Everyday Heroes in Evangelism: An Update on Saturate USA

SPEAKER 02 : 0:00

You’re listening to Family Talk, the radio broadcasting division of the James Dobson Family Institute. I am that James Dobson, and I’m so pleased that you’ve joined us today.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:19

Well, welcome to Family Talk, the broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I’m Roger Marsh, and on today’s program, we are joined by Mike and Brenda Baller, true everyday heroes who have dedicated their lives to sharing the gospel all across the country. After years of supporting global evangelism through the Jesus Film Project, the Ballers were shocked to discover that 52% of Americans still don’t know who Jesus Christ is. This revelation led them to help launch Saturate USA, an ambitious initiative to reach 120 million households with the gospel by 2027. Now, what makes this program unique is its simplicity. Churches can adopt zip codes in their area and receive free evangelism packets to hang on doors throughout their communities. Many believers struggle with knowing exactly how to share their faith effectively, but this conversation provides a straightforward approach that anyone can use to reach their neighbors. Mike and Brenda are also longtime friends of Dr. Dobson and have played a crucial role actually in helping establish Family Talk 15 years ago. Here now is Gary Bauer to introduce their remarkable story on today’s edition of Family Talk.

SPEAKER 03 : 1:31

Welcome to Family Talk, the broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I’m Gary Bauer, Senior Vice President for Public Policy here at the Dobson Institute. I’m also the host of the Defending Faith, Family, and Freedom podcast. Our guests today on Family Talk are Mike and Brenda Bauer. The Bowlers have played a huge role in helping to evangelize the United States, first through the Jesus film, and now through really another exciting project that we’re going to discuss in just a moment. But, you know, interestingly enough, they also had a huge part in the launching of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Institute, and we’re going to talk about that a little bit. Mike and Brenda are part of a select group of friends of this ministry that we’ve taken to referring to as everyday heroes. So Mike and Brenda, welcome to the Dr. James Dobson Family Talk. Dr. Dobson and his wife Shirley send you their warmest regards. We’re really glad to have you with us today.

SPEAKER 04 : 2:40

Well, thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be on. Thank you.

SPEAKER 05 : 2:42

We’re going to talk about Dr. Dobson. Sure, that might take three or four hours.

SPEAKER 04 : 2:48

We’ve been blessed by them. When we raised our boys, we used his books and his videos and everything to raise them back when. So when he was in California, we followed them all the time and everything. And when they moved to Colorado, that was such a blessing and everything. So we love his ministry and everything he’s done.

SPEAKER 03 : 3:06

Yes. They consider you both great friends and speak of you often and highly, of course.

SPEAKER 05 : 3:13

Well, about 15 years ago, though, we really got involved with them. We were sitting in Hawaii on vacation and we heard about Jim and Shirley going to start family talk. And so we’re sitting there and talking to Jim and he’s only got a secretary sitting in his whole office. And we said, well, Jim, do you have any financial people? And he said, no, not a one. So I was CPA. My wife, Brenda, has got a degree also in accounting. We said, well, rather than sitting on this beach, we’re going to fly back and see if we can’t get things together for that. So we spent all of February through May pretty much driving down every day from Denver, except on the weekends, trying to work the financial stuff and What a blessing it was. I talked to a lot of people trying to get finance together. We had to get credit card sets up. The biggest thing we had doing, helping for Jim in the very beginning, he was going to be on the Hannity program. And he could not… mentioned any address or phone number, anything. Oh, my goodness. Registered in all 50 states. And unbelievably, I call a group that I knew in Washington and talk to the secretary. And she said, well, gee whiz, do 50 states. We can get that done in two or three weeks. And I said, it’s got to be done in two or three days because he’s going to be on Hannity. So I said, give me the main guy, the principal, which I got him, and we talked. He said, Jim Dobson saved his daughter. Oh, wow. And they account for him totally doing that. And this guy said, look, we’re going to work all weekend. This was on a Friday I’m talking to him. He said, we’re going to work all weekend, and by Tuesday he can be on Hannity, and we’ll have it all done. And the big thing was he said, we’ll do it for free.

SPEAKER 03 : 5:22

Well, that was the right price. I’m sure that’s what Jim said, right?

SPEAKER 05 : 5:27

You know, they have a Washington firm do that. You know, you’re talking hours and hours. And, boy, they got it done, and what a blessing. And, you know, it was just unbelievable. I talked to credit card people, and it was just like God said, put together people. Everybody I talked to about something we were going to have to pay for We ended up with somebody that says, look, Dr. Dobson and Shirley have changed our lives. We’ll do it for free. And I mean, it was just person after person. So it just had to be God leading us to these people. But of course, Dr. Dobson has affected a lot of lives, just like he has Brenda and ours. So what a blessing that was working those 15 years ago.

