For the first time, a church can run translation at every gathering and pay only when somebody actually listens. Church passes are here: prepaid, flexible, never expiring, for the whole room, with every guest choosing their own language on the spot. They exist because of a woman who came back Sunday after Sunday, and one week stopped.
She came back Sunday after Sunday, drawn by something she could not name. The songs moved her, the people greeted her at the door, and the sermon was in a language she barely had. There was no way to translate it, so she sat through an hour of words she could not follow and tried to read the faces around her. One week she stopped coming, and nobody ever found out how close she had been.
That is the story we hear most often from churches, and it is the one nobody in the room notices happening. There is no complaint and no conversation. A person simply comes less, then only to the social evenings, then not at all, and the church never learns why.
A guest who does not understand the language rarely says so. Saying it means standing in a new place and admitting you are lost, usually to someone who is busy making coffee. So the guest smiles, nods, and decides quietly whether this is a place they can belong to.
The church, for its part, sees a friendly face for a few weeks and then an empty seat. There is nothing to act on. The problem is real, but it is invisible from the front of the room, and an invisible problem never makes it onto the agenda of a council meeting.
You cannot know in advance which Sunday somebody walks in. That is the entire problem, and it is why being ready has to be free.
Every church we talk to has thought about translation. Almost none of them offer it every week, and the reason is always the same shape: it costs something every week, and the need only turns up some weeks.
An interpreter has to be found, booked and thanked, and has to be there. Good interpreters are rare, they are usually volunteers, and the one who speaks Persian cannot help the family who arrived from Ukraine.
Receivers and headsets have to be bought, charged, handed out at the door, counted back in and replaced every few years. They also mark a guest out as the person who needs help, in a room they walked into for the first time.
A subscription bills you in January whether or not anybody needed another language in January. Over a year, most of that money pays for Sundays when the translation was never used.
So churches do the sensible thing and switch translation on for the Sundays they expect to need it: the baptism, the Christmas service, the week the guest preacher comes. Which means it is off on the Sunday nobody expected, and that is exactly the Sunday the guest walks in.
We show you the whole thing live, in about fifteen minutes. Nothing is decided on the call and nothing follows it: you see it, and then you are the judge.
In August we told you what we were building. Today it is here, and churches can buy it. For the first time, everything a church needs to keep translation running every week comes together in one way of paying:
This is the first time all of these pricing features have been put together as passes, and nobody did it before us. Each one on its own helps a little. Together they mean a church never has to guess which Sunday to switch translation on.
A church pass is prepaid, and it covers a gathering, a day or a week, depending on which one you pick. It is not a month, not a subscription, and not a number of minutes counting down while the pastor speaks. You press start at the beginning of the service, and that is the whole of it.
One pass covers the whole gathering, everyone listening. It is never per person, per seat or per listener: whether three guests follow the sermon or three hundred, it is the same pass. Every pass also carries a set number of languages at the same time. When a listener leaves, their slot is free for the next guest's language, so one pass can serve many different languages over the course of a service.
There is no monthly cost, because there is no month. Passes never expire, so what you do not use this year is still waiting next year, and there is nothing to renew and nothing to cancel.
You do not have to count anything to choose. Read what each one is built for and pick the one that sounds like your church. You can see every pass side by side on the pricing page for churches.
Hour and day passes cover one gathering, or everything you run in one day:
Hour Pass: one hour, one or two languages. Made for the church on the smallest budget, or the short midweek prayer meeting. Service Pass: one service, from the first song to the last word, with a couple of languages. Day Pass: everything you run that day, morning and evening, for 24 hours from the moment it starts. International Day Pass: a day when the room speaks five languages or more.
Week passes cover seven days from the moment you start:
Week Pass: the whole week, every gathering, from Sunday service to Bible study, youth night and small groups. International Week Pass: the same week, for a church where five languages or more are in the room at each gathering. Conference Week: several full days of a conference, from the morning session to the late evening.
Mix them however your year actually looks. A church might keep a few Service Passes for ordinary Sundays, a Week Pass for the summer camp and an International Day Pass for the Easter service when the whole city comes. And if your gathering is bigger than any of them, write to us and we will find the right fit together.
This is the part that changes the decision, so it is worth being exact about it.
A pass is only spent when someone actually listens. You start the translation at every gathering and leave it running. On a week when nobody needed another language, nothing is used, and the pass is still sitting in your account for the next time.
There is a grace period too: a pass only counts once guests have really been listening for a few minutes. The volunteer checking the sound before the service, or a guest who opens the link and closes it again, spends nothing.
So let it run on the quiet weeks too. Maybe a Sunday comes when Pardis walks in needing Persian, and a month later Maksym is standing at the back needing Ukrainian. Whoever comes, and whatever language they bring with them, you were ready before they opened the door, and you did not pay for the weeks in between.
Let it run on the quiet weeks. It costs nothing until somebody needs it.
Most people have heard of a translation app, or tried one, and come away thinking that is simply how it sounds: stiff, literal, and lost the moment the pastor tells a joke. That is a fair worry, and it is why we do not lead with a quality claim. Everybody makes one.
What we do is translate the meaning in context rather than word by word, so it comes out smooth and natural, and it stays faithful to the faith being preached. Names stay names, Scripture stays Scripture, and when the pastor quotes a verse, Smart Hints show the guest that verse from an official Bible translation in their own language.
A lead pastor wrote to us this summer about French speaking visitors who were struck that it explained Danish wordplay and sayings instead of translating them literally. Carrying the words across is the ordinary part of this work. Carrying what the words were doing is the part a congregation notices.
Nothing that could embarrass them. They use the phone already in their hand: there is no app to download, no account to create, and nobody is handed a headset at the door.
They can listen with earbuds or read the translation as text, which serves a guest who is deaf or hard of hearing, a guest who forgot their earbuds, and a guest who simply reads faster than they listen. They can even change language in the middle of the service, so a family can follow in two languages side by side. More about the guest's side is on how it works for listeners, and the full list is on the languages page.
Your first room is already there when you sign up. Add the languages you expect, share the link or the QR code (on the screen, in the bulletin or in the church WhatsApp group), and start speaking. The sound can come from the pastor's own phone or from the sound desk, whichever your church already has.
When the service begins, press start. When it ends, press stop. Everything in between happens on your guests' phones.
Do not turn an offer down before you have heard it. There is nothing to lose here and we need nothing from you.
Every church that signs up gets two Service Passes as a welcome, so your first two services are on us. There is no card to enter, no contract and nothing to cancel. Run it in your own room, with your own guests, and be the judge. If it does not solve your problem, you have lost nothing. If it does, you are welcome to keep going.
Sign up as a church, add your languages, and run your next two services with translation, on us.
The woman at the top of this piece is not a case study. She is a possibility in your own church, and the only thing that would have changed her Sunday is translation already running when she walked in, on a week nobody had marked in a calendar.
So turn it on and leave it running. It costs nothing until someone really needs it, your two welcome passes stay yours until they are used, and there is no subscription and no bill to keep an eye on in the meantime. You can read what other churches found on our stories page.
Ask us anything about passes, languages or how it would work in your church. We answer every message ourselves.