Go back to nuclear technology. We can power the world through, you know, basically clean energy with nuclear technology, or we can blow up nations. Right? I think all new all new advancements in technology can be used for good or for evil. Right? And the evil 1 will always want us to use it for evil, and there are people that will use it for that. But people continually have to use it for good to be able to fight back.
Finding time with God. Is that a struggle for you like it is for me? I mean, life's busy. Is it wearing you down? There are a lot of mental health issues on the rise, and people are wondering how the church can make a positive impact in bringing healing. It's now the time for the body of Christ to engage deeply with the world on these kinds of issues to shine the light of God's kingdom into everyday lives. So welcome to the True Changes Everything podcast. This is where we explore where God is at work, changing everything through Jesus, who is the incarnation of the truth.
Today, we're gonna be learning about exciting new applications and how to wisely engage with different technological tools for God's kingdom. My guest is Matthew Potter. Now, Matthew is the cofounder of pray dot com. That is the world's number 1 app for daily prayer and faith based audio content. Matt brings an expertise in the areas of strategizing change, building tech products and apps, finding markets in the continuously growing and evolving technology industry. And at a time when Matt was looking for ways to give back spiritually and apply his expertise to do something bigger for God's kingdom, he ran into his friend Steve who needed some spiritual encouragement. He'll tell you the story. But shortly after this divine run-in, he and Steve launched pray dot com, which will be the focus of our conversation today.
So let's welcome Matthew Potter to the Truth Changes Everything podcast. Matthew Potter, welcome to the Truth Changes Everything podcast. Honored and blessed to be here, Jeff. Thanks so much for having me. I've been looking forward to our conversation because you are the cofounder of pray dot com. Everybody's talking about this, and there's so many interesting aspects to it. But I would love if you could just share the origin story of this app, the organization, how you and your buddy got together to do it. I think this is fascinating.
So, for me, Jeff, it all started with a 15 year old girl who was walking down the street. She had just found out that she was pregnant and she was going to an abortion clinic. And on her way to that clinic, there happened to be a church. And so she stopped in at the church to talk to the pastor about some advice on the biggest decision she was gonna make in her life up to that point. And the pastor was a brand new pastor, so he was a little nervous. So he went in the back, actually called his friend that he went to seminary with, and said, Hey, what should I tell this 15 year old girl? And his friend was a church planter who just planted like a 20 person church in a high school gym in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. And, you know, the church planter said, you know what? It's providence that you called me this morning. I've been counseling this married couple who's been trying to have children, for 10 years and couldn't. And they're Christians. They just joined my church plan. Why don't you go back in there and ask that girl if she'd be willing to give her baby up for adoption? And so, the pastor went back in and the girl said yes. And I was the baby the girl brought into the church and I got adopted because of these 2 pastors that were friends.
Wow. So my life started out providentially right at that moment where, you know, it could have been taken away. I went to school out in Los Angeles, got the really unique opportunity, Jeff, to meet Steve Jobs. And, I didn't know at the time, but he's also adopted. Super inspirational guy. So when Steve launched the App Store my senior year of college, I actually dropped out of school, started a company that built apps super hard, bootstrapped that company. We built it over 10 years, built over 8000 apps in the App Store for all the major real estate companies in the United States. It was super, super fun, but, you know, I accomplished my goals and just reached this weird point in my life where I didn't have to work anymore if I didn't want to. And I wanted to give back to the church that gave me so much. And I just called my pastor and his daughter, who is my best friend, and said, Hey, how can I help and give back to the church? And they said, Hey, why don't you help us open a new campus? And I said, I'm an introverted tech entrepreneur who didn't go to seminary. That sounds terrifying. And they said, you know what? Pray about it.
So I prayed about it. And the very next day, Doctor. Jeff, I ran into, my good friend, Steve Gutina, at a coffee shop in Westlake Village. And Steve and I had known each other because we played on rival high school football teams, and we were in the same entrepreneur groups together in our area. And I just asked Steve how he was doing, and he just kinda told me that he was doing terrible. His, Steve Steve grew up to a single Jewish mom on welfare. He ended up going to the Air Force Academy to play football. He got injured in a training accident and just this shows a lot about Steve's character. But over the course of 6 months, he got better and walked onto USC's football team earning a position on the team, winning a Rose Bowl under Pete Carroll. And then as a part of a homework assignment, he started his first company, which was building professional YouTube channels for fortune 500 companies. So he built Red Bull's YouTube channel, Marriott Hotels, Mattel Toys, the LA Dodgers, Herbalife, bunch of other companies. And then he had the opportunity to sell that company and become the 29 year old CEO of the world's largest aerial production company. So they had 40 aircraft, helicopters, planes, and jets. They would film all the major motion pictures like Jurassic World, Transformers, Maverick, all you know, all the different movies that were coming out that had airplanes or helicopters or jets in them. And then, they would also work for the FBI CIA Homeland Security. It's basically the same job, do surveillance, and you just send in the video content to a different place. Instead of a studio, it's going to the CIA or FBI.
Wow. So he had he had everything. This is a guy who had everything. Yeah. Right? He had everything. This is the American dream. And yet He was making movies, catching bad guys, and saving lives at 29, and it doesn't get better than that. Yeah. Right? And so, unfortunately, September eleventh 2015, Steve's business partner died in a plane crash in Medellin, Colombia. They were filming a movie with Tom Cruise called American Made. They were stunt flying all day in the jungles of Colombia and just routine trip taking the plane back to the hangar. Steve's business partner died in a plane crash. And, because of that, Steve began searching for something to help with, that grief that he was facing in his life. And a former Navy SEAL that worked at the company gave Steve an audio sermon from a pastor, and it changed his life, and he became a Christian.
Wow. And in that moment of becoming a Christian, Steve was kinda mad about it. He was like, why and this is what he told me at the coffee shop. He said, why doesn't the ESPN for Christians exist? We have the worldwide digital destination for sports. Why don't we have the worldwide digital destination for Christians online? It doesn't make sense to me. Right. If there was a brand like that, I would have known about it. I would have went out and sought this content. And, because, you know, Steve didn't he didn't grow up going to church. He just Yeah. He grew up to a single Jewish mom on welfare at a different path than me. I grew up in church, going to church every week with my parents, you know. It was kind of ingrained. And so I said, you know what, Steve? You're right. And, that's where the birth of pray dot com happened, was at that coffee shop. And the seeds were planted when Steve's business partner died. And then, yeah, we decided to start the company with 2 other incredible co founders, Mike Lin and Ryan Beck.
Ryan, was like the largest crystal meth dealer in our area, actually. He went to prison, got mentored by a couple prisoners, and found Christ in jail. Got out, couldn't get a job, and, a church locally here nearby gave him a job as the facilities manager. And they ended up giving him a scholarship to go to college, Calvin College. And that's where Ryan got his computer science degree with a minor in philosophy. I saw that you also, did philosophy too. Yes. But, yeah, Ryan ended up working for a bunch of different insurance companies building all their back end systems, and now he's our, CTO. So and Ryan went to high school with Steve. You know, Steve was working on being all American. Ryan was working on being America's most wanted and, but now, you know, Ryan's Ryan's incredible. He also went to seminary too, and he's just changing lives all over the world. And then Mike, Mike grew up Catholic. He's still Catholic. Watched his dad go to a paper mill for 50 years, the same door in Green Bay, Wisconsin of this paper mill. And, Mike's mom actually got swindled by a financial advisor. And so Mike changed his major from marketing to finance because he didn't want anyone to be swindled out of their money again. And, he actually met Steve at a conference at USC. And, that's how Mike became our cofounder. And just loved the idea of helping change people's lives through pray dot com. So that was, October 20 second 2016, about 8 years ago.