SPEAKER 04 : 6:14

Yeah, and what was so interesting on that was we worked for those four months, and then in June, Mike got seriously ill with temporal arteritis and was on prednisone for two years and could not have been doing it after that. I had to get off of Doc’s board and everything and just… get him through that. It was a bad time. So it was really interesting how we had those four months when he wasn’t sick. Praise the Lord.

SPEAKER 03 : 6:40

And it’s hard to believe that was 15 years ago, but here we are 15 years later and the ministry is thriving and we’re working on all sorts of issues and trying to help make people good Christian citizens and spreading the gospel and so forth. You mentioned a little earlier that you both have sort of a business background. and yet you find yourselves building a life of just incredible evangelical work. Was that movement toward the evangelical world and evangelizing, was that underway before this time that you reached out to Dr. Dobson, or did it start with that and then grow from there?

SPEAKER 05 : 7:28

I was blessed to be able to—I had a CPA business in Denver, Colorado, And I was blessed to be able to sell that when I was 45. So at that time, and Brenda’s approximately the same age, at that time, we… donated our life to Christian work. One of our boys was really affected by Young Life, another boy by Fellowship of Christian Athletes. So we’re on committee of Young Life here. I was the state chairman of FCA and then on their national board after two different sessions. So we were real involved with that. And then our world ministry was Campus Crusade for Christ. Bill Bright got a hold of us, and he said, God had a plan for our life, but it turned out that he did on it.

SPEAKER 04 : 8:20

He really changed our life with all the ministry. We were on Mission Volga in 1992 with him when Russia opened and everything. What Dr. Bright always said was, we always tithed from the time we were first married and everything. Always did that. We always went to church and everything. And it was really interesting. He says, you have to live on the 10% and give 90% away. And that changed our lives.

SPEAKER 03 : 8:45

That’s a pretty revolutionary idea right there. There are a lot of people that struggle with the 10% requirement. And as you guys know, there’s a tendency to be legalized about it. Did I get to the 10? Is that pre-tax or after tax? But I suspect that what Bill Bright was trying to say was just open your hands, right, and It all belongs to the Lord. Amen. And you should only keep what you absolutely need.

SPEAKER 04 : 9:13

Amen. And don’t live a really high lifestyle and everything like that.

SPEAKER 03 : 9:18

We mentioned a little earlier the Jesus film, and we could talk for hours about that. And, you know, I really do want to give you an opportunity to talk about the relatively new project that you’re part of. But for the younger listeners, can you just fill us in? How did that happen? I mean, the figures are unbelievable. This film done on, I believe, a relatively modest budget, and the number of people it’s brought to Christ, the number of languages it’s been translated into. Sometimes I get the feeling that, you know, if I get to heaven, everybody there is going to have seen the Jesus film.

SPEAKER 04 : 10:00

Yeah. Well, it was interesting. In 1995, when they started their development board, we were asked to be on that. So we have been on that all this time. And so we’ve gone to many countries. We’ve been into China, smuggling in videos way back when there were videos, not DVDs and now how it is. But the Jesus Film app, you can get everything on there free. It’s so good with all the more than 2,500 different languages and everything. And We’ve been to 91 countries. We’ve been able to travel with the Jesus film and do so many things in so many countries showing the film and everything. It’s been such a blessing to encourage people.

SPEAKER 05 : 10:39

You know, and again, we can’t emphasize enough. You know, we’re not that smart, but we have just been so blessed abundantly. by the Lord, to be able to donate to all of these organizations. And it just seems like he continues to provide. And like I say, it’s up to him and not us, because he’s provided all this funding in these countries and so forth.

SPEAKER 04 : 11:08

And it’s really interesting when we’re giving and everything. So many times we come up with the same figure. Is that right? It’s really interesting, yes. So it’s been fun. It’s really fun.

SPEAKER 03 : 11:19

Well, you know, it seems appropriate that if you go from Genesis to Revelation— It’s a great novel. It’s the greatest story ever told. It’s only fitting that the movie you would do about the main character, Jesus Christ, would itself be a great story that people want to hear and have watched it with really an impact in all seriousness. You know it’s had an impact, but you won’t fully know it until we’re with the Lord and see all the ways that it touched lives. So, you know, often when an author writes a good book, a great book, or you have some other tremendous achievement, Act II is always a challenge, right? A lot of people never have an Act II. But now you’re involved in this new project called SaturateUSA. And my understanding is, at least in part, that project helps get around the hesitancy a lot of followers of Jesus Christ have, even today, in sharing the gospel. So talk to us about Saturate USA and what the goal is there and how it’s going.

