1. Born from Tragedy to Purpose: PRAY.COM's origin story began with CEO Steve Gatena's personal tragedy when his business partner died in a helicopter crash, leading him to discover faith through a podcast sermon that changed his life.
2. Merging Technical Skills with Faith: Ryan's unique background combines theological training with computer science expertise, allowing him to use his technical abilities for Kingdom work.
3. Excellence as a Christian Value: Guided by 1 Corinthians 10:32, Ryan emphasizes doing all things with excellence as both a biblical principle and a business practice at PRAY.COM.
4. Truth and Love in Leadership: Ryan applies Christian principles in business by balancing accountability (truth) with compassion (love), creating a strong foundation for leadership.
5. Profit with Purpose: What sets PRAY.COM apart from other tech companies is its ability to combine business success with meaningful impact, being equally concerned with "margin and mission."
6. Digital Transformation of Faith: The pandemic accelerated churches' move to digital platforms, with pastors now recognizing the importance of building online communities that extend beyond geographic boundaries.‍
7. Real-World Impact: PRAY.COM has received testimonials from users whose lives were saved by content on the platform, including a law enforcement officer who decided against suicide after hearing a Sunday Service message.

Darren Shearer: Welcome back to the Christianity in Business podcast, an initiative of the Archie W. Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. I'm your host, Darren Shearer, and this is the show that helps Christian business leaders to integrate biblical values into business.

On this episode, we're joined by Ryan Beck. Ryan is cofounder and chief technology officer of PRAY.COM, the world's number one app for daily prayer and faith-based audio content. And by the way, that number one designation is not just, you know, "world's best cup of coffee" or, you know, if you're walking through Little Italy, every restaurant's got "world's best cannoli." But they're actually the highest grossing app in the App Store.

So PRAY.COM is driven by a mission to grow faith, cultivate community, and leave a legacy of helping others. He brings expertise in computer science, software engineering, and theological studies to his role as chief technology officer. He's been in the faith space for over a decade across nonprofit and for-profit companies. I hope we're all in the faith space, Ryan. Don't you think so?

Welcome to the Christianity and Business podcast. So tell us about PRAY.COM and how it got started.

Ryan Beck: So PRAY.COM—and thanks for having me, Darren. I really appreciate this opportunity to talk about how our faith connects to business. And PRAY.COM is actually a journey of faith, a unique journey of faith and how it got started.

My business partner, Steve Gatena, current CEO of PRAY.COM, he did not come from a particular faith background prior to 2016 when the idea of PRAY.COM started to formulate in his mind. In that year, he experienced a tragedy in his life. His current, former business partner at that time, died unexpectedly in a helicopter crash. And when that happened, he had to learn how not only to be a friend to his business partner's family and coworkers, but also a leader because he was the CEO of his business partner's company that he built from the ground up.

And so he had to lead a team as a friend and as a leader during a very rough time, and he didn't know what to do. So he started searching around the Internet and with friends on how to handle this situation. And fortunately, one of his friends gave him a podcast from a pastor in Flower Mound, Texas. And that sermon, that pastor, changed his life and the history of digital faith as that planted the seed for PRAY.COM.

And from that, he knew it was really hard to find really good faith content online, and he had to have a friend to recommend him, and it shouldn't be the case. He wanted everybody to be able to find this content online. And so this idea of the digital destination for faith started to ruminate in his mind.

He ended up connecting with my now business partner, Mike Lynn, myself, and Matt Potter, and we started formulating this idea of what PRAY.COM was gonna be. We knew that it had to be a place for faith, for people to come and find hope in a hopeless situation, to find joy, to help them overcome struggles, and most importantly, to make meaningful connections in the faith space with amazing leaders that you would wanna hear from. And so that's what we've been doing since about 2017 when we initially launched, is we've been helping people grow faith and cultivate community.

Darren: Yeah. Awesome. So you've had quite a journey yourself. When did you first realize God wanted to be involved in your work in business?

Ryan: I'd say from an early age, early beginnings in my career. I had the remarkable opportunity to go to Bible college to study, become a minister. I did that, and then I started working in the ministry, worked in the ministry for a couple years, training to be a minister.

I realized during that time, I loved working in the ministry. I loved the church, and I loved the purpose behind it, the mission behind it. I didn't think that being a pastor was a calling on my life, and I decided to pursue a degree in computer science and philosophy. One day I'll put that philosophical degree to use when I retire. But right now I'm putting the computer science degree to work, and I've been able to develop these skill sets, these technical skill sets that God has graced me with and use them for meaningful impact in the world.