Okay. 8 years ago. Well, it's Yeah. It's a remarkable story and and and a providential 1. It it's clear that this is the kind of team that only God could put together. That's right. That's right. Like Ocean's 11 heavenly style. That's right. Yeah. I I love it.
Well, let's talk a little bit about pray dot com and and and tech for a minute. I know people spend 4 and a half hours a day, I think that's what the research is showing, on their phones which is that amounts to 70 days a year of the of the 365 that we have available. And there's a huge amount of discussion, especially in generational, people who are thinking about generational issues. What kind of stewardship is that or how does that change the way we think or the way we act and interact with other people? And I'm curious how you've had those discussions with your team about how pray dot com can move into a situation where it seems that people are so obsessed with their devices that that they're not living life the way they're supposed to. And then then at the same time, you're asking them, okay, here's 1 more thing for you to look at on your phone. I know you've had all those discussions, and I wish you'd just take us inside of them for a minute.
Yeah. You know, I I don't think, Steve Jobs and, the people over at Samsung and others, I don't think they believed they knew what they were doing when they launched the phone. I I don't think it was nefarious. Right? When they were building the App Store and all of these things. But it's super interesting because it's it's changed our behaviors completely. And if we go back and think about the radio and the launch of the radio and how many people it reached and how it changed behaviors completely, Right? For people they were we were working class people, people were farming, and now all of a sudden, their Wednesdays, they were listening to War of the Worlds, and they thought aliens were literally coming down Yeah. Listening to this audio drama through the radio. Right? And so we had change of behavior with radio. We had change of behavior with TV. People sitting more watching in front of the television at night. And now we have a change of behavior with with the phone. Right?
And through those moments of technological change, Christians have always been there to be able to take back that technology for the kingdom. So the way that we think about it is we're not gonna be able to change people's behaviors of them being on the phone. We should be able to be 1 of the things that they can do while on the phone since they're spending their time there already, go to where people are at. And that's that's kind of the thought process. Everything is fighting for your focus, and we're seeing the mental health issues in America from social media, big social media, and others through comparison, and and all sorts of things that are happening in people's minds as they're consuming this content. So we need to go where people are at. We need to take technology back for the kingdom. We need to inject healthy habits, healthy biblical principles, the Bible, the stories of the Bible, different pastors content, guided prayers. A lot of the things that pray dot com offers, digital devotionals, are trying to help develop and create those healthy habits of prayer. And so that's that's the way we think about it. We're not gonna be able to we can't get rid of these. Right? But we gotta go where people are at. And if everything's fighting for your focus, you know what? Part of that should be focusing on Christ.
I I like the way you're approaching this as as how do you use this technology to glorify God? In the early days of radio, you had, the old old time gospel hour, which was the number 1 listen to program in the United States. When when when television came out, you had people like Billy Graham, movies, and and others. So each new technology, the question was, how do we use this to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ? And there were there were people out there who did that and and they were really innovative. I was just looking at a couple of examples the other day. 1 is, you know, after World War 2, people people knew that the Holocaust had taken place but they didn't talk about the Holocaust. In fact, many Jewish people didn't wanna talk about it. They just wanted to forget it and and all of a sudden, it just it's like it never happened. 6000000 people just disappeared and nothing ever happened. And I was reading someone the other day who said, oh, that all took that all was the case until the 19 seventies when some secular program came out on television and all of a sudden everybody's talking about the Holocaust. But the book, The Hiding Place, which is a Christian book, and the movie based on the book, The Hiding Place came out before that. It was actually Christians who were the ones who drew attention to the holocaust and its horrors to make sure that some something like that would never happen again. So you're you're an innovator in in that way, and and I I just really appreciate that. I'm thankful for it. Thank you.
Could you take us inside just for a minute for those who aren't that familiar with pray dot com because they will be and when we finish this this show. But take us inside the user experience. What happens when someone hears about it? They go on to the site. What do they do?
Yeah. Most people hear about us through, sharing. So we have a hundred and 52000000 shares of the app outside the app on other platforms like text or email, also social media as well. But, you so someone gets a link, from a friend, from a family member of the of the app. They go in. They open the app. Immediately, there, our daily devotional pops up. And it's a devotional with a prayer at the end. And so you can listen in. You can also, go along with it if you'd like to go along with it. But immediately, you're developing a healthy habit of listening to a daily devotional and a guided prayer. And that's the goal number 1. And every time you open the app, that's the first thing you see.
Once you complete that daily prayer, you're taken to a streak page where we are we are counting helping you count the days in a row that you are developing that healthy habit of prayer. And then, once you complete the streak page, you're on a a leaderboard page where you can remind other people to not lose their streak, and you can praise people for completing their daily devotional for that day. After that page, you're able to share the app if you wanna share the app or you're taken to the, main screen of content. And on the main screen, the home screen, you've got pray radio at the very top, where we have a bunch of different incredible, pastors, tremendous, Bible teachers on pray radio, and some of them are going back all the way to when radio was coming out. Right? We also have Pray TV. We've got different people on Pray TV like Gary Wilkerson. His dad was David Wilkerson that did the Cross and the Switchblade movie from back in the seventies, which is pretty cool. So just like we were talking about taking back technology for the kingdom. And then, different podcasts from different incredible Bible teachers on there, and then a bunch of pre original content.
So we hired a 61 piece orchestra, former Disney voice actors and actresses, and we took the entire Bible and created it as almost a entertaining cinematic show. So you can hear your favorite Bible stories come to life in this cinematic audio format. We also built a sleep version of that so that people can listen to their favorite bible stories to a specific tone and rhythm that helps you fall asleep. And then we have a kids version too to help teach your kids the bible before bedtime. And parents absolutely love it. My nephews love it. They, like, replay David and Goliath every single night. I don't know why, but they just want they want David and Goliath every night. So, my brother and sister-in-law, they're just they play that for them every night. It's been great. Yeah. So they're they're engaging. The entire family then can engage. That's right.
And I'm I'm I'm remembering the times driving kids to school, that my kids are in their twenties now, but driving them to school and we're always looking for something to listen to. Well, pray dot com can step in and help you with that. That's right. Absolutely. Whether you know, and we've got different content that changes based on the time of day that you're listening. So, content for the morning, for afternoon, if you're at lunch break or you're doing, you know, you're exercising or you're doing your chores, and also when you get home from work, on your way home from work, or you're listening in bed before you fall asleep.
Now the app is called pray dot com and how how how does it encourage prayer? You've got the the teaching aspect of it, but, I it's something I've always wondered about because I have a tough time. You know, I'm 1 of those who after 5 minutes of praying, I'm antsy. I you know, this is the longest I sit still for anything that I do. You know? And I'm just I'm just curious how how it helps build an attitude and a practice of prayer itself. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. So it's through that daily daily devotional and guided prayer experience. So that streak experience, we're continually reminding you to pray. You can also set it to different times if you'd like to and add it to your calendar to remind you to pray, but we we're reminding people in that right before they start their day, they're getting that push notification when they're waking up to go in and check your prayer and spend that time and moment with God. And so you do get the daily devotional. It has a great, you know, sound background. It helps calm you right when you wake up. But that is your reminder to pray. And, you know, what if what if 8000000000 people on the planet prayed for 30 days in a row and they actually kept track? I think we'd be living in a lot different world. Wow. Yeah. We certainly would.
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In 1 specific instance, you mentioned mental health earlier, mental health issues, and the the spirituality and clinical practice journal actually studied your app. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And they, and what they found is that that using that app improved mental health over time. So, so make that connection for us because there are lots of people struggling with their mental health and to think of an app as having an effect is quite remarkable.