SPEAKER 05 : 12:30

Well, how we got involved in that, we had a group that was distributing the Jesus Stone mainly to Muslims at the time. And we saw this survey by Barna saying that 52% of Americans or the U.S. people do not know jesus christ and of course to you and us that just seems impossible but again if you came from a country they’ve never heard about jesus christ or you’re even in a family in the usa which i know now a lot of people never talk about jesus christ so When we saw that, we had spent all of our money all these years going overseas with the message. And we thought, we just got to get to this country. So this is when we decided to do Saturate USA. We first started out going to the churches, asking them to pay part of the money to do the DVDs and stuff. And it just was forever going through boards. And now we said, finally, we went out and got a group of about eight of us together. And we’ve been providing the funding, all the funding for the DVDs, the Knowing God Personally booklet. The bags that they go in, the only thing we ask the church to do is to provide a letter or a card inviting the people right around their zip code, around the church, which is right around the church, inviting them to come to church, to their place, and come and learn about Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER 04 : 14:11

So there’s a two and a half minute video online that people need to look at before they do it. They can adopt a church online at saturateusa.org. And the most important thing, though, when they do each home, we want them to pray for each home. So we want to pray for that home that they will come to Christ or… you know, that they will make a difference in their life. But it’s all free. The church just has to adopt the zip codes around their church. They will be getting all kinds of their zip code broken down into small bite-sized pieces for people to go out and do it. So they get everything free that they need.

SPEAKER 03 : 14:49

Well, what a wonderful program. And you mentioned zip code a couple of times. So that’s literally the way you’re going at this, to essentially adopt a zip code and then blanket it with the good news. Exactly.

SPEAKER 04 : 15:01

Around their churches so that people would come to their church in their zip codes. Like at our church, we’ve done four zip codes around the church right now. Oh, I see. And everything. So you can do more than one. You can do other people’s. We have a doctor and his wife that do it on their own. They’ve done a whole zip code themselves by doing 500 things every weekend.

SPEAKER 05 : 15:20

Every weekend, they go out and do 500 homes. So, I mean, it’s something that just even an individual in church says, hey, I want to get the youth group here together and go out, you know, on one Saturday on a zip code up north with our church. We did 12,000 homes in about three hours because a bunch of people showed up to do it. So it can be done, but then one person can do it. But the main thing, it gets a person started in evangelization. If you go out and hang out on a door, you started your life evangelizing, and the Lord’s going to put people in front of you to do that. And I just think back over our lives how few people you really get to evangelize And they literally can reach 12,000 homes like I did. Three per home is 36,000 people that have had the opportunity to hear about Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER 03 : 16:16

Well, Mike, most of my time is spent in Washington, D.C., and I try to evangelize, but I must be doing something wrong. I need to sit down, get some training from you guys, because I’m not seeing that much improvement among our politicians. But at any rate, look, I was really excited to hear you say that there’s material in this project that’s specifically aimed at young people, at children, and You both know that Dr. Dobson and Shirley have spent so much of their ministry trying to save kids, trying to make sure that our children have mothers and fathers that love them, they’re gifts from God. Dr. Dobson and I wrote a book a gazillion years ago, Children at Risk, the battle for the hearts and minds of our children. And you can’t go by one day without seeing, sadly, the evidence of of all the evil forces that are trying to grab our kids so i know you both have a heart for america’s children too and yes are you hopeful that we can win this battle for their hearts and minds we will because i i think if every home has this hanging on their door and had an opportunity to hear about jesus christ it’s got to change the country to a great extent

SPEAKER 05 : 17:40

And, you know, I even think Dr. Dobson, we talk about the effect he has on the whole world, so to speak. But we were on his program one time two years ago, I think it was. And then within two days, we had 2 million homes adopted by that transmission of his, just a little over 2 million homes. And I mean, think of that, 2 million homes, that’s times 3, 6 million people. What an outreach, just by his program, his name, and so forth. So his last 15 years have been unbelievable on things.

SPEAKER 03 : 18:20

You know, I was joking a little bit about Washington, D.C. I think people would be surprised. I know you all have been involved in Bible studies. There are a surprising number of Bible studies by members of Congress, and there’s a number of people in the cabinet right now of the United States that are clearly Christians and are bold in talking about their faith. I was really moved by the fact that when the new administration came in, a number of cabinet members, after they got through their confirmation hearings, the first thing they did was thank God for helping them get through. Because as we know, politics is so ugly these days and so many terrible things are said about people. So The gospel’s even making its way here in Washington, which is a good thing. You mentioned churches can play a major role in this. I would think just being part of the Saturate USA project would have a revival impact on the church too, right? In the sense that it gives them a goal and something that the church can work on together.

