- Starting price
- Free
- Free tier
- Yes
- Platforms
- Web - iOS and Android via GodTools
- Developer
- Campus fur Christus Schweiz (Cru Switzerland)
- Launched
- -
- Updated
- Aug 5, 2026
The verdict
The Four is the right tool for a teenager or new believer who wants one memorable four-beat outline they can produce from a wristband in ninety seconds, and it is free in every language it has been translated into. It is the wrong tool for anyone who needs the presentation to carry the conversation - the English page has no video, no written prayer, no follow-up sequence and no decision capture, all of which the Fellowship of Christian Athletes edition of the same four points does have.
Try The Four ↗Opens thefour.com
The listing that sent us here pointed at a Cru article about The Four rather than The Four itself, so start with the correction: the product lives at thefour.com, and it is a project of Campus fur Christus Schweiz - Cru's Swiss national movement - which its own community page states outright, adding that it 'was designed with the Vision to multiply internationally'. The Cru article is a good secondary account of the tool, but it is an article. The tool is a website.
What the website does is narrow on purpose. Four symbols carry four claims: a heart for God's love, a division sign for sin as separation, a cross for what Jesus did about it, and a question mark for the response. On the English page those become four headings - 'God loves me', 'I live apart from God', 'Jesus gave everything for me', and 'Will I choose to follow Jesus?' - each with a short paragraph underneath, closing on the line 'Would you like to do that today?' and a single button labelled 'I want more' that routes to Read, Pray, Meet and Contact pages. That is the whole surface. There is no animation, no video, no interactive walkthrough and no form.
The lineage matters for placing it. Cru's own write-up credits Raphael Marti of Campus fur Christus Schweiz with building The Four as a deliberate replacement for the 1952 Four Spiritual Laws booklet on the grounds that 'the booklet is more for the older generation'. So this is not a new gospel outline; it is the same four-beat structure re-skinned for people who will not accept a tract but will ask about a wristband. Cru's article describes exactly that mechanic - Marti wearing a black band at dinner and letting neighbours ask what the symbols mean.
The honest complication is that the best-built version of The Four is not the one at thefour.com. The Fellowship of Christian Athletes runs the same four points at thefour.fca.org with a short video for each section, a suggested prayer, a 'Made a Decision' submission form, a First Steps follow-up path and nine listed translations. Campus fur Christus's own English page has none of those. A reader arriving cold should know that the brand is a family of forks, not one product, and that the forks are not equally finished.
✓ The good
- Free with nothing behind it - the web presentation costs nothing, requires no account, and the site's own copy says starting a relationship with God 'is for free, totally simple and will change your life'
- Four beats, four symbols, memorable in one sitting - heart, division sign, cross, question mark is the shortest teachable structure in the genre and does not require a printed prop to recall
- Genuinely multilingual at the site level - the language switcher offers 40+ regional site options grouped across Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East, and Latin America, the Caribbean and the US
- Reaches phones without needing its own app - Agape UK's GodTools page lists 'The FOUR' as one of five gospel presentations inside Cru's free GodTools app alongside Knowing God Personally, The Four Spiritual Laws, Honour Restored and Power Over Fear
- Physical props are cheap enough to hand out - Cru Store lists THE FOUR bracelets at $1.40 each in four sizes and seven colours, with a bag-of-100 bulk option
- Published outreach playbook rather than theory alone - the reachout section names around twenty concrete event formats, from Street Bingo and Drink Survey to Bubble Soccer, Jesus March and The Four Cards
- Adopted outside Cru, which is a durability signal - FCA, First Priority and Power to Change Australia all run their own branded editions of the same four points
✗ Watch out
- The English page has no video, prayer text or decision capture - features the FCA edition of the identical four points ships with, so the gap is a choice rather than a limit of the format
- No published language total anywhere - Cru's article says 'currently available in 8 languages and being used in 10 different countries', the faith.tools listing says 20+, and the site's own switcher lists 40+ regional options; none of the three is dated and no page reconciles them
- The resources path is broken - thefour.com/resources/ returns a 404, so the brand and print materials the navigation advertises are not reachable from that URL
- Nothing on the site trains you in the conversation - there is a style quiz and a list of event ideas, but no course, no objection handling and no manuscript
- The shop is merchandise-led, not resource-led - shop.thefour.com sells t-shirts from $12.00 to $38.50, a Champion packable jacket at $49.00, a car magnet at $4.00 and pin buttons from $3.00, and lists no free downloads on that page
- Its parent movement's financial disclosure is thin by sector standards - MinistryWatch records that Cru does not file a Form 990, grades its transparency a D and scores donor confidence 51 out of 100
Best for
- High school and university students who want one memorable outline
- Youth workers and camp leaders equipping first-time sharers
- Short-term and cross-cultural teams needing a translated page to point at
- Anyone who wants a free gospel summary with no signup wall
Avoid if
- You want video, a written prayer and follow-up built into one page
- You need a structured evangelism training course with objection handling
- You want a native app of its own rather than a web page
- You are looking for a long-form apologetics or seeker-question resource
What The Four is
The Four is a one-page gospel outline delivered as a website, built by Campus fur Christus Schweiz and multiplied through Cru's national movements and outside partners. Four symbols - heart, division sign, cross, question mark - map to four statements a person can learn in minutes and reproduce without notes. The intended use is conversational: you carry the symbols, someone asks, you walk the four beats. Cru frames it as the successor to the Four Spiritual Laws booklet Bill Bright wrote in 1952.