So we we have a incredible chief data officer who came to us from a company called Harbor Freight Tools. He was there. He took Harbor Freight Tools from a hundred million dollars a year to 8000000000 dollars a year. Wow. And almost single handedly was collecting all of the data to show, like, which products they should show in which stores in which order in which advertisements, millions of SKUs just crunching large amounts of data. And his name is, Victor Harris. He's an incredible guy. So when Victor came on our team and he brought 3, PhD data scientists with him, 1 of the first initiatives that we began planning was something called Pray Science.
And it was very counterintuitive to me in the beginning. I was like, well, you know, why should we do science? It sounds like it's gonna lose a lot of money. Like and and, you know, Victor and some of the members of the team just said, look, we are created in the image of God. Wouldn't you think by connecting with your creator, when you're created in the image of God, would help you with your physical body and your mental health? Not just with your spiritual life, which is a huge thing as well, but wouldn't you think that it would help with your mental health? And I said, yeah. That makes complete sense. Okay. Let's do this. Right?
And so we lit up Prey Science Division, and we've been working with some incredible universities and researchers. And we just brought on our first, PhD science researcher, doctor Bree Laird. And she's the 1 that's been spearheading a lot of these, studies that we've been doing. So we actually have a cross sectional survey that we ran. And, we just sent out a bunch of survey questions in the app, and what we came back with was, well, functionally, people that use the app in more frequency during a week reported less mental health symptoms that they were going through. And so when we got that signal, we didn't want just wanna leave it at a cross sectional survey. We did a, an 8 week randomized, trial of people that were using the app. And that study came back, and it's what you're referencing. It's, you know, those people we we tracked people using the app, brand new users. And when they were using it for more than 5 days a week, they saw a outsized return on mental health symptoms going away. Anxiety going away. Depression going away. Some of these, you know, really trauma filled and things that are deep rooted in people going away.
And you know what? We we don't believe it's the app. It's God. Right? It's God. We're just a conduit. But the way that we've built the content and the way that it's, created, it it has really helped a tremendous amount of people. And so, we're actually doubling down and we've gotten published now in 3 different scientific journals. All about and it's not the first time prayer has been studied before. There's other studies on prayer that it increases the gray matter density in your brain when you when you pray and different things. And, you know, it just it was super interesting to me because, you know, you would think meditating helps a lot, but really meditating is focusing within and focusing on the problem and holding on to it. Whereas with prayer, you're giving your problem up to God who has the power over that problem and, it's helped a lot of people. So we're doubling down on Pray Science and you're gonna see a lot more content coming out created using this methodology that we're gonna do more studies on. So it's been it's been really incredible to see the results. Yeah.
Are you studying the difference between people who already are religious and people who are non religious? So we don't ask that question in the survey, if you're religious or not religious. But it is a randomized group of users that are trying pray dot com for the first time, that we did our second study on. Mhmm. And, you know, those people could be religious. Pray dot com is a filter. Right? So it could be they're coming, they're wanting to use the app because they're already a Christian. And we don't know what denomination or, you know, if they're Catholic or Protestant or Presbyterian or Baptist. But we also don't know where they're at in their faith journey. So that might be the next level of study is, you know, if you come in and you have some level of experience with, church or religion or no experience, how does that net out? So that might be another study that we would run. Right now, we don't know. It's it was a random group of people and we don't know the level of, you know, study that they've done of the Bible or the or what denomination they are or how often they go to church or some of those other things that we're gonna run more studies on. So Yeah. It's a great question.
I I think it's I think it'd be interesting because, you know, you do have this sacred secular divide in in culture. But Yeah. You know, my suspicion is people are coming to pray dot com either out of curiosity because they have an emotional need of some sort that's not being met any other way. And and so there are a lot of people out there who don't believe in God who actually are spiritual. They would be open to something spiritual which can be dangerous because there are all kinds of spiritual experiences that are that are false. But this gives you this gives them an opportunity to kind of play around with it a little bit on their own and see what God does in their mind and in their heart.
I I'm I guess I'm also curious about how that bridges over to church community because I know 1 thing about most apps, you know, aside from some gaming platforms is it's a solitary experience And Right. You know, how do you how do you create the community? How do, you know, how do people get encouraged to join the body of Christ or, you know, there's so many people that have church hurt and they don't want to be involved. You know, I I've never met. In my time of life right now, I know more believers who are not involved in a church community in any way. They love Jesus, but they just they just don't they're just not part of a church. And I'm curious what kind of connection there is.
Doctor. Jeff, we talk about this all the time. So it's super fun. We go we say, how do we go from URL to IRL? And IRL is 1 of those, you know, new millennial terms, I guess, in real life. Right? Yeah. So, how do we go from URL to IRL? And, you know, it it's interesting. So if we if we likened the big big media right now is all talking about how the we have the decline of Christianity in America happening. Right? And they're referencing people in the pews as the decline of Christianity. So, you know, we see things that we can draw, we can draw some conclusions of that are are similar. Right? So let's just let's just back up and say, okay, we're we're just scientists. We're looking at this. Right? If we were to look at church as a physical location that you go and you get content from, what other like physical locations do you go to where you get content from? Okay. Okay. Movie theaters. Right. Right?
So, if we went to a movie theater so, are we gonna say that Hollywood is declining and movies are declining completely because people are going to movie theaters less right now? Well, we could draw that conclusion, but that's not what's happening. More movies are TV shows are being consumed than ever before Yeah. Actually. They're just being consumed in a different place. So if we were to look at, Christian content consumption over the last 24 months, it's up 52 percent. Wow. Christian content consumption in America is up 52 percent in the last 24 months. Now, church populations are declining, but that's a different problem we need to solve. Right? So more people are seeking, more people are consuming Christian content than ever before. But how do we take that from URL to IRL? Right? So I'm I'm against saying that, you know, Christianity is in decline in America because of that stat. It's just going to a different place. Yeah.
The barrier to entry to going to a physical location, because we live such busy lives now, is higher. So, gone are the days where you would get with your wife and get in the car and go to a couple churches in the 15 minute drive and see which 1 you like the best. Right? What do we what do we do now before we go to a restaurant? Doctor Jeff, before you go to a restaurant, new restaurant, you've never been there before, you're gonna spend your hard earned money, you're trying to decide if you're gonna like it or not, what do you do? I'm looking at the reviews. You're going on Yelp. Right? You're going on Google reviews. You're checking out photos, videos of people that have been there before.
The same thing the same behaviors that we're training people with restaurants and movie theaters, they're applying to church to. And they wanna go in. They wanna hear the pastor first. They wanna see photos of the location. They wanna make sure if it's right for them before they're gonna go take their Sunday morning and decide if they wanna go to a place that they're not going to like. They're gonna do more research because more information is available to them now. So they have more information that they can do they can make decisions. So, you know, some of our goals and things with pray dot com is we're going to be helping people go from URL to IRL with some of the different ministries that are on the app. Now we're very selective on the ministries that we have on the app that are providing content. But how do we if people wanna go to that next level and they wanna go to a physical location near them, how do we recommend those locations? So it's currently an internal discussion right now with our leadership team at pray dot com and how we take care of those people and help shepherd those people to the right locations that they would wanna go to and how do we help them in that decision making process. So, yeah. We we talk about it all the time. And what behaviors are already happening. Right? That people are doing before they check a physical location, before they get in their car and drive. Right? Which is higher barrier to entry than pressing play. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
That's right. And and I understand it's a different problem than than we used to have. I mean if you grew up going to church, you kinda felt a sense of a rhythm. You would do it every week. It's, you know, it's your Sabbath. You you get up, you go to the church, you're part of the church community. But if somebody's coming to Christianity for the first time, that's not an ingrained behavior. There's no Sabbath impulse. Yeah. That's right. So how do you move people toward, let's make this part of your weekly pattern of life. This is your, you know, this is a calendar thing. I think that's, I think that is fascinating. That's right.
