In late August, Clear and Simple Media (CSM) took a trip to Burkina Faso. Nebié Badiou (CSM’s Representative in country) and I made presentations at a Christian camp 20 km north of the capital city. Five hundred upper secondary school and university students had gathered there for a conference.

For the next two days, Nebié talked about the new website. He told them how people would benefit from reading the material there. He emphasized that the site had only gone “live” a few days ago, and they would be the first to see it. He also asked the students to help us. “You,” he said, “are the key to help us make the site even better.” By the time Wednesday rolled around, Nebié had built quite a momentum of anticipation. 

Vérité Simple

On Wednesday, he distributed nearly 600 cards to the students and leaders with only two lines in print – www.asimpleword.org and www.véritésimple.org. Their assignment was simple. Visit the site. Read as much of it as possible over the next month. Ask any questions they might have through the CONNECT page. Make any suggestions about how we could make the site better. Then give the invitation to visit the website to someone else.

We have always tried to be aggressive in the matter of field-testing our materials. This project is our most aggressive approach to date. 

In the first fourteen days after launching, the site saw 2,800 visitors over those two weeks. For the next several weeks, the site received about 50 visits per day. 

Traffic has varied widely since then, but in our last analytics reports, for the period between November 14 to November 28, the site averaged more than 300 unique visitors per day.

One of the stories that we encourage ourselves with is Jesus’ tale of the Sower and his seed. The Sower scattered the seed widely and indiscriminately. The seed landed in many different places. But some fell on good soil. That seed produced much fruit.

In our electronic age, we have a greater capacity to “sow” than we have ever had before. Please pray that God would use our efforts to build his kingdom. And pray that a significant portion of “the seed” will fall onto good ground.