SermonAudio Celebrates 25 Years

SermonAudio celebrated 25 years of broadcasting the Word of God around the globe on Friday, Dec. 12, with a beautiful banquet held in the Davis Room on the campus of Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C.

Since May 1, 2000, the website has grown to include a library of nearly 2.9 million sermons, from nearly 50,000 speakers, and with nearly 500 million total downloads. This is quite an achievement, since it took two years to realize those first million downloads. These sermons have now reached as far as the International Space Station—driven by the theme verse, Rom. 10:17: “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

The evening commemorated the growth of the ministry from its humble beginnings under the direction of founder Steven Lee. His vision for SermonAudio dates back to youthful days and late nights of listening endlessly to sermons via cassette tape and headphones. “The Story of SermonAudio” was told by way of a new 22-minute film that premiered that night.

“You’re training future generations of preachers, in addition to evangelization,” stated Dr. Bob Jones III, chancellor of BJU. He told the audience that SermonAudio, in essence, supplies pastors in third-world countries with a Bible college-level education.

“I think what you are doing here is just beginning,” Jones said to Lee.

Also launching at the banquet was Global Sermons—a new feature of SermonAudio which allows broadcasters to pay to have sermons translated, transcribed and recorded in any of 46 languages, by means of artificial intelligence. The ultimate goal of Global Sermons is “every sermon in every language.” The first sermons to be globalized in this way will be every message ever preached by Charles Haddon Spurgeon.

Who could have imagined such opportunities being accessible, even to small churches and ministries, just a few years ago—when the most sophisticated media outreaches still involved having a tape ministry, or placing a program on a local radio station? These advances through technology are truly astounding.

Aaron Darlington, representing The Master’s Seminary, called the work of SermonAudio “the providential preservation of the propagation of truth.”

In all, there were 200 invited guests at the banquet. These included representatives from many ministries such as Answers in Genesis, Blue Letter Bible, BJU, The Crown College of the Bible, IFCA International, Ligonier Ministries, TMS, MLJ Trust and VCY America, along with numerous local churches.

“Many of our broadcasters have been with us for over 20 years,” Lee stated. A number of them were honored at the banquet as being illustrative of the larger group.

Following the evening’s festivities, Lee led a tour of SermonAudio’s headquarters, including The Vault (SermonAudio’s in-house data storage system, which began operating on Dec. 9, 2022—at the height of cancel culture), which is housed on the second floor of the Mack Building, next to the library, on the BJU campus.

SermonAudio has been a major part of my life and ministry for most of its history. I began my own page for my ministry within The Friends of Israel during the shutdowns of 2020. I have also overseen Dr. John Whitcomb’s page on SermonAudio since July of 2003. When I first explained the concept to Dr. Whitcomb and showed him the website, he jumped at the opportunity to join.

Those were the days of mailing cassettes off to a third-party service that had the technology and the know-how to upload the audio to a website—which I certainly lacked. I remember dropping those first cassette tapes off at the post office and walking away saying to myself, “We’re on SermonAudio!” I had great fun with that undertaking—handling the Whitcomb Ministries page as if I were running my own radio station. Now, more than 22 years later, I am still checking the page nearly every day, and we are well past a million downloads of Dr. Whitcomb’s messages.

I have watched with amazement as SermonAudio has expanded its services exponentially through the development of technology, and with projects like The Vault. I have benefited greatly from this website myself, as a listener, many more times than I could ever count.

I want to thank Steven Lee for inviting me to this very special event. He is truly a great friend. I have had the privilege of conducting interviews with him in the past, and always enjoy working with him—including serving as a speaker for the Daily United Prayer meeting, which I was privileged to do in person this past June, live from The Vault.^*

Armen Thomassian, senior minister of Faith Free Presbyterian Church in Greenville, and Lee’s own pastor, gave this fitting charge to the SermonAudio staff: “Keep going—the end is not yet. The best is yet to be.”

I am deeply grateful to and for SermonAudio. May the Lord’s richest blessing continue to fall upon this ministry outreach—until Christ comes again.