Media Meets People
Where They Are
That's why TWR added video to the family.
For some, it may be a bit of a head-scratcher — an organization that's traditionally done radio getting into video ...
It was for Aicha, a church planter in North Africa.
When she was looking for video producers to create animated Bible stories, a friend asked if she'd contacted TWR. “Aren’t they a radio group?” Aicha said.
And it's true, that's what TWR's been doing for more than 68 years. But in 2017, the organization launched TWR MOTION.
We're a small team of video producers who partner with church planters to create videos that connect people with Jesus.
Aicha was our first partner. In partnership with her and Media to Movements, we produced our first series Share the Story.
Church planters like Aicha are discovering that the animated videos we produce can connect them with seekers in the social media generation.
Chris, a church planter in Bosnia andHerzegovina, had this to say about turning to a social media campaign:
We didn't even run it for 30 days, because at Day 20 we were overwhelmed with the amount of people that were responding. … We had more engagement with spiritual-seeking people in that
20-day period than we did in the first 10 years combined.
A means for each generation
Jesus, who in Revelation says he is “making all things new,” uses the means of each generation to call people to himself. The Roman government set up a system of roads by which the gospel was spread quickly by early believers.
The apostle Paul used those roads until he was thrown in prison. Then he wrote circular letters, which were distributed by his friends.
In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg invented metal movable type, paving the way for mass printing and, some say, for the Protestant Reformation.
Five hundred years later, a man named Paul Freed was called by God to bring the gospel to Spain, but his attempts to get established there were thwarted.
So he turned to radio in the early 1950s, founding the ministry that became Trans World Radio. First broadcasting only three languages over a small surplus transmitter, TWR today reaches people groups over multiple media platforms in 190 nations and more than 300 languages.
Now, church planters from North Africa to the Caucasus to Southeast Asia are calling on TWR MOTION’s expertise to provide gospel-centered videos custom-made for spiritually open people in their cultural context.
Benefits of using media
- YouTube is the second-largest search engine. People are going there to learn how to do all sorts of things.
- Over 80% of people unreached by the gospel live in countries where YouTube is the No. 1 or No. 2 most-viewed website.
- Facebook has more than 2 billion active users.
- Those who are seeking can talk back to us because platforms like Facebook allow for two-way communication.
- Worldwide, people Googled “Jesus” far more during the year (as of June 18) than they did hot topics like “Taylor Swift,” “Donald Trump,” “Bridgerton” or “gas prices,” according to Google Trends data.
- Animated videos allow us to easily adapt the content we create into other languages.
Facebook alone has over 2 billion active users on it.
It’s the largest nation in the world. How can we give up this opportunity? Probably the greatest opportunity
that we have ever had since the beginning of the
church to be able to get the gospel out there.”
Watch the Videos
Curious to see the Share the Story, the animated Bible stories we produced for Aicha, or the testimonies videos we developed to disciple believers in the Arab world? Check them out and learn more about each series by clicking the button below.
WATCH The Videos