GotQuestions.org - 2011 Version

Why People Ask Questions About God and Life

Everyone has questions. Children have questions, teenagers definitely have questions, adults, the elderly, everyone has questions.

They're seeking, they're skeptical, they're critical, they're cynical.

Some of the questions that come to mind would be, what does it take for salvation?

Questions about life, about God, about why we exist.

Premarital sex or divorce.

What is the rapture?

Death and grief.

Is Jesus the son of God?

Things that happen in the world, difficult things.

Is the Trinity real?

There's millions of people looking for these answers.

The problem is there's not a whole lot of places people can go to find answers to their questions, especially if they want answers from a biblical perspective.

Where are they going?

They're going online.

GotQuestions is the most unique ministry on the web today.

GotQuestions is for anybody who has a question about anything, about life.

The way GotQuestions works is people can go onto the site and they can search for any question they might have.

God gave us the vision of providing a place online where people could come ask any spiritually related questions that they have and we would respond with a biblically based answer.

GotQuestions is so unique in that, number one, it uses the search engines and the social media networks to actually engage people based on their search queries, their actual hurts and hangups and questions that they have.

It's reaching all of these people that have no idea who GotQuestions is, have no idea that they're looking for a Christian worldview answer.

So rather than promoting the front door, the homepage, we really focus on let's provide a service, let's answer people's questions through the search engines, and from that people get to know the ministry and keep coming back for more.

Now there's a lot of questions that can be answered with a standard response because they're the questions that people ask over and over and over.

We started building up the site so that more and more of the frequently asked questions were available. In the past nine years or so that we've been doing this, we have approaching 2 ,500 frequently asked questions on the site.

If they're not finding what they want on the site, they can submit a question.

GotQuestions has email responders that actually will personally respond.

It comes to us in a database form, we look at the question, and then we will assign that to the writer that we think would be perfectly suited to answer that question.

Now they can go in deeper, and now they can actually ask a question. That's not just a search query in a Google task bar, it's a full couple sentences of. Here's what I'm really dealing with.

Most of the questions that I receive have to do with Christian living or things about God, things that people are confused about when they see life and the Bible maybe not match up.

People will write in questions to the website, and they'll just be asking about everyday things about their lives and what God's view is on it.

We currently have over 300 people who help us answer all the questions we receive, and there's an application process where we ask for their testimony, ask for them to answer a test question, because not only do we want them to be able to write intelligibly, we want to be able to detect a passion for people.

I had been an English writing major in college and had wanted to write for Christian ministry, but that didn't end up happening and I got a different job, so when this opportunity came up, it just seemed like the perfect way to mix my passion for writing with my passion for God and just a nice way to encourage people.

There is a heart of wanting that person to understand God's plan and God's love, and then he does have the answers.

GotQuestions is biblically based, and we do have some people that have doctoral degrees or are pastors.

We also have people with some counseling experience or people who've had very difficult life experiences. So depending on the nature of the question, we will assign it to the writer that we think would do the best job at answering that question.

I feel like God hopefully is speaking through me through these answers that I give. I definitely put in a lot of prayer as I'm answering them and go back to the Bible as much as I need to and look to commentaries and other sources where I need those too.

The people who ask the questions are really opening up their heart and being vulnerable in a lot of ways. They're asking things about God or things that don't make sense to them and that are troubling.

And I get to come in and show them, you know, here's the truth about what the Bible says or here's what I've experienced. These individual questions matter to him. So being a part of that is a blessing to me.

Translation and Global Reach

Several years ago, God really gave us the vision of translating our content because it's not just people who speak English who have questions. People in other parts of the world speaking all kinds of languages, they have questions too.

Our first idea was just let's just do the top 10 world languages. And then once we started going to those languages, we discovered, you know, people in Romania have questions, people in the Philippines have questions, and they don't speak any of these languages that we're covering.

Over the past years, we've grown to now we have pages translated into 140 different languages.

When I was about to do some research through GodQuestions .org website, I happened to see some Tagalog translations in the articles that I've found in GodQuestions .org. You know, I shared to them my desires to reach out more Filipinos using this tool, not only here in the United States, but also in the Philippines.

Many, many people in some of these languages where there's only maybe 100 ,000 speakers, they come to us and said, I went to the Google version of my language and did the search, and your site was the only Christian site that has bothered to translate the material into my language.

Because of that, I was more attracted to what you had to say.

Just to see that a website like this is being focused to their, you know, to their ethnic language, for them, it will have the sense of this people cares for us.

The answers that I get from GodQuestions are so helpful in my day-to-day life.

Since I'm a baby Christian, I'm using it more just to reinforce my basic doctrines.

GodQuestions Ministry is a tool that helps me bring the answer to this people in a biblical and systematic way.

I feel like volunteering for GodQuestions is a very great use of my time.

I do see myself using GodQuestions for the rest of my life.

If you truly are a believer who wants to influence the culture, Great Commission-wise, strategic evangelism-wise, there's no better place to go.

I would be very happy to recommend GodQuestions .org to my friends and to everyone, especially for those who are seeking the truth.

I had questions, the Bible has answers, and GodQuestions .org helped me find the answers.