So so this is this is fascinating to me and I love the way you're thinking that through and getting into the minds of a person, what their barriers might be and all of that. Let's talk about the future of technology just generally for the kingdom of God because I think the last problem that you mentioned that you're dealing with is something similar to say a Billy Graham crusade. Somebody would come down the aisle, they would trust Jesus Christ as their lord and savior and then they try to connect them with a local church and that's where the real problems begin. Because there are, you know, there are a lot of differences between the churches and the churches that sign up and say we want more people coming aren't necessarily the churches that you want them to go to. But how you know, but at the same time, you gotta keep everybody involved and you don't wanna hurt people's feelings based on their different denomination. I just there's so many different aspects to that.
But I wanna just talk about the kingdom of God for a minute because globally, what what do you see happening? This is we I I had always thought, well, this technology and the smartphone, the way it's being used is fracturing society. There's no longer a social consensus. People aren't even consuming the same information. So the things that everybody thought we all knew, we don't actually know those things anymore. And, and it, it felt a little discouraging, but I have a suspicion that you're saying this from a very different perspective.
Yeah. I I am. And if, you know, if we were talking about there's lots of different technologies we could talk about. Right? But I think the top of mind for everybody is, you know, artificial intelligence. Right? And how does AI technology work? Well, you know, it it works based on what you feed it. So if you're feeding AI technology things that are not truthful, then it's gonna provide responses that are not truthful. Right? And so, you know, at at pray dot com, we've developed some of our own AI technology that we're utilizing to help help people save help pastors and ministries save money and help them be able to reach more people in the world. So there's 1 way you can use AI technology for good. Right?
Describe how that process works. I'm really curious about that. Yeah. So so right now, within the app, when, ministries, are using our app to be able to reach our big and growing audience. They upload their content, and the artificial intelligence will automatically transcribe that content. It'll also create a title and description for the content that they put in, and then it also is translating that content in that person's voice. So, doctor Jeff, you could you could have your podcast in Spanish, German, Chinese if you wanted, and it would all, get sent out. It would all be distributed at the same time across multiple platforms. And then Prey dot com's artificial intelligence also brings back all the data and analytics to show you what content people are loving, what they're getting through, what they're sharing, what they're favoriting the most. So it helps you create content that helps people more. Wow.
So that's part of the ways that we're using artificial intelligence within pray dot com is to reach more people groups in their native tongue, through that translation technology and then also transcription and then translation of the transcription. Sorry. That's kind of confusing. But yeah. And it's it's really cool because if we make a mistake, just like we're talking on this, you know, this podcast right now, if we make a mistake in prey dot com's technology, you can go in and hit edit and change the mistake and you would never know, and then it updates all the audio and video content all over with that mistake fixed. So it's a pretty cool technology that we've built, and and we're continuously feeding our models with tremendous bible teachers. So we're feeding it with biblical truth. Right? And so eventually you'll be able to ask Praise AI questions on the Bible and it'll come back with, you know, it could come back with what does Jack Graham say about that? Or what does, you know, Tony Evans say about that? Or what does Doctor. Ed Young say about that? You know, lots of different ways that you can use that technology for the good. Right?
And let's take it all the way back to to, you know, we talked about behaviors and previous technologies. Let's go back to nuclear technology. We can power the world through, you know, basically clean energy with nuclear technology, or we can blow up nations. Right? I think all new all new advancements in technology can be used for good or for evil. Right? And the evil 1 will always want us to use it for evil, and there are people that will use it for that, but people continually have to use it for good to be able to fight back.
That's amazing. Well, it's true. Yeah. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to apply that to so say somebody in the rising generation who's interested in technology, interested at maybe they're studying computer science, you know, studying cyber or something like that. Give them a vision for where some of the needs are right now, where they might be able to think of themselves as a missionary moving into some place where their their particular call would need a specific thirst?
You know, lots of people have have asked me to solve lots of problems, when it comes to apps and technology just because of my background. So, you know, people are trying to figure out problems with getting money into different countries because, you know, Christians right now are being, sent away from certain countries in the world. And and being able to get money into those countries without it being taxed at an exorbitant rate, to be able to help missionaries and Christian efforts in those countries is 1 way, 1 problem that needs to be solved.
I think, you know, there's def there's no, there's no small amount of problems right now in the world. And, the more that we can provide, use AI technology to help save money and empower ministries to do more with less people, I think is something else that that people should be thinking about if they were venturing into wanting to start a Christian business or wanting to start a ministry, a technology ministry.
Also, cybersecurity is a big thing. The US government just is now giving a lot of money to places of worship right now for cybersecurity, and security of their facilities. So I would say that that is something that's super important, in the future as as battle and war becomes more ones and zeros than it becomes bullets and guns. So yeah, I would say cybersecurity, money, being able to transfer money in different ways, through different technologies to be able to save more money to use it for kingdom purposes, and then, everything in artificial intelligence and, machine learning, to be able to help get the message out to multiple people groups and help find out how we can create better, mental health and spiritual health habits for people is is really big on top of mind.
So I love that. I wouldn't have thought of those being sort of missionary initiatives for the time in which we live but in in many ways they are in the same way that in the 19 fifties, people were using linguistics to learn how to communicate the gospel to individuals in their heart language. Yeah. Now we're using the language of our time, the technology of our time to learn how to communicate biblical truth.
Matthew, I love this. This is fascinating. So folks will wanna go check out pray dot com and just keep in mind that this isn't just something you do as a user. This is something that you can use to find those who are need some encouragement, need some need some help in their lives. You know, I'm constantly having conversations with people who say something like, I just there's something missing or I just need some more God in my life. This is this is the kind of thing that you can refer them to. It's an easy entry, a way for them to get into a personal daily habit of scripture study and prayer and then begin to, learn from some of the great teachings.
I'll tell you how far this has come, Matthew. When I was first a Christian, my mother wanted to disciple me, but she didn't know what to do. She gave me this huge like box lid from a big paper box full of cassettes. And as I was traveling around the country, we're just plugging in these little white cassettes of all these different preachers. And and in many ways, even though I never went to any of their churches, they did disciple me. Yeah. And so it's it's kind of fun to see how this is this is coming back around. Yeah. But in a whole new fun way. I love it. Absolutely. Me too.
And if anyone was listening right now to the show and they wanted to download pray dot com and maybe, you know, part of the app has a paid portion of the app. And, I just wanted to give everybody the app for free today, if that's okay with you. Oh, yeah. So just for listening right now and getting to the end, go to pray dot com forward slash matt and click on get the app for free. And you can get the entire app for free just by listening to today's show. Wow. Okay. So pray dot com slash Forward slash forward slash m a t t. M a t t. Okay. Alright, Matt. That's fantastic. And we'll mention that in the intro and the outro and everywhere else we can too because we we want people to check that out.
Well, thanks so much for your time today. It really means a lot. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Thank you to my guest, Matthew Potter, for coming on the show. You can learn more about his work and download their app, which he's offered free to people who are watching or listening to this show. You can find they have a lot of additional resources too, but just go to pray dot com forward slash matt and get started.
This podcast is a resource of Summit Ministries. At Summit, we come alongside the rising generation, their trainers, parents, and influencers, so that young people may know God's truth and become champions of a biblical worldview. To learn more about Summit Ministries or get resources to help the young people in your life embrace and share the truth that changes everything, visit summit dot org. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.
