Hear it. Love it. live it. (How we got to where we are)
Things have changed
For starters, my hair isn't purple anymore and I need new headshots. But there’s more.
The following is an email Kelsey sent out to the email list we had built from 2020-2025. We are sharing it on this blog as an introduction and recap. If you’re new to Outloud Bible, this is an introduction to us, Mike and Kelsey. If you’ve been with us for a while, this is a recap of the wild ride we’ve been on for these several years.
Either way, it’s a testimony, or perhaps many testimonies, of imperfect people doing the best we can to follow Jesus even when it doesn’t make sense.
However you found Mike and Kelsey Domeny, I know you haven't heard from us in a while. Things have been changing over here. In the past five years, you may have met us through:
our book, Next Best Yes
our podcast by the same name
our coaching community, The Grove
a Church Creative Couch online event
a download to help your business align with the Bible
a retreat
maybe we spoke at an event you attended
perhaps you just know us
That list of how people may have found us is, alone, a testament to how winding our path has been over the past five years.
A new mission
In our coaching and on our podcast, we talked often about how the mission God puts on your heart can change from year to year and season to season. Your calling is always to follow Jesus and help as many other people follow Him with you. But your mission, we would say how you fulfill that calling, changes.
For three years that mission had been centered on The Grove, and helping other people say "yes!" to the thing God put on their heart. But we often talked about something else in those coaching calls, too:
You might be pursuing a mission on your heart, but you are the mission on God's heart. That is, He cares more about who you are than what you do. And the path He's asking you to walk is likely so you will get to know Him more and become the person He wants you to be.
So, our calling hasn't changed, but our mission has. And it has been revealed after many hard, long years of God pruning away who we were and changing us to be who we are.
A new, and old, project
Before our daughter was born, we had an idea for a ministry called "Swordplay." The idea was combing Scripture (the "sword of the spirit") with theatre (play) in some sort of way to help people experience the Word of God as if it were written by real people - because it was.
That idea was shelved for a decade.
In 2021, in the wake of the pandemic and Mike losing his primary source of income and purpose with a traveling improv ministry, Mike was begging God to show him what to do next.
God led Mike to 1 Timothy 4:13 and 15 "focus on reading the Scriptures to the church, encouraging the believers, and teaching them. Give your complete attention to these matters. Throw yourself into your tasks so that everyone will see your progress."
God said, "read my Word. And put a microphone in front of your face and share it with others."
That's when Mike launched the Outloud Bible Project podcast. For three years, he has released two episodes a week of reading the Bible in a conversational tone so we can hear the Word of God, love it, and live it outloud.
We now recognize that the idea for Swordplay was still alive, but under a new name. We were not the people in 2012 who would be ready for that ministry. God had a lot of work to do on our hearts to prepare us for what He's given us today.
A new realization
Since COVID shut down Mike's full time ministry, we've been wanting to know what God has next for us. This intensified when Mike and I felt led to shut down The Grove. It was, after all, the thing we were doing. Without that coaching community, I didn't know what to do.
Several months ago, I was sitting and scrolling on my phone. I came across a reel of a pastor talking about marriage roles as defined in Ephesians and I was deeply convicted. The Holy Spirit pressed on my heart, "Kelsey, submit to Mike."
I recoiled, "I'm not not submitting to him. We don't fight, I'm not domineering, or disrespectful. We have a wonderful marriage full of love and mutual respect!"
Have you ever tried to out-logic God on why the sin He's revealing to you isn't sin? It doesn't work.
I felt the Lord in that conversation guide me to a new realization: God had already given Mike the vision for what was next for us.
Three years ago.
Outloud Bible Project.
I just didn't accept that it would be next for us because I was not involved. I had always thought of it as "Mike's thing." I wasn't content with something that didn't have, I'll be brutally honest, more of me in it.
When the Lord told me to submit to Mike, He was saying to throw my full support behind the one thing God hadn't pruned away. Give my full attention to the thing God was leading my husband in. Stop looking for something else that looked more like what I wanted and submit to the Lord by submitting to my husband's mission.