It is not a course, not a booklet with a digital companion, and not an app of its own. There is no Apple or Google Play listing for The Four; it reaches a phone screen inside Cru's free GodTools app, where Agape UK's tool list names 'The FOUR' as one of five gospel presentations. The website is text, translation and a next-step link, plus a style quiz and a catalogue of outreach ideas.
Four symbols instead of four paragraphs
What separates The Four from the outline it descends from is that the content is carried by icons rather than text. A tract has to be produced, opened and read, which means the other person consents to being read to. Four symbols on a wristband invert that: the object is ambient, the question comes from them, and the presenter is answering rather than initiating. Cru's account of the tool leans entirely on this mechanic - a black band at a dinner table, neighbours asking what the marks mean.
That inversion is also why the tool is thin by design. Because the symbols are the payload, the website only has to hold the words they stand for, in as many languages as possible, at a URL you can say out loud. It delivers that: 40+ regional editions, four short headings. What it does not do is carry the conversation, and the vendor never claims it will - the closest thing to training is a shoe-metaphor quiz premised on 'at least seven different styles of evangelism' and on sharing 'without changing who you are'.
The four-point page
The English presentation at thefour.com/en/ is four headings with a short paragraph each: 'God loves me', 'I live apart from God', 'Jesus gave everything for me', and 'Will I choose to follow Jesus?'. It closes with John 3:16, the question 'Would you like to do that today?' and one button labelled 'I want more' leading to Read, Pray, Meet and Contact pages.
It is static text. There is no video, no step-by-step interaction, no prayer written out for the reader to say, and no confirmation or decision mechanism. For a tool whose whole job is to be readable on a stranger's phone in thirty seconds that is defensible, but it means the page is a script reference rather than an experience, and the fourth point ends on an invitation the page does not then help anyone act on.
Translation and regional editions
The language switcher is the most substantial thing on the site. It offers 40+ regional entries in four blocks - Europe with more than twenty options, Asia Pacific with around a dozen, Africa and the Middle East with roughly eight, and Latin America, the Caribbean and the US with about ten. Several are country editions of the same language, which is why a count of switcher rows is not a language count.
No page publishes the actual total. Cru's article states 'currently available in 8 languages and being used in 10 different countries', the faith.tools listing says 20+, and the switcher implies more again. All three stand as published; the article is plainly older, but nothing on the vendor's site is dated, so a reader cannot tell how current any figure is.
The partner forks, and GodTools
The Four is licensed outward more than most free web tools. Fellowship of Christian Athletes runs thefour.fca.org with a video per section, nine listed languages including Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Hindi, Russian, French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Arabic, a suggested prayer, a 'Made a Decision' form, a First Steps follow-up path and an All Ability section. First Priority hosts an explainer video and sells the wristband. Power to Change Australia runs thefour.au.
So a reader has to choose an edition, not just a tool. The fullest version of the four points, with video and follow-up, is FCA's site. The original with the widest translation set is thefour.com. The same presentation on a phone alongside four other Cru outlines is GodTools, distributed free and described as supporting over 100 languages across 190+ countries.
Pricing
Free
Free
Everything on thefour.com is free and account-free: the four-point presentation in every translated regional edition, the Read, Pray, Meet and Contact next-step pages, the evangelism style quiz and the roughly twenty published outreach ideas. The project is funded by donations to Campus fur Christus Schweiz, which states on its community page that 'All donations are used to spread the good news and not to cover salary costs', with suggested tiers running from $40 USD to donate a Bible to four people up to $4,000+, including $400 to provide training for forty people.
Printed props (Cru Store, US)
$1.40 per bracelet
The wristband is the tool's signature object and it is sold, not given: Cru Store lists THE FOUR bracelets at $1.40 each across 150mm, 180mm, 190mm and 210mm sizes in black, navy, electric blue, purple, pink, red and white. A bag of 100 is offered as a bulk option but its price is not displayed on the bracelet product page, so the per-unit bulk figure is not published there.
