History of GotQuestions.org

GotQuestions.org was founded in February of 2002. God gave our founder, S. Michael Houdmann, a vision for helping people find answers to their Bible questions through the internet. Little did he envision how quickly God would turn GotQuestions.org into a full-time ministry. We quickly discovered what a great need there was for a quality Bible answer service on the internet.

Within one month of our launch, GotQuestions.org was receiving over 30 questions a day. The volunteer staff grew from 5 writers, to 10, to 20, to 50, and ultimately to our current staff of over 115. At the same time, the volume of questions steadily increased. We are currently averaging 110 questions per day. In response, we opened our question answering ministry to volunteers whom the Lord brings our way. We continue to praise the Lord for our volunteer writers. They are what makes this ministry possible!

Just as in any other field, the internet is a battlefield. This is equally true in the spiritual realm. The cults, false religions, and other semi-Christian groups have websites as well. Some of these sites perform much the same function that we do. The answers these sites provide are often very unbiblical and lead searching people down a false path - potentially to their own spiritual destruction. (Note: we are by no means claim to be the only site on the internet that answers people's questions in a God-honoring way. In fact, there are others.) So, the GotQuestions staff began to pray, how can we prevent people from visiting these unbiblical sites? In response to our prayers, God led us to search engine optimization and search engine advertising. By designing our webpages to be search engine friendly, we achieve good listings in the search engine. For example, we seek to be listed highly every time someone searches for Bible Questions, Bible Answers, and Christian Answers - because that is what we do. We determined that we would strive to be listed higher than the sites that do not proclaim the truth - no matter the cost - trusting that God would provide the funding we would need. God has met our needs every step of the way, as we knew He would (Philippians 4:19).

As our website traffic increased and the volume of questions continued to grow, we recognized the need to have our most frequently asked questions and answers posted online for easy access. We currently have over 1300 of our most frequently asked questions posted online in our archives. We started posting a question of the week online and immediately received requests for it to be sent out via email as well. Many "questioners" would ask us to recommend a good Christian book that would help them with their question, so we began including recommended books along with the answers, and created an affiliate bookstore online.

In November of 2005, we began the process of translating what we believe to be our most important webpages into other languages. It is our goal to translate our 52 "most important" articles into every major world language. Beyond that, it is our goal to translate at least 200 webpages into the world languages that are most prominent on the internet. There are, sadly, many languages in which there is very little to no quality Christian content available online.

We continue to pray and dream regarding how God would expand and improve the ministry of GotQuestions.org! We praise the Lord for what He has accomplished through us and in us! We look forward for how God will use GotQuestions.org in the future (Jeremiah 29:11).

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