A Franklin couple’s new faith-based startup has grown so quickly since its launch in January that at one point the husband and wife considered asking God to slow things down.
LoveJesus.com is a subscription-based service where customers receive monthly packages containing a four-week devotional book and related articles. To date, nearly 10,000 packages have been shipped.
“It only took a few weeks before there were boxes all over our house and our kids were helping us pack,” said Derick Uecker, co-founder of the service. He and his wife, Elise, have four children.
Derick Uecker said he came up with the idea for LoveJesus.com in the summer of 2023, when the couple uprooted their family from Minnesota and moved to the Nashville area. Derick Uecker describes that time as a dark period in his life.
“I have only pursued my faith superficially, but I have never felt so distant,” said Derick Uecker. “In this struggle, I heard God audibly saying to me: ‘Teach people to love me.'”
“It’s not about the money”
As an entrepreneur, Derick Uecker has founded more than 120 Internet start-ups over the years.
“Creating a .com domain was all I knew, so my first thought was to create a website and that’s how I came up with ‘LoveJesus.com,'” said Derick Uecker.
But LoveJesus.com was already owned by a “domain squatter,” someone who buys hundreds of URLs in the hope of selling some of them later for a large profit.
“I bid up to $12,000 for the domain,” said Derick Uecker, “but the squatter’s lawyer told me the price was set at $59,000 and could not be lowered.”
Derick Uecker told the attorney he would wait 24 hours to see if the seller changed the price before moving his business elsewhere, but in reality he had no plan B.
“At the 23rd hour, the lawyer called me and said that in the 20 years I’ve worked with this client, he’d never seen him negotiate like that, but the client would sell the domain for $12,000,” said Derick Uecker.
He didn’t hesitate.
Derick Uecker remembers thinking after purchasing the site, “OK, sir, I have the domain. Now what?”
Less than a year later, LoveJesus.com has exploded in numbers, with the number of customers rising to over 1,400 and the newsletter reaching nearly 15,000 subscribers.
For the first few months, the Ueckers ran the business from their home, with boxes stacked floor to ceiling in several rooms. The couple recently moved their operation to a secure, shared warehouse in Nashville.
“We don’t live off of it. It’s not about the money,” said Derick Uecker. “But I feel more meaning in it than in anything I’ve ever done.”
Elise Uecker said she and her husband often pray before sending packages, and at the end of a month, if they feel God is calling them to change their devotional theme for the next month, they drop their preparations and follow His lead.
“We don’t just want a feel-good box,” says Elise Uecker. “We want these boxes to touch people and strengthen their faith.”
What goes in each box?
The Ueckers didn’t have to look long to find someone to write the monthly devotions for the boxes, said Elise Uecker.
Derick Uecker’s cousin, Theresa Meacham, has experience as a ghostwriter in the wellness industry.
“When we first asked her about the letter, her jaw literally dropped,” said Derick Uecker. “She told us that she had just spoken to her husband about wanting to do something in the church.”
LoveJesus.com initially offered women’s boxes before expanding its offerings to include teen and children’s boxes. The Ueckers plan to add a men’s subscription soon, they said.
New customer Jennifer Ayres, who lives in Franklin, says she looks forward to the women’s box every month.
“I’m always surprised by the different items in the box,” Ayres said. “I can tell they’ve been carefully selected and it always feels like they’re handpicked for me.”
For example, previous boxes have included items such as a working miniature oil lamp to illustrate a Bible verse about Jesus as the light of the world, or a small jar of honey to highlight a Bible verse that compares the words of Jesus to the sweetness of honey.
Derick Uecker said the inclusion of honey was a small miracle.
“We were 100 jars short of honey and had to ship it that same day,” he said. “I called 36 different stores in the area to see if anyone had it in stock before Elise asked me if I had prayed for it.”
Derick Uecker said that shortly after he reluctantly knelt down to pray, one of the couple’s children discovered a packet of honey on their doorstep.
“It was an order we had placed weeks ago and the company had told us it had been lost,” explained Derick Uecker. “There were exactly 100 glasses in it.”
