LCN Article
2020 Digital and Broadcast Media Update

November / December 2020

Mike DeSimone

The Church of God has been commissioned to preach the Gospel to the world, both “as a witness” and to “make disciples” of those who respond to the message positively (Matthew 24:14; 28:19–20). Mr. Weston takes this very seriously, and he has commissioned the team here in Charlotte to increase our reach to more people who have never heard the truth—as well as to help them respond to what they hear, removing obstacles from their path toward becoming members of God’s Church and, ultimately, the Family of God. This is a focus that God, in His mercy, has blessed tremendously with both open doors and abundant fruits of walking through those doors.

In this report, we will survey these doors and the encouraging results of going through them. First, we’ll examine our efforts to extend our reach, which could be considered the “witnessing” portion of our mission. Then we’ll see how people are responding as they order literature or follow us in another way. Finally, we’ll see what is happening with those who positively respond to what they read and hear from our literature and God’s word.

There are really three primary areas that we measure in our active effort to reach as many people as possible with the Gospel message: social media followers/subscribers, unique website visitors, and television viewers. In this report, we’ll focus on social media followers and website visitors.            

Social Media Followers

graph showing social media followersIn late 2019, we set a goal to have a little more than 1,050,000 total followers and subscribers to all our social media platforms in all languages by December 31, 2020—a 30 percent increase. The great news is that we passed this target in September 2020, and currently have 1,054,000 social media followers. This is in large part due to some “viral” gains that came through our Spanish and English YouTube channels in March and April this year, which added over 60,000 YouTube subscribers toward our goal! Those who “follow” us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, or “subscribe” to us on YouTube, are, in effect, saying, “I like what I hear, and I want to hear more from Tomorrow’s World and/or the Living Church of God.”

Fourteen videos on our Spanish and English YouTube channels now have more than 1 million views, and two videos on our Spanish channel have over 2 million views! Our YouTube channels average about 1.5 to 2.5 million video views every month, about half of which come from unique viewers. This does not include the multiple millions of times Tomorrow’s World videos show up as viewing options when people are on YouTube. In this way, the truth is available to millions of people, letting them know where they can find it when the time is right for them to hear it.

Website Visitors

In 2019, TomorrowsWorld.org averaged 125,000 unique visitors per month, and it has been our goal to increase traffic to the website to an average of 250,000 monthly visitors by the end of 2020. There are many ways to do this, utilizing tools such as paid advertisements and other search optimization techniques, social media, and organic search traffic. We have made specific efforts to reach more people with these methods, and with God’s blessing, we are moving closer and closer to achieving our goal for 2020. In fact, the website received more than 250,000 unique visitors in both March and April, setting new records for monthly website visitors!

To be sure, we don’t just want more traffic, but also “higher quality traffic”—in other words, we want more people engaging with the website, not just more people showing up and leaving immediately. Some of the actions we measure in order to understand our visitors’ engagement levels are subscriptions via email, Bible Study Course (BSC) “starts” and “completes,” literature orders in response to the telecast, and literature orders made online. This year, we narrowed our focus to online literature orders and BSC starts.

Online Literature Orders

graph showing online literature ordersAn online literature order occurs when someone orders literature at TomorrowsWorld.org. We measure the number of times people place orders, not the number of products people order, since a person who regularly orders a few pieces of literature is generally more likely to be reading them than many of those who order “everything you’ve got.” We would like for about 45 percent of these orders to be made by “new adds”—in other words, we want to continue to reach out to new people and get them subscribed to Tomorrow’s World magazine.

Late in 2019, Mr. Weston approved the goal to reach an average of 10,000 monthly literature orders by the end of 2020—a 400 percent increase from the average of 2,500 per month we were receiving at that time. We thought this goal would be very difficult to reach. However, God opened doors and blessed our efforts, and even before 2019 ended, we were receiving 10,000 orders per month. So, after further evaluation and adjustments, we increased our 2020 goal to an average of 17,000 monthly literature orders—and later increased it again, to 34,000. Our 2020 goal is now about 1,360 percent higher than it was originally. As much as Christ opens the doors, we want to go through them!

One of the reasons literature orders are so important is because they allow us to begin a “relationship” with people. When people order anything we offer, they also begin receiving the Tomorrow’s World magazine. It comes to their home ten times per year and continues to spiritually feed them beyond the literature they initially ordered. Then, so that we can have a “high-quality” circulation of subscribers who actually read the magazine, we maintain an active renewal program by asking subscribers who have not ordered anything from us in three years if they wish to continue their subscription.

Bible Study Course “Starts”

graph showing new bsc signups

Anyone who completes the Bible Study Course certainly has learned a great deal about the true word of God. The BSC serves as a tool for engaging people on a deep level, providing us with another way to build a “relationship” with those interested in the truth.

