MINDEN, Nev., July 1, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Kingdom Ventures, Inc. (OTCBB:KDMV), a rapidly growing church development company, and Talk America Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Talk America Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq:TALK), a leading provider of bundled local and long-distance phone services, jointly announced today that they have signed an agreement enabling Kingdom Ventures, Inc. to market telecommunications services to faith-based organizations and their members.
The Church Telecommunications Initiative is part of Kingdom Ventures' initiative to transform the Christian community into the world's largest affinity group. By switching to Talk America, church members could probably lower their monthly phone bill, but more importantly, they would be able to help their favorite church as a significant portion of all fees will be donated back to the church.
"We chose Talk America because of their extremely competitive services and great reputation. Talk America has agreed to assist in training our representatives within the next few months. Upon the completion of the training, our agents can start signing up churches and their members. A significant portion of the monthly fees will be donated back to the church. We believe this provides church members with a powerful incentive to switch telecommunications carriers. After all, they can now make a difference simply by redirecting their everyday spending," said Gene Jackson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Kingdom Ventures, Inc.
Kingdom Ventures is a rapidly growing church development company. Its divisions and/or subsidiaries include Christian Times -- the nation's largest regional Christian newspaper chain, Xtreme Notebooks, Inc. (the company's church technology unit), iExalt.com (a popular Christian web portal), Yahwear Clothing (Christian apparel), CMA (Christian Merchants Association) and Christian Speakers and Artist.
In addition, 94% of churches have fewer than 1,000 active members, and therefore limited financial resources to effectively manage the business side of their operations. This is where Kingdom Ventures can help. It helps faith-based organizations streamline their operations, raise additional money through various fund-raising activities or simply provide technological solutions that transform small and medium-sized churches into state-of-the-art presentation centers. Kingdom Ventures helps churches focus on their core mission -- reaching people for God -- by focusing on its core business: helping churches and their people grow.
Within less than three years, Kingdom Ventures has built a distribution network for Christian products, consisting of 2,100+ retail stores; 1,200 Christian bookstores and 900 gift stores. It has also established strong business relationships with hundreds of Christian organizations and performed over 750 fundraising events -- helping churches and other Christian organizations grow.
The company's goal is to touch more than 75,000 churches within the next three years. To date, the company's key executives have already worked with over 10,000 churches.
For more information on Kingdom Ventures, visit http://www.kdmvcorp.com.
To sign up for shareholder alerts, visit http://www.kdmvcorp.com/ir_shareholderalerts.htm.
To learn more about Christian Times, visit http://www.christiantimes.com.
To learn more about Talk America, visit www.talk.com
All statements other than statements of historical fact included in this press release are "forward-looking statements." The forward-looking statements, including statements about the company's future expectations, including future revenues and earnings, and all other forward-looking statements (i.e., future operational results and sales) are subject to assumptions and beliefs based on current information known to the company and factors that are subject to uncertainties, risk and other influences, which are outside the company's control, and may yield results differing materially from those anticipated.