SPEAKER 05 : 19:32

Right. Well, another big thing that’s just happened, the IRS has come out now and said they will not go after any churches that use the church to give out their thoughts on political items and so forth. So it’s so big now that these churches can’t say, oh, I can’t do it because of the Johnson Amendment. It just isn’t the case. Yes, I think it should help a great deal with these churches, again, getting people out of the pews. Because I forget what percentage, such a low percentage of people ever will share their faith. And that’s evangelical people. So it’s just a way to get people going on this, and hopefully it would grow within a church. But again, one person can go to that church and do it. The pastor has to do nothing. We got that two and a half minute video that he can have any time to show at the beginning. That’s all he needs to do.

SPEAKER 03 : 20:26

Brenda, you and Mike have both, you know, you’ve had your ear to the ground for quite a few years now. And I think you may pick up things before other people do. And I know that millions of people have been praying for revival in America. We all agree we need it.

SPEAKER 05 : 20:45

I do think there’s revival. I think with the young people especially. Yes, with all the young people. It appears these young people are getting in gear more than the older people. And so they could change this thing real quick, because I think most revivals have come out of young people. And I think that will happen.

SPEAKER 03 : 21:04

Mike and Brenda, you know, we’re told there’s a place prepared for us when we go to the perfect heaven and earth. You’ve done incredible work. Where should people go to find out more about the Saturate program? Just go to saturateusa.org.

SPEAKER 05 : 21:22

Saturateusa.org. Two and a half minute video will tell you everything you need to know at the very beginning.

SPEAKER 04 : 21:29

And you can sign up right there on the website. Real simple. And somebody will call you and get back with you. They’ll get back with you. All we ask of the churches is that report back on how many people on your zip code you’ve done. That’s the problem. They don’t want to report back. They get into it and forget to report back.

SPEAKER 05 : 21:47

We’re tracking every home in the USA. So, I mean, we know what’s been done and so forth. you’re talking to an evangelistic group of church or anything, Gary, just mention that to them. I mean, it’s all free. They just have to give it some energy. But just stick that in your mind, saturateusa.org.

SPEAKER 04 : 22:06

And a lot of people say that a DVD has no worth in the U.S. anymore, but you have to remember that we have so many people from other countries coming here, and they all have DVDs and want something in their own language. We are targeting them. And rather than a card, this is more worth and people tend not to throw it away like they would do a card or something.

SPEAKER 03 : 22:27

You mentioned a little earlier that while the gospel, and you’ve been involved in that through the Jesus film, has been spread around the world. We sometimes lose sight of the fact that we have a big evangelical challenge here in the United States. I remember not that many years ago, I was in an airport, I believe it was in New Orleans, and there were four or five gentlemen sitting nearby and we struck up a conversation and They wanted to know what I did and so forth. And I asked them about themselves, and they told me that they were from Nigeria. And I asked them, well, why were they in the United States? And they said, well, we’re Christians. We’ve come here to spread the gospel. And I thought, what? Yeah. a way that the Lord works, right? Because it was Christians that went to Nigeria, many of them from America to spread the gospel. And now the Christians of Nigeria come to America to give it back to us. Only God can work out plans like that. I said that you’re part of our Everyday Heroes program where we want to highlight people like yourselves. There’s nothing every day about either one of you. You’re superstars. And we’ll do everything we can to get the word out for saturateusa.org. And let’s see if we can reach that goal by the end of 2027.

SPEAKER 01 : 24:01

You don’t have to be a theologian to share your faith. You just need to have a willing and obedient heart. You’ve been listening to a special edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, featuring an inspiring conversation with Gary Bauer and Mike and Brenda Baller talking about their nationwide effort to saturate America with the gospel. Now, if you’d like to learn more about Saturate USA and discover how your church can adopt a zip code and receive free evangelism materials, go to drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. Through the JDFI, we are working to promote biblical principles and respect for America’s founding values, and your support makes broadcasts like this one possible. As our nation drifts from its original spiritual roots, your partnership helps us reach families and guide them back to the biblical truth that once anchored our society. To join us in this mission, you can give a gift online at drjamesdobson.org, or you can call a member of our constituent care team at 877-732-6825. Well, I’m Roger Marsh, and on behalf of Dr. James Dobson and all of us here at Family Talk, thanks so much for listening today. Be sure to join us again next time right here for another edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, the voice you still trust for the family you love. The preceding program was a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.

SPEAKER 02 : 25:26

Hello, everyone. Do you need help dealing with the everyday tasks of raising a family? I’m James Dobson here, and if you do, I hope you’ll tune in to our next edition of Family Talk. Our main purpose in this ministry is to put tools into your hands that will strengthen your marriage and help you raise your kids. Hope to see you right here next time for another edition of Family Talk.