Merchandise (shop.thefour.com)
$3.00 - $49.00
The international shop is branded apparel and accessories rather than ministry supplies: pin buttons $3.00 to $3.50, car magnet $4.00, short-sleeve unisex t-shirts $12.00 to $19.00, an evangelism bag $35.50, and an embroidered Champion packable jacket $49.00. Youth business cards run $5.00 to $50.00 depending on quantity. No free downloads are listed on that page.
The web tool is free and there is no tier above it. No account, no email gate, no premium version, and nothing on the presentation page asks for money.
What costs money is the physical layer. Cru Store lists THE FOUR bracelets at $1.40 each; at that unit price a hundred bands is $140 if bought individually, which is why the bag-of-100 option exists - though its price is not shown on the bracelet page, so the actual bulk saving is not published there. The international shop at shop.thefour.com is a merchandise store: $3.00 to $3.50 pin buttons, a $4.00 car magnet, $12.00 to $19.00 t-shirts, a $35.50 evangelism bag, a $49.00 embroidered Champion jacket.
Funding is donation-based through Campus fur Christus Schweiz in Zurich, whose community page carries the claim that 'All donations are used to spread the good news and not to cover salary costs' and presents impact-labelled tiers from $40 up past $4,000, including $400 to 'Provide Training for 40 People'. That is a designation claim, not an audited overhead ratio, and the site does not publish one.
On the parent organisation: MinistryWatch's record for Cru, EIN 95-6006173, states plainly that 'This organization does not file a Form 990' and quotes Cru's reason - that a 990 'requires us to disclose in a public manner information which we believe violates the privacy of our donors and our missionaries outside of the US'. The same record lists Cru as an ECFA member since 1979, gives it a transparency grade of D and a donor confidence score of 51 out of 100, notes a fiscal year ending 08/31, and says financials for the ministry have not been collected. The ECFA membership and the missing 990 point in opposite directions, so cite both - and note that The Four is published by the Swiss entity, so no US filing describes this product's books directly.
Where The Four falls behind
Depth on its own page. The four points at thefour.com/en/ get one paragraph each and then stop. The FCA edition of the identical outline adds a video per point, a written prayer and a First Steps path, which demonstrates that the format supports more and that the original has chosen not to build it.
Its own numbers. A free multilingual tool's headline claim is reach, and this one has three incompatible published figures - 8 languages and 10 countries in Cru's article, 20+ in the faith.tools listing, 40+ regional entries in the switcher - and no dated page anywhere that says what the current total is. Comparable free tools publish a count and a date.
Basic site hygiene. thefour.com/resources/ returns a 404 while the navigation still advertises resources, and the shop that replaces it sells jackets and beanies rather than the print files a youth worker actually came for.
Training. The site's contribution to equipping a nervous first-time sharer is an evangelism style quiz built around shoes and a list of roughly twenty event ideas. Life on Mission ships AI role-play for rehearsal; GodTools carries in-app training material. The Four gives you the words and leaves the practice to you.
The scripted-outline question, which it does not engage. Four-point gospel summaries are a well-established genre with a well-established published critique, including from inside evangelicalism. Writing at Missio Alliance, David Fitch argues such tools 'approach the lost person from a position of power' with 'a prepackaged message that assumes one gospel fits all', that they 'assume the Christian language as a given' when terms like sin no longer land, and that they can separate the gospel from real life. Fitch also concedes these outlines still work for people already formed in Christian vocabulary. Cru's own framing partly agrees with the critique - the tool exists because the booklet reads as generational - and the style quiz gestures at fit. But nothing on the site addresses the objection directly, and a reader weighing whether to hand a teenager a script deserves to know the argument exists. We are reporting the debate, not settling it.
The Four vs. GodTools vs. Jesus Film Project
The Four and GodTools are the same organisation and are frequently confused, so be exact about the relationship. The Four is a website that hosts one four-point outline in many regional editions and sells wristbands carrying its symbols. GodTools is Cru's free iOS and Android app that carries five gospel presentations - Knowing God Personally, The Four Spiritual Laws, The FOUR, Honour Restored and Power Over Fear - plus Satisfied, conversation-starter questions and in-app training, and its listings claim over 100 languages across 190+ countries. The Four is one item in the GodTools catalogue. If you want the outline on a phone with training around it, install GodTools; if you want a URL you can say out loud to someone in their own language, send thefour.com.
Jesus Film Project solves the adjacent problem with film rather than a diagram, and at a translation scale nothing here matches. Alpha runs the opposite play entirely - a multi-week conversational course built on questions rather than a fixed four-beat summary - and suits the person for whom the scripted-outline critique lands hardest. Life on Mission, from the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board, is the closest functional peer to The Four on a phone: free, visual, four-ish points, and it adds AI role-play so a user can rehearse before a real conversation.
Ranked by what a specific reader needs: shortest thing to memorise, The Four. Best-equipped single page of the same four points, FCA's edition at thefour.fca.org. Widest language coverage on a phone, GodTools. Rehearsal before the conversation, Life on Mission. Long conversation instead of a summary, Alpha.
