you’ll face the fires of hell,” “Accept or you’re rejecting God.” But when I first heard this gospel, I didn’t know God. It took me six years from first introduction, being dragged to church as a high-schooler and young college student, being exposed to Bible teachers on the radio, and learning Scriptures from good good teaching. Hearing bad teaching. Sorting that all out. It wasn’t the “invitation to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior” that saved me, it was the knowledge of God that I received from really solid teachers—teachers who weren’t pressuring me, but educating me about the history of the text, showing me how the history related to now, and revealing the implications that this wild old text had on my life today, in modern America.
I realized this was what I want to bring to the public. Access to those good teachings. God was revealing to me that he had given me my desires, and that it was ok that I wanted to do this project as much as I felt called by him to do it. That I had a passion for it because I knew the darkness of not knowing God. So I proceeded to couple my passion with his calling.
I realized by this time that billboards were the only way to bring the scriptures to a wide audience. The reason why drinks and insurance companies advertise so much on billboards is because billboards are the most cost-effective vehicle for reaching all the people. Not people identified by their algorithms for particular interests. Not people watching one type of show. All the people. The only comparable form of advertising is direct mail—but at its cheapest direct mail costs $20,000-$40,000 to reach 20,000 people. To reach 20,000 people with a billboard, it costs about $500. The cost difference is astronomical. I have surrendered to the vision of billboards as a way to bring Sunday School to the public.
And now, after a year of part-time support, with a solid website built, a growing cache of billboards, and a Bible guide to help orient people, and a readiness to start fundraising, I find myself again at an impasse.
We’ve reached 2 million views in one community, and we’ve taken that community through the Creation Story and the Old Testament. We have a billboard support commitment to take that same community through the life of Jesus over the next year. This is from a Catholic donor who understands that the results may never be seen. He works for Google, so he knows about results. But he’s dedicated to this project that decidedly shows no results. Very few clicks. No feedback. The benefits of which might not be seen for years later, and might just be the whisper of the Spirit in hearts here and there.
Unfortunately, extraneous life events have left my family in debt. Since I’m not working, we’re only building half of our retirement, and I’m now in my 50s. I started this in my 30s, and have dedicated my best working years to this project. We’ve sacrificed over $500,000 in my wages for our family, and it shows. It shows in our credit card statements. It shows in our leaky roof. It shows in our kitchen cabinets with their peeling paint and breaking frames. It shows in our old carpet that disgusts me every time I walk on it. It shows in broken floorboards and a floor that’s in desperate need of refinishing. It shows in our back steps that need rebuilt with a railing. It shows in our front walk that is fighting disintegration with rubbery patches and round-up.
And I ask you have I failed? I feel like I have. I feel like I’ve failed my family. I feel like I’ve failed the vision. I feel like I’ve failed God. I feel like I’ve failed my Christian community making everyone uncomfortable with this cockamamie idea. And I feel like I’ve failed to understand who God is or what he’s about. I know that I have no idea how church systems work, I underestimated the overwhelm of trying to build something as a woman in a man’s world, and now I look at what needs to be done to fulfill the vision of this project, which is to find twelve organizations willing to support once a year for six years for each billboard. My hope is faltering, from four years of working in the consultation world, I know that people who succeed are a powerful force of enthusiasm to raise this money; but I feel defeated and hopeless.
And every time I go to church I feel overwhelmed. I see others with ministries supported. I see people hearing God and others rejoicing.
I feel like I did it, I answered the call, I prayed on my knees, I listened to God for his voice and it feels like it’s been for naught. I can’t even get excited about this project anymore. I dread talking about it with people. For the most part I hide that fact that it’s part of my work. And every time I go to church and I hear teachings about doing what God lays on your heart, I feel this bitter resentment seep in. I’m angry. I’m angry that he didn’t provide a way forward. That somehow I did it all wrong. That now I’ve not only burdened my family, but now I have defrauded a friend by receiving support for building a project that’s going nowhere fast and I’m feeling overwhelmed and unable to continue. I have just enough enthusiasm left about the project to politely answer questions when people ask. But behind closed doors…I just can’t.
I’m applying for jobs. I’m near closing this project for good. It will be an absolute relief to throw this project in the trash. I wish I could do it sooner. But I’ve committed to my donor to go through the life of Christ over the next year, and it seems a shame to not bring that teaching to the neighborhood of W 130th and Bellaire. God help me.
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