Yes, if cost is what's keeping your church from offering live translation, a church translation scholarship or subsidy from Jesus Speaks may close the gap, and the way to find out is to ask. Jesus Speaks was built on the mission field by a missionary who kept standing in rooms full of nations with no way for each person to hear the gospel in their heart language, and no budget for interpreters or booths. So pricing works on prepaid credits, where 1 credit equals €1, drawn down per language per minute actually heard. A one-hour service in three languages on the standard voice uses about 10.8 credits. Approved ministries start with €5 of free credit, listeners are always free and unlimited, and scholarships and subsidies are decided case by case through a conversation, not a form with a cutoff. If you're a small church, plant, or field ministry that assumed this was out of reach, please ask before going without.
Why does live translation feel out of reach for small churches?
Because for most small congregations, every new line in the budget has to fight for its place. We hear it all the time: "We'd love to translate, but we can barely cover rent."
What do the U.S. numbers show about small church budgets?
The numbers from the United States show why. These are U.S. figures, but if you serve a church plant in Europe, Africa, Asia or Latin America, we suspect the shape of the problem will feel familiar.
| Figure | What it describes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| $85,000 | Median annual budget for U.S. churches under 100 in attendance (2025) | Lifeway Research, via Ministry Place |
| $10,000 / $60,000 | Average startup and first-year costs for plants over two years old with under 100 attending | Christianity Today, Jan. 2023 |
| 26% and 15% | Share of plant funding from the core group and from the primary leader's own earnings or savings | Lifeway Research, 2022 |
| 33 weeks | Average cash reserves held by very small U.S. churches | Christian Standard, 2025 |
Why do very small churches hesitate to add a new expense?
That last line matters. Very small churches tend to be careful and debt-averse, and the same survey found only 21 percent of them carry debt. That's good stewardship. It also means a costly interpreter or a rack of receivers usually loses the vote.
Who is sitting in your service without understanding it?
Often more people than we realize. In the United States, the Census Bureau records over 430 languages spoken or signed across the country, and of the 74.1 million people who speak a non-English language at home, 39.1% meet the federal definition of limited English proficiency (Mendoza Firm summary of U.S. Census data, 2026).
In U.S. evangelical churches specifically, 12% of evangelicals were born outside the country and another 7% have at least one parent who was, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center study (The Washington Times, Oct. 2026).
Outside the U.S., the faces change but the need doesn't. A refugee family in a Greek church plant. A Filipino nurse in a small congregation in the Gulf. A missionary who arrived in a new country before learning the language. Revelation 7:9 pictures a multitude "from every nation, tribe, people and language" standing together before the throne. Many of our churches already look like a small foretaste of that. The question is whether everyone in the room can follow along.
What does "ministry, not margin" mean at Jesus Speaks?
We call it "ministry, not margin." The goal is to get the Word to people, not to build a pricing model that only large churches can use.
You pay only for what is heard
Credits are drawn down per language, per minute that someone is actually listening. If no one picks Farsi this Sunday, you don't pay for Farsi this Sunday. There's no monthly seat count and no per-listener fee.
Listeners are always free
Whether three people or three hundred tune in, listening is free and unlimited. Your newcomers never see a bill, a sign-up wall, or an app store. They scan a QR code or open a link in any browser and choose their language from 87+ options.
Every word is kept
When playback falls behind the speaker, it speeds up rather than skipping ahead. Your congregation hears the whole message, not a summary. We consider that a ministry conviction as much as an engineering choice.
What can €5 of starter credit actually cover?
Using the example above, about 10.8 credits for one hour in three languages on the standard voice, the rough math works out to around 0.06 credits per language per minute. So €5 of starter credit could cover roughly 80 listening-minutes in one language, or around 25 to 30 minutes running in three languages.
Please treat that as an estimate, not a quote. Your actual use depends on how many languages are active, how long people listen, and which voice you choose. Premium voices, including ones that can clone your pastor's own voice, use credits differently than the standard voice.
What the starter credit is really for is trying it in your own room: your sound, your accents, your people. Run it during a midweek Bible study or a portion of Sunday worship and watch what happens when someone hears the sermon in their heart language for the first time.
How does a church translation scholarship work at Jesus Speaks?
Honestly, it starts with a conversation. We don't publish a fixed scholarship amount or a rigid eligibility chart, because ministries on the field don't fit neat boxes. A house church in a closed country, a refugee ministry run by volunteers, and a small rural congregation welcoming its first immigrant families all have different realities.
Here's what we can tell you:
- Scholarships and subsidies are decided case by case, after we've talked with you.
- They're available to Christian ministries who share our statement of faith, the same group who can use Jesus Speaks at all.
- Asking costs you nothing but a few minutes, and it won't affect your access to standard credits.
- We'd rather hear from you than have you quietly decide translation isn't for churches like yours.
Paul wrote, "I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some" (1 Corinthians 9:22). Removing a cost barrier is one small way we try to live that out alongside you.
What should you share when you ask for help?
You don't need a grant proposal. A short, honest note helps us understand how to serve you. Consider including:
- Who you are: your church or ministry, where you serve, and roughly how many people gather.
- The languages in the room: which ones, and about how many people speak each.
- How often you'd translate: weekly worship, a monthly gathering, a one-time conference.
- Your current situation: volunteer interpreters stretched thin, no interpreter at all, or newcomers simply going without.
- What you can contribute: even a small amount helps us size support fairly, and "nothing right now" is an honest answer too.
Do you need expensive equipment to get started?
No. That's one of the biggest reasons the missionary who built Jesus Speaks started the project in the first place: booths and receiver racks belong to budgets a church plant never sees.
There are four ways to run it, and you can begin with the simplest:
- A single phone. No hardware at all. One phone listens to the speaker and runs the translation over a cell-phone data connection.
- A laptop into your soundboard. Send translated audio to your house speakers or livestream.
- Listeners on their own phones. Captions and a warm, natural voice in each person's language.
- Wireless listening receivers. If your church already owns headsets for interpretation, you may be able to feed the audio to them.
There's also a side-by-side captions view for older and hard-of-hearing members, and you can upload sermon notes, glossaries and name lists so names like Nebuchadnezzar, your local town, or your ministry's own terms come through correctly.
Ask before you go without
At Pentecost, the crowd was amazed because "each one heard their own language being spoken" (Acts 2:6). That still moves us. We'd love for the immigrant grandmother, the refugee teenager, and the visiting missionary in your service to experience a little of that wonder.
If your ministry shares our statement of faith, you're warmly invited to sign up at jesusspeaks.eu/signup, try it with your €5 of starter credit, and, if cost is still the barrier, tell us about your situation. The Jesus Speaks team reads every note, and we'll talk it through with you.