Go back to nuclear technology. We can power the world through, you know, basically clean energy with nuclear technology, or we can blow up nations. Right? I think all new all new advancements in technology can be used for good or for evil. Right? And the evil 1 will always want us to use it for evil, and there are people that will use it for that. But people continually have to use it for good to be able to fight back.
Finding time with God. Is that a struggle for you like it is for me? I mean, life's busy. Is it wearing you down? There are a lot of mental health issues on the rise, and people are wondering how the church can make a positive impact in bringing healing. It's now the time for the body of Christ to engage deeply with the world on these kinds of issues to shine the light of God's kingdom into everyday lives. So welcome to the True Changes Everything podcast. This is where we explore where God is at work, changing everything through Jesus, who is the incarnation of the truth.
Today, we're gonna be learning about exciting new applications and how to wisely engage with different technological tools for God's kingdom. My guest is Matthew Potter. Now, Matthew is the cofounder of pray dot com. That is the world's number 1 app for daily prayer and faith based audio content. Matt brings an expertise in the areas of strategizing change, building tech products and apps, finding markets in the continuously growing and evolving technology industry. And at a time when Matt was looking for ways to give back spiritually and apply his expertise to do something bigger for God's kingdom, he ran into his friend Steve who needed some spiritual encouragement. He'll tell you the story. But shortly after this divine run-in, he and Steve launched pray dot com, which will be the focus of our conversation today.
So let's welcome Matthew Potter to the Truth Changes Everything podcast. Matthew Potter, welcome to the Truth Changes Everything podcast. Honored and blessed to be here, Jeff. Thanks so much for having me. I've been looking forward to our conversation because you are the cofounder of pray dot com. Everybody's talking about this, and there's so many interesting aspects to it. But I would love if you could just share the origin story of this app, the organization, how you and your buddy got together to do it. I think this is fascinating.
So, for me, Jeff, it all started with a 15 year old girl who was walking down the street. She had just found out that she was pregnant and she was going to an abortion clinic. And on her way to that clinic, there happened to be a church. And so she stopped in at the church to talk to the pastor about some advice on the biggest decision she was gonna make in her life up to that point. And the pastor was a brand new pastor, so he was a little nervous. So he went in the back, actually called his friend that he went to seminary with, and said, Hey, what should I tell this 15 year old girl? And his friend was a church planter who just planted like a 20 person church in a high school gym in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. And, you know, the church planter said, you know what? It's providence that you called me this morning. I've been counseling this married couple who's been trying to have children, for 10 years and couldn't. And they're Christians. They just joined my church plan. Why don't you go back in there and ask that girl if she'd be willing to give her baby up for adoption? And so, the pastor went back in and the girl said yes. And I was the baby the girl brought into the church and I got adopted because of these 2 pastors that were friends.
Wow. So my life started out providentially right at that moment where, you know, it could have been taken away. I went to school out in Los Angeles, got the really unique opportunity, Jeff, to meet Steve Jobs. And, I didn't know at the time, but he's also adopted. Super inspirational guy. So when Steve launched the App Store my senior year of college, I actually dropped out of school, started a company that built apps super hard, bootstrapped that company. We built it over 10 years, built over 8000 apps in the App Store for all the major real estate companies in the United States. It was super, super fun, but, you know, I accomplished my goals and just reached this weird point in my life where I didn't have to work anymore if I didn't want to. And I wanted to give back to the church that gave me so much. And I just called my pastor and his daughter, who is my best friend, and said, Hey, how can I help and give back to the church? And they said, Hey, why don't you help us open a new campus? And I said, I'm an introverted tech entrepreneur who didn't go to seminary. That sounds terrifying. And they said, you know what? Pray about it.
So I prayed about it. And the very next day, Doctor. Jeff, I ran into, my good friend, Steve Gutina, at a coffee shop in Westlake Village. And Steve and I had known each other because we played on rival high school football teams, and we were in the same entrepreneur groups together in our area. And I just asked Steve how he was doing, and he just kinda told me that he was doing terrible. His, Steve Steve grew up to a single Jewish mom on welfare. He ended up going to the Air Force Academy to play football. He got injured in a training accident and just this shows a lot about Steve's character. But over the course of 6 months, he got better and walked onto USC's football team earning a position on the team, winning a Rose Bowl under Pete Carroll. And then as a part of a homework assignment, he started his first company, which was building professional YouTube channels for fortune 500 companies. So he built Red Bull's YouTube channel, Marriott Hotels, Mattel Toys, the LA Dodgers, Herbalife, bunch of other companies. And then he had the opportunity to sell that company and become the 29 year old CEO of the world's largest aerial production company. So they had 40 aircraft, helicopters, planes, and jets. They would film all the major motion pictures like Jurassic World, Transformers, Maverick, all you know, all the different movies that were coming out that had airplanes or helicopters or jets in them. And then, they would also work for the FBI CIA Homeland Security. It's basically the same job, do surveillance, and you just send in the video content to a different place. Instead of a studio, it's going to the CIA or FBI.
Wow. So he had he had everything. This is a guy who had everything. Yeah. Right? He had everything. This is the American dream. And yet He was making movies, catching bad guys, and saving lives at 29, and it doesn't get better than that. Yeah. Right? And so, unfortunately, September eleventh 2015, Steve's business partner died in a plane crash in Medellin, Colombia. They were filming a movie with Tom Cruise called American Made. They were stunt flying all day in the jungles of Colombia and just routine trip taking the plane back to the hangar. Steve's business partner died in a plane crash. And, because of that, Steve began searching for something to help with, that grief that he was facing in his life. And a former Navy SEAL that worked at the company gave Steve an audio sermon from a pastor, and it changed his life, and he became a Christian.
Wow. And in that moment of becoming a Christian, Steve was kinda mad about it. He was like, why and this is what he told me at the coffee shop. He said, why doesn't the ESPN for Christians exist? We have the worldwide digital destination for sports. Why don't we have the worldwide digital destination for Christians online? It doesn't make sense to me. Right. If there was a brand like that, I would have known about it. I would have went out and sought this content. And, because, you know, Steve didn't he didn't grow up going to church. He just Yeah. He grew up to a single Jewish mom on welfare at a different path than me. I grew up in church, going to church every week with my parents, you know. It was kind of ingrained. And so I said, you know what, Steve? You're right. And, that's where the birth of pray dot com happened, was at that coffee shop. And the seeds were planted when Steve's business partner died. And then, yeah, we decided to start the company with 2 other incredible co founders, Mike Lin and Ryan Beck.
Ryan, was like the largest crystal meth dealer in our area, actually. He went to prison, got mentored by a couple prisoners, and found Christ in jail. Got out, couldn't get a job, and, a church locally here nearby gave him a job as the facilities manager. And they ended up giving him a scholarship to go to college, Calvin College. And that's where Ryan got his computer science degree with a minor in philosophy. I saw that you also, did philosophy too. Yes. But, yeah, Ryan ended up working for a bunch of different insurance companies building all their back end systems, and now he's our, CTO. So and Ryan went to high school with Steve. You know, Steve was working on being all American. Ryan was working on being America's most wanted and, but now, you know, Ryan's Ryan's incredible. He also went to seminary too, and he's just changing lives all over the world. And then Mike, Mike grew up Catholic. He's still Catholic. Watched his dad go to a paper mill for 50 years, the same door in Green Bay, Wisconsin of this paper mill. And, Mike's mom actually got swindled by a financial advisor. And so Mike changed his major from marketing to finance because he didn't want anyone to be swindled out of their money again. And, he actually met Steve at a conference at USC. And, that's how Mike became our cofounder. And just loved the idea of helping change people's lives through pray dot com. So that was, October 20 second 2016, about 8 years ago.