The bottom line
The Four does one thing, does it in dozens of regional editions, and charges nothing for it, which is why it has spread past Cru into FCA, First Priority and Power to Change Australia. Treat it as a memory aid and a URL rather than a product: the four symbols are excellent, the wristband mechanic is genuinely clever, and the English page underneath them is thinner than the FCA fork of the same content and thinner than the GodTools version that carries it on a phone. Get the outline here, get the equipping somewhere else, and know before you hand it to a teenager that the strengths and limits of scripted presentations are a live published argument rather than a settled question.
Alternatives to The Four
GodToolsCru's free app carrying The FOUR plus four other gospel outlines, conversation starters and training, with over 100 languages claimed. The same content with more around it.
Life on MissionThe North American Mission Board's free gospel-conversation app, similar in shape to The Four but with AI role-play so users can rehearse before a real conversation.
Jesus Film ProjectCru's film-based evangelism catalogue rather than a diagram, at a translation scale nothing else in the category approaches. Different tool for the same job.AlphaA multi-week conversational course built on questions instead of a fixed outline. The alternative for anyone who finds a four-point script the wrong starting point.
CruThe parent movement's own training and article library, including the write-up of The Four that most listings mistake for the tool itself.Frequently asked questions
Is The Four free?
The website is entirely free with no account required, in every regional edition. The printed props are not: Cru Store lists THE FOUR bracelets at $1.40 each, and shop.thefour.com sells branded apparel and accessories from $3.00 up to a $49.00 jacket. The project is funded by donations to Campus fur Christus Schweiz, whose community page states that 'All donations are used to spread the good news and not to cover salary costs'.
Is there a The Four app?
No. There is no Apple App Store or Google Play listing for The Four itself - it is a website. The way the outline reaches a phone is inside Cru's free GodTools app, where Agape UK's tool list names 'The FOUR' as one of five gospel presentations alongside Knowing God Personally, The Four Spiritual Laws, Honour Restored and Power Over Fear.
What is the difference between The Four and GodTools?
They are both Cru products and easily confused. The Four is a single four-point gospel outline published as a website with many regional translations, plus a wristband carrying its symbols. GodTools is an app that carries The FOUR as one of five outlines, alongside Satisfied, conversation-starter questions and in-app training, and claims over 100 languages. Use The Four for one memorable structure and a shareable URL; use GodTools for the outline on a phone with training beside it.
How many languages is The Four in?
No page publishes a current total, and the available figures disagree. Cru's article says it is 'currently available in 8 languages and being used in 10 different countries'. The faith.tools listing says 20+. The switcher on thefour.com lists 40+ regional site entries across Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East, and Latin America, the Caribbean and the US - though some of those are country editions of the same language. None of the three is dated.
Who created The Four and how does it relate to the Four Spiritual Laws?
Cru credits Raphael Marti of Campus fur Christus Schweiz, Cru's Swiss national movement, and the community page confirms 'THE FOUR IS A PROJECT OF Campus fur Christus SWITZERLAND'. It is a deliberate successor to the Four Spiritual Laws booklet Bill Bright wrote in 1952; Cru's article records the judgement that 'the booklet is more for the older generation'. The theological structure is the same four beats, re-expressed as symbols.
Does the site help me actually have the conversation?
Only lightly. There is an evangelism style quiz that assigns a type of shoe to each of what it describes as at least seven biblical styles, on the premise that you can share 'without changing who you are', and a reachout section listing roughly twenty event formats including Street Bingo, Drink Survey, The Four Cards, Bubble Soccer and Jesus March. There is no course, no objection handling and no rehearsal tool. Note also that thefour.com/resources/ currently returns a 404.
Does Cru publish its financials?
Partly, and the picture is mixed. MinistryWatch's record for Cru (EIN 95-6006173) states that 'This organization does not file a Form 990', quoting Cru's reason that a 990 would disclose information it believes 'violates the privacy of our donors and our missionaries outside of the US'. The same record lists Cru as an ECFA member since 1979, grades transparency D, scores donor confidence 51 out of 100, and says financials have not been collected. The Four is published by the Swiss entity, so no US filing covers this tool's books.
Sources & further reading
- THE FOUR - the four-point presentation (English) ↗
- THE FOUR - community, project ownership and donation tiers ↗
- Cru - One Easy Way to Talk About Jesus With Today's Generation ↗
- THE FOUR - Fellowship of Christian Athletes edition ↗
- Cru Store - THE FOUR bracelets pricing ↗
- Agape UK - GodTools tool list ↗
- MinistryWatch - Cru (EIN 95-6006173) filing and accountability record ↗
- Missio Alliance - David Fitch on the limits of packaged gospel outlines ↗
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