A new book
When Mike and I wrote Next Best Yes we were in a season of going. So we wrote down what we were learning during that time and put in into a book.
Immediately after that book came out, God put on the brakes. He said "stop." And we have been learning that before we can throw ourselves into the Kingdom building work He may have for us, we need to prioritize knowing Him, and being known by Him.
The Kingdom work doesn't start with "yes." It starts with knowing who you're saying "yes" to and becoming the kind of person who will follow even when it doesn't make sense.
Now, Mike and I are rewriting Next Best Yes as well as working on two other books in a new series that will follow God's people on the journey of:
getting to know Him
becoming the people He wants them to be
entering into the Kingdom work He planned for them
Here's an excerpt of chapter 7 of book 1: When God says Stop:
“I don’t think I can do this anymore,” one tissue box down, and halfway into the second catching my tears and snot, I told Mike, “I trust God. I do. I just don’t know how much longer I can wait month to month for income. I don’t know anymore if we’re acting in faith or foolishness.” Our 13-year-old daughter had just deposited her birthday money and, officially, she had more money in her bank account than we did.
It was a different despair. I can honestly say I wasn’t complaining about manna, I wasn’t leaning on my understanding, I wasn’t questioning God - I fully believed He would take care of our needs. I was just exhausted.
I felt like I didn’t have the strength to keep pushing on. I didn’t know how many more closed doors I could take. Everyone has a breaking point and I’m confident I was on the brink of mine.
Click the button below to read the whole chapter for free!
A new direction
Thank you for reading this. I know it's long. But I wanted to give you the full picture of where we've come from and where we're going.
In December, the Next Best Yes website will shut down. We have already closed The Grove, and the Next Best Yes podcast will stay live through the end of this year, then it will come offline.
We are throwing our full selves into Outloud Bible Project. Because the American church is starving—not due to lack of inspiration, but for lack of obedience. We hear sermons, scroll past soundbites, and nod at truth without ever cracking open the Bible for ourselves. We’ve outsourced our faith to influencers and forgotten how to sit with God’s Word.
So we shelve it. And when life hits hard, we respond just like everyone else—because we don’t know what Jesus actually said. And if we don’t know His words, we can’t follow His way.
It’s time to change that. The abundant life isn’t found in vague belief—it’s found in knowing and obeying the Word.
We are committed to helping people hear the word of God. Love the Word of God. And Live like it makes a difference.
Hear it. Love it. Live it.
The podcast Mike has run solo for three years, we are now working on together. For now, every Friday, we do an episode called "Living Outloud" where we talk about practical application of the passages he read that week.
We're talking about expanding to five or six episodes a week. And we're exploring what it would look like to do video in addition to the audio podcasts.
We have also begun traveling to churches with Outloud Bible Experiences. We are delivering fully-embodied presentations of Scripture. Churches aren’t watching a recital.
They’re experiencing the living, active Word of God in a surprisingly refreshing way.
These events are always free for churches, made possible by God’s generosity through individuals.
People have responded to these experiences with comments like
"I have never understood the Bible that easily before!"
"I thought I'd be bored being read to, but that was engaging from start to finish!"
"Powerful." "Impactful." "I want to go read it for myself now!"
You can see a glimpse of what we're doing with the video below. Click the image to watch on YouTube.
A new email
Since we are throwing ourselves into this task of helping people hear it, love it, live it, we are moving all of our operations to outloudbible.com.
You can reach us at mike@outloudbible.com or kelsey@outloudbible.com
We won't spam you. But we do want to continue to encourage you to know the the Bible says and live like it makes a difference. Our content is now 100% devoted to equipping people to
hear the Bible in a way that stirs the soul
and awaken a hunger for truth.
Thank you for following along this far. I hope you'll stay with us and continue to know God and be known by Him.
If you'd like to learn more about Outloud Bible Project, click here.
If you'd like to talk about bringing an Outloud Bible Experience to your church or event, click here.
If you'd like to support this mission as we get off the ground, click here.
Please pray for us. We're praying for you.