Okay. 8 years ago. Well, it's Yeah. It's a remarkable story and and and a providential 1. It it's clear that this is the kind of team that only God could put together. That's right. That's right. Like Ocean's 11 heavenly style. That's right. Yeah. I I love it.
Well, let's talk a little bit about pray dot com and and and tech for a minute. I know people spend 4 and a half hours a day, I think that's what the research is showing, on their phones which is that amounts to 70 days a year of the of the 365 that we have available. And there's a huge amount of discussion, especially in generational, people who are thinking about generational issues. What kind of stewardship is that or how does that change the way we think or the way we act and interact with other people? And I'm curious how you've had those discussions with your team about how pray dot com can move into a situation where it seems that people are so obsessed with their devices that that they're not living life the way they're supposed to. And then then at the same time, you're asking them, okay, here's 1 more thing for you to look at on your phone. I know you've had all those discussions, and I wish you'd just take us inside of them for a minute.
Yeah. You know, I I don't think, Steve Jobs and, the people over at Samsung and others, I don't think they believed they knew what they were doing when they launched the phone. I I don't think it was nefarious. Right? When they were building the App Store and all of these things. But it's super interesting because it's it's changed our behaviors completely. And if we go back and think about the radio and the launch of the radio and how many people it reached and how it changed behaviors completely, Right? For people they were we were working class people, people were farming, and now all of a sudden, their Wednesdays, they were listening to War of the Worlds, and they thought aliens were literally coming down Yeah. Listening to this audio drama through the radio. Right? And so we had change of behavior with radio. We had change of behavior with TV. People sitting more watching in front of the television at night. And now we have a change of behavior with with the phone. Right?
And through those moments of technological change, Christians have always been there to be able to take back that technology for the kingdom. So the way that we think about it is we're not gonna be able to change people's behaviors of them being on the phone. We should be able to be 1 of the things that they can do while on the phone since they're spending their time there already, go to where people are at. And that's that's kind of the thought process. Everything is fighting for your focus, and we're seeing the mental health issues in America from social media, big social media, and others through comparison, and and all sorts of things that are happening in people's minds as they're consuming this content. So we need to go where people are at. We need to take technology back for the kingdom. We need to inject healthy habits, healthy biblical principles, the Bible, the stories of the Bible, different pastors content, guided prayers. A lot of the things that pray dot com offers, digital devotionals, are trying to help develop and create those healthy habits of prayer. And so that's that's the way we think about it. We're not gonna be able to we can't get rid of these. Right? But we gotta go where people are at. And if everything's fighting for your focus, you know what? Part of that should be focusing on Christ.
I I like the way you're approaching this as as how do you use this technology to glorify God? In the early days of radio, you had, the old old time gospel hour, which was the number 1 listen to program in the United States. When when when television came out, you had people like Billy Graham, movies, and and others. So each new technology, the question was, how do we use this to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ? And there were there were people out there who did that and and they were really innovative. I was just looking at a couple of examples the other day. 1 is, you know, after World War 2, people people knew that the Holocaust had taken place but they didn't talk about the Holocaust. In fact, many Jewish people didn't wanna talk about it. They just wanted to forget it and and all of a sudden, it just it's like it never happened. 6000000 people just disappeared and nothing ever happened. And I was reading someone the other day who said, oh, that all took that all was the case until the 19 seventies when some secular program came out on television and all of a sudden everybody's talking about the Holocaust. But the book, The Hiding Place, which is a Christian book, and the movie based on the book, The Hiding Place came out before that. It was actually Christians who were the ones who drew attention to the holocaust and its horrors to make sure that some something like that would never happen again. So you're you're an innovator in in that way, and and I I just really appreciate that. I'm thankful for it. Thank you.
Could you take us inside just for a minute for those who aren't that familiar with pray dot com because they will be and when we finish this this show. But take us inside the user experience. What happens when someone hears about it? They go on to the site. What do they do?
Yeah. Most people hear about us through, sharing. So we have a hundred and 52000000 shares of the app outside the app on other platforms like text or email, also social media as well. But, you so someone gets a link, from a friend, from a family member of the of the app. They go in. They open the app. Immediately, there, our daily devotional pops up. And it's a devotional with a prayer at the end. And so you can listen in. You can also, go along with it if you'd like to go along with it. But immediately, you're developing a healthy habit of listening to a daily devotional and a guided prayer. And that's the goal number 1. And every time you open the app, that's the first thing you see.
Once you complete that daily prayer, you're taken to a streak page where we are we are counting helping you count the days in a row that you are developing that healthy habit of prayer. And then, once you complete the streak page, you're on a a leaderboard page where you can remind other people to not lose their streak, and you can praise people for completing their daily devotional for that day. After that page, you're able to share the app if you wanna share the app or you're taken to the, main screen of content. And on the main screen, the home screen, you've got pray radio at the very top, where we have a bunch of different incredible, pastors, tremendous, Bible teachers on pray radio, and some of them are going back all the way to when radio was coming out. Right? We also have Pray TV. We've got different people on Pray TV like Gary Wilkerson. His dad was David Wilkerson that did the Cross and the Switchblade movie from back in the seventies, which is pretty cool. So just like we were talking about taking back technology for the kingdom. And then, different podcasts from different incredible Bible teachers on there, and then a bunch of pre original content.
So we hired a 61 piece orchestra, former Disney voice actors and actresses, and we took the entire Bible and created it as almost a entertaining cinematic show. So you can hear your favorite Bible stories come to life in this cinematic audio format. We also built a sleep version of that so that people can listen to their favorite bible stories to a specific tone and rhythm that helps you fall asleep. And then we have a kids version too to help teach your kids the bible before bedtime. And parents absolutely love it. My nephews love it. They, like, replay David and Goliath every single night. I don't know why, but they just want they want David and Goliath every night. So, my brother and sister-in-law, they're just they play that for them every night. It's been great. Yeah. So they're they're engaging. The entire family then can engage. That's right.
And I'm I'm I'm remembering the times driving kids to school, that my kids are in their twenties now, but driving them to school and we're always looking for something to listen to. Well, pray dot com can step in and help you with that. That's right. Absolutely. Whether you know, and we've got different content that changes based on the time of day that you're listening. So, content for the morning, for afternoon, if you're at lunch break or you're doing, you know, you're exercising or you're doing your chores, and also when you get home from work, on your way home from work, or you're listening in bed before you fall asleep.
Now the app is called pray dot com and how how how does it encourage prayer? You've got the the teaching aspect of it, but, I it's something I've always wondered about because I have a tough time. You know, I'm 1 of those who after 5 minutes of praying, I'm antsy. I you know, this is the longest I sit still for anything that I do. You know? And I'm just I'm just curious how how it helps build an attitude and a practice of prayer itself. Yeah. Yeah. It's a great question. So it's through that daily daily devotional and guided prayer experience. So that streak experience, we're continually reminding you to pray. You can also set it to different times if you'd like to and add it to your calendar to remind you to pray, but we we're reminding people in that right before they start their day, they're getting that push notification when they're waking up to go in and check your prayer and spend that time and moment with God. And so you do get the daily devotional. It has a great, you know, sound background. It helps calm you right when you wake up. But that is your reminder to pray. And, you know, what if what if 8000000000 people on the planet prayed for 30 days in a row and they actually kept track? I think we'd be living in a lot different world. Wow. Yeah. We certainly would.
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In 1 specific instance, you mentioned mental health earlier, mental health issues, and the the spirituality and clinical practice journal actually studied your app. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And they, and what they found is that that using that app improved mental health over time. So, so make that connection for us because there are lots of people struggling with their mental health and to think of an app as having an effect is quite remarkable.