In an effort to reach more people with this wonderful tool, we originally set a goal to have an average of 6,000 people starting the BSC every month by the end of 2020—about six times more than the monthly average in 2019. Again, doors opened in ways we didn’t expect, and this goal was achieved more quickly than we had imagined. Because of this, and because of the importance of the Bible Study Course in helping people learn God’s truth, we raised the goal again, this time to 16,000 new “starts” per month. We have been making active progress toward this new goal, getting closer each month and having over 13,000 people start the BSC in both July and August. As with our other goals, though, we don’t want to just increase numbers for the sake of increasing numbers—we want as many people as possible to not only start the course, but complete it. Therefore, we are actively working on improving the completion rate, and we have made it our goal to double that rate by the end of 2022.

Attend in Person

The next major step for a person responding to the truth is attending a Tomorrow’s World Presentation and/or Sabbath services. Due to COVID-19, we have stopped holding Tomorrow’s World Presentations for the time being, but hope to revive them again soon. In the end, since God is the one who does the calling, we can’t just increase the number of people requesting to attend services each month—however, we can try to remove as many stumbling blocks as possible from the paths of such people. So, at Mr. Weston’s direction, that has been another active project this year. We have removed stumbling blocks in a few different ways—for example, we have redesigned the LCG.org homepage to better introduce ourselves to non-members.

Another active project has been to redesign the “Attend with us” form to make it easier for people to get in touch with a minister and learn more about services held in their area. The initial results of this project are very promising and encouraging. Not only are more people requesting to speak with ministers, but those who do go to the online form are actually completing it at a higher rate. This means that more people are desiring to attend services and following through with the process. In the third quarter of 2020, more people asked to come to services than in any other quarter since the Living Church of God began in 1999!

Positive Responses

Take a look at a very small sample of the responses that have recently been pouring in:

“I’ve been studying the Tomorrow’s World Bible study and would like to attend and fellowship.”
—Sharon from New Castle, DE

“I want to learn what God wants from me as I try to put into practice what I read in God’s word that’s different than what I find in most churches.”
—Mark from Nampa, ID

“I’m reading all your free materials and I believe all the information about having Jesus Christ [as] our Savior. Since I was in high school I’ve read The Plain Truth by Herbert W. Armstrong. Now, I’m searching for the continuation. It’s the Tomorrow’s World magazine…. Kindly send me information… so I can give my tithes to help in the publication of the magazine, even a small amount I can afford but it comes from my heart. Thank you very much.”
—Tony from Mississauga, Canada.

If these people continue on this path and remain faithful to the end, they will have the opportunity to rise in the first resurrection to eternal life as members of God’s Family—and each of us currently in God’s Church will have played a part in that process!

Plans for 2021 and Beyond

Even with as much growth as we’ve had, we haven’t made a dent in reaching the population of this world. We still have a very long way to go, and we’ll continue making progress in the important areas we’ve mentioned, walking through doors as Christ opens them. We are not likely to continue having the rapid growth we had this year, but we will continue to reach as far as our available resources will allow. With this in mind, here are a few more things to keep an eye out for in 2021:

Television Optimizations

  • Increased number of television stations and associated responses
  • Simple improvements to the Tomorrow’s World telecast to increase its response rate

Website Traffic

  • Search Engine Optimization efforts helping our organic search traffic

Bible Study Course

  • Further improvement to and promotion of our online BSC
  • Optimizations made to the online BSC to help people complete the course. We hope to begin seeing even more people complete the course as a result of the increased amount of people who start it

“Go-tos” (Those who request to speak with a minister; ministers are asked to “go to” these people)

  • We hope to see the number of “Go-tos” continue to rise through 2021, as more people complete the BSC and order literature in general
  • We plan to continue our efforts in making it as easy as possible for those who are sincerely interested in God’s truth to begin attending services

International

  • In 2021 and 2022, we hope to intensify our efforts in several international regions

The exciting fruits of 2020 are, of course, the results of God’s blessings and Mr. Weston’s vision and leadership. Our Work also takes a great team of dedicated people, and it could not be done without the Church Administration, Internet, Editorial, Television, Finance, Mail Processing, Personal Correspondence, and Legal Affairs & Risk Management departments working together toward the same goals as one body. We hope to reach more and more people and continue to build on previous improvements, but in the end, the Great Commission will not be accomplished by our doing—it will be accomplished by Jesus Christ, His power, and His Spirit (Zechariah 4:6). It will be accomplished through miracles that He provides to support the small efforts we make. He will open doors to reach the people of the world—it is our job to continue asking, seeking, and knocking for Christ to open those doors. As we go through them, He will continue to bless this Work (Revelation 3:8).