For this young man, listening to sermons on cassette became a lifeline. The preacher’s voice would be the last thing he heard before falling asleep. In those quiet nights, the boy was learning the truth of Scripture.
Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Night after night, sermon after sermon – the Lord was planting His Word deep in the heart of the boy.
This young man, like many of his generation, was a gamer, and soon after, a computer programmer. He was fascinated by the world of technology, which was becoming more accessible and user-friendly.
During his college years, he attended a small church – pastored, according to him, by “The World’s Greatest Preacher.” Week after week, the young man would hear sound and faithful exposition of the scriptures.
Soon, the young man began to ask himself this question: How could more people hear and be blessed by the messages he was hearing?
One day, in a back room of the church pastored by “the world’s greatest preacher,” he found a rack of audio cassette tapes. The cassettes had gathered dust, and the powerful messages they contained – were likely to never be heard again.
This, thought the young man, isn’t right. Sermons, when faithfully preached, shouldn’t be limited to a single Sunday or to a single audience. They should be enjoyed for generations to come.
But how?
The answer came to him in an avalanche of innovation and technology. IBM and Apple led the way by introducing personal computers to the masses. Audio cassettes were replaced by Compact Discs. Then came digital audio and a new thing called MP3, which allowed for the compression of audio files, making it easier to store and share.
Then, in 1989, the World Wide Web was invented.
The young man, a child of the 80s, was captivated by all these technological breakthroughs, even as he continued to love hearing God’s Word proclaimed.
One day, that love for preaching led him to ask his pastor whether he should enter the ministry. While his pastor loved the young man’s passion for God’s Word, he detected stronger giftedness – but not for preaching.
While this was disappointing, his pastor’s counsel turned out to be one of the greatest blessings to this talented, passionate and tender-hearted young man – Steven Lee.
Steven Lee’s love for preaching, his desire for God’s Word to reach thousands, and his fascination with technology would soon converge into a new calling.
This convergence was the birth of an idea … which sprung from seeing those dusty, audio cassettes containing priceless messages delivered by ‘the world’s greatest preacher.’
What if the preached word could travel through the internet? What if technology could become the servant of theology?
With that thought, Steven threw himself into work. Night after night, line by line, pixel by pixel, he began creating an entirely new media platform. He was a man on a mission.
The work was grueling, the hours were long, and the tools were primitive. Yet he felt as though a hand greater-than-his-own was guiding him. At long last, after a full year of coding, the vision became reality.
On May 1, 2000, SermonAudio was born. From day one, the mission – to preserve and propagate solid Bible teaching – was clear.
Technology and innovation continued to advance leaps and bounds. The iPod ‘put a thousand songs in your pocket.’ The iPhone redefined communication. Streaming became the new normal. How we communicated, listened, watched and learned – changed forever.
Yet, even as the noise of innovation grew louder, Steven Lee found his strength the same way he always had – listening, daily, to God’s Word being proclaimed.
As technology became more available to users, more people discovered SermonAudio, and by 2002, the site had achieved 1 million sermon downloads.
Each change in the world of technology opened a new path for the company. When it became mainstream to livestream, SermonAudio's webcasting system was rebuilt with multicasting support. When the world went mobile, SermonAudio became mobile-friendly. As social media came to the forefront, cross-publishing to multiple platforms was introduced.
SermonAudio grew into a platform known and trusted worldwide - reaching hundreds of thousands.
By 2012, the SermonAudio library contained more than 500,000 messages, 100 million sermon downloads, and thousands of churches and ministries broadcasting.
This was the Lord's doing. There was no other explanation.
Then, the world began to shake. The digital realm became dark. In 2021, a preacher found that a gaming platform had, in an instant, erased his entire library of 3,000 sermons. There was no warning. No alarm had sounded. Everything was just … gone.
Not long after, SermonAudio became the target of a crippling cyber-attack. There was a threatening message on Facebook, followed by every link to SermonAudio being blocked.
Steven realized the technology that once was an ally had become a sword. This realization gave birth to SermonAudio’s greatest undertaking - the building of The Vault.
In the same way persecuted Christians of the past hid manuscripts in caves, the time had come to do the same in the present digital world.
The Vault is not a metaphor. It is an actual infrastructure made of stone and steel, servers and switches, cables and circuits - built to protect preaching.
In 2019, an idea was proposed to the leadership of Bob Jones University. What if SermonAudio constructed The Vault … a secure, physical home for the preservation and propagation of preaching … on the campus of Bob Jones University? It was agreed, and on
December 9, 2022, The Vault officially opened.
But storing sermons safely in The Vault was only half the story. Steven’s desire was for these messages to not simply reside in The Vault, but instead – he wanted the messages to travel and to be available in every language.
But how?
The ‘how?’ was answered with a remarkable gift – an H100 GPU, which gave SermonAudio the power to utilize artificial intelligence privately, enabling the translation of sermons into multiple languages. And so began - Global Sermons.
Today, SermonAudio contains the world’s largest library of sermons with almost 500,000 million downloads. It’s reach spans the globe … and beyond. Beyond, you ask? One day, word arrived that a sermon and livestream from The Vault had reached the International Space Station! On that day, the heavens, by way of The Vault, declared the glory of God.
And so, the boy with the cassette tapes became the man who engineered The Vault. The cassettes that once played in the solitude of a bedroom became the sermon that soared through the expanse of space.
The neglected shelf of dusty cassette tapes became the global library of voices heard by millions, and the dream once thought impossible, every sermon in every language, is becoming a reality.
This is not the end of the story, but the beginning of its final chapter.
When all is said and done, this is not Steven Lee’s story or SermonAudio’s story.
It is the story of the God Who preserves His Word, Who multiplies it, Who carries it farther and higher than any one man could dream.
This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations.
And then Christ shall return!
Oh, and who was ‘The World’s Greatest Preacher?’
For the answer to that question, come visit Steven, and his dedicated team of 10 SermonAudio preservationists, guardians, missionaries and global distributors, on the campus of Bob Jones University!