So we we have a incredible chief data officer who came to us from a company called Harbor Freight Tools. He was there. He took Harbor Freight Tools from a hundred million dollars a year to 8000000000 dollars a year. Wow. And almost single handedly was collecting all of the data to show, like, which products they should show in which stores in which order in which advertisements, millions of SKUs just crunching large amounts of data. And his name is, Victor Harris. He's an incredible guy. So when Victor came on our team and he brought 3, PhD data scientists with him, 1 of the first initiatives that we began planning was something called Pray Science.
And it was very counterintuitive to me in the beginning. I was like, well, you know, why should we do science? It sounds like it's gonna lose a lot of money. Like and and, you know, Victor and some of the members of the team just said, look, we are created in the image of God. Wouldn't you think by connecting with your creator, when you're created in the image of God, would help you with your physical body and your mental health? Not just with your spiritual life, which is a huge thing as well, but wouldn't you think that it would help with your mental health? And I said, yeah. That makes complete sense. Okay. Let's do this. Right?
And so we lit up Prey Science Division, and we've been working with some incredible universities and researchers. And we just brought on our first, PhD science researcher, doctor Bree Laird. And she's the 1 that's been spearheading a lot of these, studies that we've been doing. So we actually have a cross sectional survey that we ran. And, we just sent out a bunch of survey questions in the app, and what we came back with was, well, functionally, people that use the app in more frequency during a week reported less mental health symptoms that they were going through. And so when we got that signal, we didn't want just wanna leave it at a cross sectional survey. We did a, an 8 week randomized, trial of people that were using the app. And that study came back, and it's what you're referencing. It's, you know, those people we we tracked people using the app, brand new users. And when they were using it for more than 5 days a week, they saw a outsized return on mental health symptoms going away. Anxiety going away. Depression going away. Some of these, you know, really trauma filled and things that are deep rooted in people going away.
And you know what? We we don't believe it's the app. It's God. Right? It's God. We're just a conduit. But the way that we've built the content and the way that it's, created, it it has really helped a tremendous amount of people. And so, we're actually doubling down and we've gotten published now in 3 different scientific journals. All about and it's not the first time prayer has been studied before. There's other studies on prayer that it increases the gray matter density in your brain when you when you pray and different things. And, you know, it just it was super interesting to me because, you know, you would think meditating helps a lot, but really meditating is focusing within and focusing on the problem and holding on to it. Whereas with prayer, you're giving your problem up to God who has the power over that problem and, it's helped a lot of people. So we're doubling down on Pray Science and you're gonna see a lot more content coming out created using this methodology that we're gonna do more studies on. So it's been it's been really incredible to see the results. Yeah.
Are you studying the difference between people who already are religious and people who are non religious? So we don't ask that question in the survey, if you're religious or not religious. But it is a randomized group of users that are trying pray dot com for the first time, that we did our second study on. Mhmm. And, you know, those people could be religious. Pray dot com is a filter. Right? So it could be they're coming, they're wanting to use the app because they're already a Christian. And we don't know what denomination or, you know, if they're Catholic or Protestant or Presbyterian or Baptist. But we also don't know where they're at in their faith journey. So that might be the next level of study is, you know, if you come in and you have some level of experience with, church or religion or no experience, how does that net out? So that might be another study that we would run. Right now, we don't know. It's it was a random group of people and we don't know the level of, you know, study that they've done of the Bible or the or what denomination they are or how often they go to church or some of those other things that we're gonna run more studies on. So Yeah. It's a great question.
I I think it's I think it'd be interesting because, you know, you do have this sacred secular divide in in culture. But Yeah. You know, my suspicion is people are coming to pray dot com either out of curiosity because they have an emotional need of some sort that's not being met any other way. And and so there are a lot of people out there who don't believe in God who actually are spiritual. They would be open to something spiritual which can be dangerous because there are all kinds of spiritual experiences that are that are false. But this gives you this gives them an opportunity to kind of play around with it a little bit on their own and see what God does in their mind and in their heart.
I I'm I guess I'm also curious about how that bridges over to church community because I know 1 thing about most apps, you know, aside from some gaming platforms is it's a solitary experience And Right. You know, how do you how do you create the community? How do, you know, how do people get encouraged to join the body of Christ or, you know, there's so many people that have church hurt and they don't want to be involved. You know, I I've never met. In my time of life right now, I know more believers who are not involved in a church community in any way. They love Jesus, but they just they just don't they're just not part of a church. And I'm curious what kind of connection there is.
Doctor. Jeff, we talk about this all the time. So it's super fun. We go we say, how do we go from URL to IRL? And IRL is 1 of those, you know, new millennial terms, I guess, in real life. Right? Yeah. So, how do we go from URL to IRL? And, you know, it it's interesting. So if we if we likened the big big media right now is all talking about how the we have the decline of Christianity in America happening. Right? And they're referencing people in the pews as the decline of Christianity. So, you know, we see things that we can draw, we can draw some conclusions of that are are similar. Right? So let's just let's just back up and say, okay, we're we're just scientists. We're looking at this. Right? If we were to look at church as a physical location that you go and you get content from, what other like physical locations do you go to where you get content from? Okay. Okay. Movie theaters. Right. Right?
So, if we went to a movie theater so, are we gonna say that Hollywood is declining and movies are declining completely because people are going to movie theaters less right now? Well, we could draw that conclusion, but that's not what's happening. More movies are TV shows are being consumed than ever before Yeah. Actually. They're just being consumed in a different place. So if we were to look at, Christian content consumption over the last 24 months, it's up 52 percent. Wow. Christian content consumption in America is up 52 percent in the last 24 months. Now, church populations are declining, but that's a different problem we need to solve. Right? So more people are seeking, more people are consuming Christian content than ever before. But how do we take that from URL to IRL? Right? So I'm I'm against saying that, you know, Christianity is in decline in America because of that stat. It's just going to a different place. Yeah.
The barrier to entry to going to a physical location, because we live such busy lives now, is higher. So, gone are the days where you would get with your wife and get in the car and go to a couple churches in the 15 minute drive and see which 1 you like the best. Right? What do we what do we do now before we go to a restaurant? Doctor Jeff, before you go to a restaurant, new restaurant, you've never been there before, you're gonna spend your hard earned money, you're trying to decide if you're gonna like it or not, what do you do? I'm looking at the reviews. You're going on Yelp. Right? You're going on Google reviews. You're checking out photos, videos of people that have been there before.
The same thing the same behaviors that we're training people with restaurants and movie theaters, they're applying to church to. And they wanna go in. They wanna hear the pastor first. They wanna see photos of the location. They wanna make sure if it's right for them before they're gonna go take their Sunday morning and decide if they wanna go to a place that they're not going to like. They're gonna do more research because more information is available to them now. So they have more information that they can do they can make decisions. So, you know, some of our goals and things with pray dot com is we're going to be helping people go from URL to IRL with some of the different ministries that are on the app. Now we're very selective on the ministries that we have on the app that are providing content. But how do we if people wanna go to that next level and they wanna go to a physical location near them, how do we recommend those locations? So it's currently an internal discussion right now with our leadership team at pray dot com and how we take care of those people and help shepherd those people to the right locations that they would wanna go to and how do we help them in that decision making process. So, yeah. We we talk about it all the time. And what behaviors are already happening. Right? That people are doing before they check a physical location, before they get in their car and drive. Right? Which is higher barrier to entry than pressing play. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
That's right. And and I understand it's a different problem than than we used to have. I mean if you grew up going to church, you kinda felt a sense of a rhythm. You would do it every week. It's, you know, it's your Sabbath. You you get up, you go to the church, you're part of the church community. But if somebody's coming to Christianity for the first time, that's not an ingrained behavior. There's no Sabbath impulse. Yeah. That's right. So how do you move people toward, let's make this part of your weekly pattern of life. This is your, you know, this is a calendar thing. I think that's, I think that is fascinating. That's right.