I had my first opportunity at a company called Mission India. They do philanthropic work all across India, but also the greater Asia area in the faith space and the secular space. And there, I really got to see how I can take these technical skill sets that God had given me and apply them in mission-driven work. And I knew that that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to do purpose-driven work.

And so when I reconnected with my friend Steve, and we started talking about PRAY.COM, I knew this was a great opportunity to continue doing that great work in the faith space, in the faith industry, and apply my skill sets at a higher stage than maybe at Mission India, the great work that we were doing. But PRAY.COM gave me a greater stage to actually work. And so that's when I would say, at Mission India is when I really got to find the connection between my skill set and work and how I can use it for the kingdom.

Darren: And what's your favorite Bible verse or passage related to business and entrepreneurship?

Ryan: Yeah. So I think that First Corinthians 10:32, it really speaks to something that I found—that I learned actually in my philosophical studies. And I was able to tie it with my theological studies in my work and do all things to the glory of God. And so another way to translate that is "do all things with excellence."

And so as Christians, we have a purpose beyond ourselves, beyond the immediate work. We have a purpose that God has given us to do excellent work. And I believe that is the call of a Christian, to do whatever you do with excellence. And that's that's one of the main verses that I go back to, and that's one of the main verses for work and life that I try to live by.

Darren: Yeah. What does that look like in your business specifically?

Ryan: So I think that when I think about my faith in business, I don't think about necessarily particular instances and what does the Bible say, how to handle this. I really think about a foundation that I get to lay as a Christian in business, and it gives me some moral framework. It gives me an ethical stance to stand on, but it also gives me policies and practices on how to handle certain situations.

And so one thing as Christians that we learn from the pulpit and from the Bible is that we aren't to shy away from truth. We are also to deliver truth with love, though. And so sometimes we overemphasize the love and we neglect the truth. Sometimes we overemphasize the truth and neglect the love.

And with these two combinations of truth and love, I think you can deliver a high output company because you're able to hold people accountable like we do at the church. You know, we have ethical standards at churches and you have accountability with pastors and elders and mentors and friends. Right? So same thing applies in the business. There's accountability, there's truth, and then there's that love. How do you guide people and help them meet those standards that you've set?

And by no means should the Christian lower their standards or set low standards. They should be high. We serve a great God who's given us great skill sets to do great things. And, you know, I think that we should operate, coordinate.

Darren: Yeah. And and and so, you know, obviously, all the other Silicon Valley companies, they wanna do things with excellence. They wanna do a good job. They wanna take care of people. As a Christian-owned company, what do you feel like really kinda sets PRAY.COM apart from a lot of the other tech companies in terms of how you apply that verse from First Corinthians 10 about doing things for the glory of God?

Ryan: Yeah. That's a good question. I think one of the great things—the great opportunities we have at Pray is that, yes, we are a venture-backed company, and so we do have to have high standards. You know, we have to hit numbers, hit quarterly goals. Those things apply. That's no different for Pray.

One thing that we offer, and other companies do as well, but I think what makes us stand out is we get to make profit and tie it with purpose. We actually get to be concerned with margin and mission. And so we're able to come in every day knowing that the task at hand that I have to complete this day or this week for some launch is actually—it has meaning beyond that. We're impacting people's lives. We're actually having a positive impact in the world.

We get hundreds of reviews about how we're transforming, not only just people's morning and day with daily devotionals, but how we're helping people overcome depression and addiction through prayer. Why? Because that's what faith does. We get to help people grow their faith. Faith helps people overcome deep struggles that people—we all encounter throughout life, and we get to actually deliver them audio, video, reading material for them to grow their faith. And so I think that's really what PRAY.COM offers is purpose and profit.

Darren: Yeah. Is there a particular testimonial that stands out in your mind?

Ryan: I love this story. It was probably about a year ago, give or take. We actually got an email from a pastor that's on our platform, has content on there. And we have something called Sunday Service, and we have different pastors from around the world that will host the Sunday service. And he was giving a Sunday service message.

And a notification on this customer's phone pops up, and it's this message. He listens to it, and it changed his life. That customer, it changed his life so much, he wrote into that pastor, he said, "I wanna let you know, Pastor Adam Mesa, that even though I don't attend your church, your message changed my life. I was gonna commit suicide that week."

Darren: Wow.

Ryan: "If I didn't hear that message, I would no longer be here. But your message gave me hope." He worked in law enforcement, the service industry, and he was going through a tough time. And this person, his life was transformed by a message.

