Is Stranger Things actually a good analogy?

I was sitting here in my yellow chair trying to come up with an analogy I want to talk about today. I was originally thinking about spiders, and building webs. But that didn’t seem quite right, because a web can be contained. I mean more like tentacles that reach out and try to expand.

That’s what we want to be at Bare Marriage. We want to reach out and try to expand–and infect people. But in a good way!

Our challenge is that there are three groups of people out there in the evangelical world:

We want to help the church be healthy.

That means that the people in the church need to be healthy (since, after all, the church is just the people in it!). But also the church needs to be teaching things that bring life and flourishing, rather than that hurt people. Both for the sake of teaching others about Jesus, and for the sake of people’s well-being.

For so long the evangelical church has hindered the work of Christ by hurting people and turning people away because of what it teaches on marriage and sex.

We want to change that.

We need to reach #3.

The podcast, blog, books, and social media channels are for #1, and a bit for #3.

We certainly do reach people through our social media, and we get new readers and followers everyday!

But we need more. 

We need to get more creative, and start acting in ways that we haven’t already, doing things that we haven’t already, so that we can reach that group of people.

That’s where the Good Fruit Faith Initiative comes in

The Good Fruit Faith Initiative of the Bosko Foundation has as its mission the goal of spreading our healthy messages about sex and marriage into places it hasn’t reached before.

We’ve identified several key groups that we want to target:

1. People whose first language isn’t English

There’s a whole world of evangelicals beyond the English speaking world, and we want to be more strategic in targeting them! In 2026 we’re going to have our first Spanish book published (the Spanish edition of The Good Girl’s Guide to Great Sex is coming), and then The Good Guy’s Guide is going to follow that, and The Great Sex Rescue will follow that.

We raised money for that last year, and we’re so excited to see that come to fruition!

We also want to produce a 10-episode podcast arc in Spanish.

Plus we want to get our work translated into two new languages a year, and this year we’ve chosen Armenian (because we have a great contact!) and Swahili (because we’re planning a trip to Kenya in 2027, so we want it ready!).

We’re hoping to keep this going!

2. Professional leaders and helpers in the evangelical world

We want to reach the teachers and helpers–the pastors and counselors as they’re being trained. And the best way to do that is to change the academic conversation about evangelicalism’s marriage and sex teaching.

That’s why in 2025 we partnered with five different universities to collaborate with different professors to write research papers using our datasets. We currently have eight papers in various stages of submission, and we hope to have a bunch published in 2026 and 2027, with more being written all the time. When the research world is filled with data that Love & Respect is a hoax; that obligation sex is widely taught and hugely harmful; that sexual pain disorders can be linked to evangelicalism’s teachings–then people start to listen. And we already see that happening with our work, and our peer reviewed work, being cited and used in seminary courses.

We also want to work in 2026 and 2027 on certification programs for counselors, churches, and pastors; on pastor roundtables and teaching sessions where we can present our findings; and so much more! 

In 2025 we visited some Christian university campuses; we’d like to do more of that and teach our future leaders. We have so many ideas on targeting this group!

3. People in general who need our message

We want to reach people just like you who haven’t heard of us yet. They’re not seeing our current social media, and they’re not reading our blog or our books. So we’re working on three documentary standalone podcast series (we have one launching in February we’ve been working on all of 2025 on Love & Respect!). We’re creating a new YouTube channel which will host the podcast series and host higher quality professional videos explaining key concepts (you can see some here).

This is a huge area we’ve been putting time into behind the scenes, and we’re hoping to have a lot to show you in 2026!

We want our (good) tentacles to reach in more places

God is shaking the evangelical church. We’re seeing political crises, sexual abuse crises, denominations splitting.

We’re seeing huge leaders fall.

There’s so much confusion and disenchantment, and a general feeling that something isn’t right.

In other words, the fields right now are ripe for the harvest! People are eager to hear that Jesus isn’t pleased with messages about sex and marriage that hurt women. That Jesus doesn’t objectify women or think that men are just lust monsters. That there is a better, healthier way. And when you find that way, you often find peace with God too.

But we need your help this Giving Tuesday.

Remember Group 1, the group that has already heard of us and likes us? That group (that’s YOU!) is fully funded. Our course sales, book royalties, sponsorships, and more keeps that going. And that could keep going on in perpetuity. That’s where I put most of my effort.

But Group 3? We have absolutely no way of making money off of that. That’s not funded. The only way we can grow our tentacles is if you partner with us.

We’re always here to create the content that you consume.

But if you want others to benefit from it too, would you consider joining with us?

Our goal is to raise $94,000 by December 31 to keep our reach growing.

That’s about 1% of Focus on the Family’s budget.

But Scripture seems to really like underdogs!

If you’re in the U.S., you can get a tax-deductible receipt for any giving to The Good Fruit Faith Initiative. If you have charity money to give away before the end of 2025, would you consider giving some to us to help what we’re doing?

And we would love to raise half of that $94,000 through monthly donations, so that we don’t have to fuss about raising money every year. We already have a loyal base that pays for one full-time salary. We’d love to add to that so we can grow even more. If we can get just 150 people giving $25 a month, or 400 people giving $10 a month, we’d be in such great shape for the future!

What if you’re not in the United States? You can still give through the Good Fruit Faith Initiative, you just won’t be able to get a tax receipt (we’re working on that for Canada! It’s just really expensive). But you can also give through our Patreon, and the perk of that is that you get to join our Facebook Patreon group and get access to extras, like Joanna’s book club podcasts, and our behind the scenes musings!

Together we can change the church

If you’ve benefited from our work, and you want others to hear it too, will you join us? We can’t do it alone. But I believe that God wants to do something big with Bare Marriage!

So let’s be those tentacles, and make inroads where people haven’t heard yet.

Thank you so much!