The Gospel on Demand in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish
by Dennis Wiens – SAT-7 USA Senior Impact Catalyst
I was checking out of my hotel in Minneapolis but needed to talk to the customer service agent at the check-out counter. The young lady’s name tag said she was from Türkiye. With no one around waiting, I got out my smartphone and opened the SAT-7 PLUS app to the SAT-7 TÜRK channel.
I introduced myself and said I had recently visited her country. She asked what I did that took me to her country. I shared with her I worked for a media service called SAT-7 and had been visiting my colleagues who work for SAT-7 TÜRK. I opened the app and let her listen to the content streaming live from Istanbul, in her heart language and culture. Wow, was she excited! She asked how she could download the app to her phone.
While she was downloading the SAT-7 PLUS app, she told me this amazing story. When she had visited her parents several months earlier in Istanbul, she found them watching this Christian television channel that was “just for Christians”. She explained that they enjoyed the meaningful programs and liked that there was so much content for youth!
Available worldwide in multiple languages, SAT-7 PLUS (www.sat7plus.org) enables the Middle East and North Africa media ministry, SAT-7 (www.sat7usa.org), to take their media content global and bring the life-changing message of the Gospel to worldwide audiences in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish.
The SAT-7 PLUS platform, which functions similarly to popular secular television streaming services, is available on web browsers and as an app for all mobile devices. As well as livestreaming, it also offers access to an extensive video-on-demand catalog of Christian programming from SAT-7 ARABIC, SAT-7 PARS (in Persian), SAT-7 TÜRK, SAT-7 KIDS (in Arabic), and the Arabic primary education project My School. Viewers can also use SAT-7 PLUS to communicate directly with the channels’ viewer counselor staff via messaging.
Antoine Karam, SAT-7’s Broadcast and IT Director shares, “The content that is out there already is not unfortunately positive or life-giving. With SAT-7 PLUS, we aspire to break through the ‘dark box’ that mobile devices and other devices can be for young people and bring hope using the same medium. As we know, just one word from Jesus can be a game-changer.”
Many children in the Middle East and North Africa grow up surrounded by conflict and without the hope found in the Gospel. Now, they can find the Gospel through any device on SAT-7 PLUS with content just for them, protected by parental controls.
Viewers do not have to share any personal data to use SAT-7 PLUS, and the platform is also available in a variety of bandwidths, including audio-only for the slowest Internet connections. Programs can also be downloaded and later watched on-the-go or without Internet.
SAT-7 is making God’s love visible in the Middle East and North Africa and now globally through SAT-7 PLUS. Viewers are coming to faith and Christians are growing in their faith.
This includes refugee and immigrant families, especially children and parents who appreciate video content in their heart language and culture.
Please pray for my young Turkish friend and her family, that the content they are watching will touch their hearts. This is my prayer for the viewers, Christian and non-Christian, who clocked up over 50,000 hours of viewing time on SAT-7 PLUS in 2022. This is in addition to 13.5 million satellite viewers and over 30 million YouTube views.
Join with SAT-7 (www.sat7usa.org) in making the Gospel available on demand, anywhere in the world!