And that happens every day at church. We just get to do it at a global stage. We have that privilege. We're so grateful to be able to do that, to connect amazing leaders that are transforming people's lives with people of faith and help them overcome, in a lot of instances, these mental health issues that are plaguing us even right now.

We just came out of the physical pandemic. We're still in a mental health pandemic, and pastors are helping people every day overcome those mental health struggles, and they do it on PRAY.COM as well.

Darren: Wow. And so through the pandemic, this has affected y'all's operations. You know, everything has gone remote in the last couple of years. And I don't know if you were doing the Sunday service before the pandemic or if that was something that kinda started as people were not able to go to their physical church building. What are you noticing? What trends are you noticing in terms of how people are, I guess, doing church, so to speak? Is a lot more of that kind of going online into more of these other digital platforms, or what are you seeing?

Ryan: Yeah, I think that what we're seeing is that the faith, churches are realizing the digital transformation that is coming to the church, in that there is an online representation, an online community that they have to be a part of. The pandemic spurred that along. It didn't cause it. It had already been existing. It just accelerated it.

And so now what we're seeing is churches have a greater desire to come online, to form communities online, and to reach people online. Whereas before, I would say before the pandemic, it was, "This is our local church. I have an online ministry, but it's really to get people plugged into other local churches. I'm not really looking to do community."

But now it's starting to change, starting to evolve. People, pastors in particular, are starting to realize that community no longer just means my physical local community. It also means my online global community that may not be living in my same area. So I think that's the biggest trend that we're seeing is digital church or church is coming online and not just with their content, but with community as well.

Darren: Yeah. How many people are attending y'all's Sunday service?

Ryan: You know, we're very fortunate to get hundreds of thousands of people to come in and join the Sunday service every Sunday. And so it makes it a great place for pastors to come in and get their message out. So we're super excited that we get to work with pretty amazing pastors to help them deliver that message.

Darren: Yeah. And so is it—how many pastors is it, like, one service everyone's hearing the same message and there's worship? Like, how does that work?

Ryan: Yeah. So it works just like a regular Sunday service, and it is—yeah. It's one pastor. We have some worship, and then we have a message. The difference is you can kinda catch it all day. And so that's one of the unique opportunities that you have. And then there's other content afterwards that people can continue listening to if they really like that message. They can continue diving in to something along those lines or explore beyond that.

Darren: Yeah. Wow. Do you have stuff for kids too, or is it pretty much targeting adults?

Ryan: Yeah. We actually have kids Bible stories on there. And so one of the great things about the kids Bible stories is parents write in all the time. "My kids love it. We go to bed to it. They always ask me, 'Hey, can you play it?'" And so it's kind of like a kid's bible—a bedtime bible story in effect. So yeah.

Darren: Awesome. Well, we're gonna have to check that out and try it out with our kids. We've got boys 8 and under. I think we'll just love that. So where should people go? Obviously, PRAY.COM. Anything you wanna say about how people can get connected?

Ryan: Yeah. So PRAY.COM, you can check us out by just going to PRAY.COM or downloading the PRAY.COM app in the iOS or Android app stores. And you can browse our PRAY.COM articles to get to know us a little bit more. We also have PRAY.COM/meet-the-founders, if you wanna know about the founding team, a little bit about us, and our background.

Darren: Yeah. Alright. Excellent. What's one action you would want our Christian business professionals to take today?

Ryan: You know, I love this book called "Love Works." And I think that that really spells out how can we incorporate Jesus' love in the workplace. Love is this soft, emotional word that people in the business world may get tripped up by, but it doesn't have to be that way.

And there's a great quote in that book, and it goes something like this: "You can use power in a way that does not abuse power." And so often, power is abused because love doesn't accompany it. Jesus was the most powerful human being slash god-man that we have ever witnessed, but yet, he empowered people.

And I think that's what that book really communicates is how do you make love work in the workplace by using power to empower your teammates? And so that would be the thing I would take away. That's a great book for me. I can go back to it all the time.

Darren: Yeah. Well, everybody go check that out. It's by Joel Manby, former CEO of Herschend Entertainment, which owns Dollywood and a lot of other theme parks, and then he went on to be the CEO of SeaWorld. He was the first guest on Undercover Boss.

Ryan: Yeah.

Darren: Yeah. If anyone's—I'm sure some of our listeners have watched that episode, but excellent book and teaching. Thanks for mentioning that. And PRAY.COM, again, is the website. Gonna be super easy for people to remember. Ryan, thank you for coming on the show and to encourage our listeners today.

Ryan: Of course, Darren. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

Darren: We hope you've enjoyed this episode. And if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity in Business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HBU Center for Christianity in Business at christianityinbusiness.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.