So so this is this is fascinating to me and I love the way you're thinking that through and getting into the minds of a person, what their barriers might be and all of that. Let's talk about the future of technology just generally for the kingdom of God because I think the last problem that you mentioned that you're dealing with is something similar to say a Billy Graham crusade. Somebody would come down the aisle, they would trust Jesus Christ as their lord and savior and then they try to connect them with a local church and that's where the real problems begin. Because there are, you know, there are a lot of differences between the churches and the churches that sign up and say we want more people coming aren't necessarily the churches that you want them to go to. But how you know, but at the same time, you gotta keep everybody involved and you don't wanna hurt people's feelings based on their different denomination. I just there's so many different aspects to that.
But I wanna just talk about the kingdom of God for a minute because globally, what what do you see happening? This is we I I had always thought, well, this technology and the smartphone, the way it's being used is fracturing society. There's no longer a social consensus. People aren't even consuming the same information. So the things that everybody thought we all knew, we don't actually know those things anymore. And, and it, it felt a little discouraging, but I have a suspicion that you're saying this from a very different perspective.
Yeah. I I am. And if, you know, if we were talking about there's lots of different technologies we could talk about. Right? But I think the top of mind for everybody is, you know, artificial intelligence. Right? And how does AI technology work? Well, you know, it it works based on what you feed it. So if you're feeding AI technology things that are not truthful, then it's gonna provide responses that are not truthful. Right? And so, you know, at at pray dot com, we've developed some of our own AI technology that we're utilizing to help help people save help pastors and ministries save money and help them be able to reach more people in the world. So there's 1 way you can use AI technology for good. Right?
Describe how that process works. I'm really curious about that. Yeah. So so right now, within the app, when, ministries, are using our app to be able to reach our big and growing audience. They upload their content, and the artificial intelligence will automatically transcribe that content. It'll also create a title and description for the content that they put in, and then it also is translating that content in that person's voice. So, doctor Jeff, you could you could have your podcast in Spanish, German, Chinese if you wanted, and it would all, get sent out. It would all be distributed at the same time across multiple platforms. And then Prey dot com's artificial intelligence also brings back all the data and analytics to show you what content people are loving, what they're getting through, what they're sharing, what they're favoriting the most. So it helps you create content that helps people more. Wow.
So that's part of the ways that we're using artificial intelligence within pray dot com is to reach more people groups in their native tongue, through that translation technology and then also transcription and then translation of the transcription. Sorry. That's kind of confusing. But yeah. And it's it's really cool because if we make a mistake, just like we're talking on this, you know, this podcast right now, if we make a mistake in prey dot com's technology, you can go in and hit edit and change the mistake and you would never know, and then it updates all the audio and video content all over with that mistake fixed. So it's a pretty cool technology that we've built, and and we're continuously feeding our models with tremendous bible teachers. So we're feeding it with biblical truth. Right? And so eventually you'll be able to ask Praise AI questions on the Bible and it'll come back with, you know, it could come back with what does Jack Graham say about that? Or what does, you know, Tony Evans say about that? Or what does Doctor. Ed Young say about that? You know, lots of different ways that you can use that technology for the good. Right?
And let's take it all the way back to to, you know, we talked about behaviors and previous technologies. Let's go back to nuclear technology. We can power the world through, you know, basically clean energy with nuclear technology, or we can blow up nations. Right? I think all new all new advancements in technology can be used for good or for evil. Right? And the evil 1 will always want us to use it for evil, and there are people that will use it for that, but people continually have to use it for good to be able to fight back.
That's amazing. Well, it's true. Yeah. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to apply that to so say somebody in the rising generation who's interested in technology, interested at maybe they're studying computer science, you know, studying cyber or something like that. Give them a vision for where some of the needs are right now, where they might be able to think of themselves as a missionary moving into some place where their their particular call would need a specific thirst?
You know, lots of people have have asked me to solve lots of problems, when it comes to apps and technology just because of my background. So, you know, people are trying to figure out problems with getting money into different countries because, you know, Christians right now are being, sent away from certain countries in the world. And and being able to get money into those countries without it being taxed at an exorbitant rate, to be able to help missionaries and Christian efforts in those countries is 1 way, 1 problem that needs to be solved.
I think, you know, there's def there's no, there's no small amount of problems right now in the world. And, the more that we can provide, use AI technology to help save money and empower ministries to do more with less people, I think is something else that that people should be thinking about if they were venturing into wanting to start a Christian business or wanting to start a ministry, a technology ministry.
Also, cybersecurity is a big thing. The US government just is now giving a lot of money to places of worship right now for cybersecurity, and security of their facilities. So I would say that that is something that's super important, in the future as as battle and war becomes more ones and zeros than it becomes bullets and guns. So yeah, I would say cybersecurity, money, being able to transfer money in different ways, through different technologies to be able to save more money to use it for kingdom purposes, and then, everything in artificial intelligence and, machine learning, to be able to help get the message out to multiple people groups and help find out how we can create better, mental health and spiritual health habits for people is is really big on top of mind.
So I love that. I wouldn't have thought of those being sort of missionary initiatives for the time in which we live but in in many ways they are in the same way that in the 19 fifties, people were using linguistics to learn how to communicate the gospel to individuals in their heart language. Yeah. Now we're using the language of our time, the technology of our time to learn how to communicate biblical truth.
Matthew, I love this. This is fascinating. So folks will wanna go check out pray dot com and just keep in mind that this isn't just something you do as a user. This is something that you can use to find those who are need some encouragement, need some need some help in their lives. You know, I'm constantly having conversations with people who say something like, I just there's something missing or I just need some more God in my life. This is this is the kind of thing that you can refer them to. It's an easy entry, a way for them to get into a personal daily habit of scripture study and prayer and then begin to, learn from some of the great teachings.
I'll tell you how far this has come, Matthew. When I was first a Christian, my mother wanted to disciple me, but she didn't know what to do. She gave me this huge like box lid from a big paper box full of cassettes. And as I was traveling around the country, we're just plugging in these little white cassettes of all these different preachers. And and in many ways, even though I never went to any of their churches, they did disciple me. Yeah. And so it's it's kind of fun to see how this is this is coming back around. Yeah. But in a whole new fun way. I love it. Absolutely. Me too.
And if anyone was listening right now to the show and they wanted to download pray dot com and maybe, you know, part of the app has a paid portion of the app. And, I just wanted to give everybody the app for free today, if that's okay with you. Oh, yeah. So just for listening right now and getting to the end, go to pray dot com forward slash matt and click on get the app for free. And you can get the entire app for free just by listening to today's show. Wow. Okay. So pray dot com slash Forward slash forward slash m a t t. M a t t. Okay. Alright, Matt. That's fantastic. And we'll mention that in the intro and the outro and everywhere else we can too because we we want people to check that out.
Well, thanks so much for your time today. It really means a lot. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
Thank you to my guest, Matthew Potter, for coming on the show. You can learn more about his work and download their app, which he's offered free to people who are watching or listening to this show. You can find they have a lot of additional resources too, but just go to pray dot com forward slash matt and get started.
This podcast is a resource of Summit Ministries. At Summit, we come alongside the rising generation, their trainers, parents, and influencers, so that young people may know God's truth and become champions of a biblical worldview. To learn more about Summit Ministries or get resources to help the young people in your life embrace and share the truth that changes everything, visit summit dot org. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.
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