Let me begin with a confession, and a bit of history!  My ministry background is Christian literature and I have always had a distaste of television, and especially so called Christian television.  TV is often driven by visuals – if you have footage, it goes in the evening news.  It is superficial – you need pretty faces, make up, artificial sets, special effects.  TV is, in many senses, not morally neutral; it is actually a difficult vehicle to use in purveying the Truth of the Gospel!  And, Christian television often comes across as boring, as “radio with pictures” and is sometimes outright manipulative.

And yet, as I ministered in the Middle East during the 1980’s, I could not but notice the increasing presence and growing influence of television – especially on non-readers.  Egyptian farmers who used to rise at 5 am to tend their fields now got up blurry eyed at 7 am, having stayed up late to watch Egyptian soap operas.  Suddenly rural communities wanted to have the same consumer products and services that city folks had – as seen on TV.

What won me over to the use of TV for Christian ministry were the facts that:

• Only half of the Arab world is functionally literate (i.e. literate enough to read a page from the Bible)
• Most Middle Easterners lived, and continue to live, in closed homes in closed countries and may not ever hear the Gospel except through radio or TV
• The advent of satellite TV in the 1990’s meant that, for the first time, Christian television could be viewed UNCENSORED in millions of homes.(Today more than 300 million people across the Middle East and North Africa have access to uncensored satellite television).

But there was still the intrinsic nature of Christian television to deal with.  As I studied this sometimes weird and wonderful world, it became clear that much Christian TV was driven by sponsorship.  Many Christian channels in the West and around the world unashamedly funded themselves by on-air appeals and/or by selling most of their airtime to any Christian ministry that would buy it.  As a consequence, much Christian TV is dominated by Western ministries who have the money to buy time.  The result is, in many cases, broadcast schedules not designed to meet or confront the researched needs, attitudes, opinions and interests of potential audiences but a mishmash of different programs for a narrow Christian audience, and with the editorial integrity of a shopping channel.

From the outset, SAT-7 wanted to break away from this model and put out a schedule of programs to meet the needs and interests of new audiences, outside the small Christian communities of the Middle East – especially serving children, women and others who are rarely touched by any forms of Christian witness.  But such a choice was difficult and raised concerns about financial sustainability – because now we have to not only make or buy the programs but also pay for all the airtime ourselves!

Editorially, SAT-7 has also sought a different path. It has a two-fold mission: To encourage scattered believers across the region, especially supporting the leaders of the growing house church movement (leaders who, for multiple reasons, are unlikely to get any formal seminary training); and to make the Good News available to all in the Middle East and North Africa. However, these two objectives are much easier to simultaneously accommodate in the Middle East than in most Western contexts! The vast majority of our audience is not from a Christian background but they are sincerely “religious”, and want to please God. As such audiences listen to Christian teaching on such subjects as The Grace of God, Knowing God or the Assurance that we have as Believers in Christ, the message resonates with this non-Christian viewership.

I remember, some time ago, a funding agency asked us to provide a breakdown of our programming by categories: Pre-evangelistic, Evangelistic, Discipleship Training, etc. But these classifications do not necessarily work in the Middle East. A classic example is the time right after a terrible car bomb ripped through a Baghdad suburb. Many innocent Shi’a Muslims were killed. We put an appeal on-screen for the Christians in our audience to pray for the people in Baghdad directly affected by this terrible incident. A man from Morocco called SAT-7, saying that he was very touched by the compassion of Christians for the people of Iraq and he wanted to understand more about the Christian faith…and asked for a New Testament. So, an appeal to Christians to pray also had an unexpected evangelistic impact.

In many ways, SAT-7 is similar to “the city on the hill” as mentioned in Matthew 5:14. It gives those of other faiths, or none, a chance to see what Christians really believe; it is an unprecedented opportunity for the Church in these nations, where most other forms of Christian witness have long been suppressed, to “let their light shine before others”.

In 1996 SAT-7 began with just two-hours-per-week of such Arabic programming.  Today it has four satellite channels broadcasting Christian television around the clock in Arabic, Farsi and Turkish.  Its most successful channel (with a regular audience of nine million Arab children) is SAT-7 KIDS.

But what about Christian television in today’s fast changing media environment?  The Arab World has been slow to get on-line, and most Arab counties continue to exercise censorship over the Internet.  So, satellite TV still has a key future in the region, especially given the low literacy rates.  However, as last year’s so called “Arab Spring” illustrated, all kinds of social media are growing in the region, even if its use is mostly restricted to the young and educated.

Over the past years, SAT-7’s different channels have seen a massive growth in YouTube downloads (now well over 600,000 per month for the Arabic channel alone); the use of Facebook, Twitter, Oovoo, Yahoo Messenger and Skype for interaction with live shows, etc. And, new 4G telephone networks will soon open up all kinds of new opportunities; including the inexpensive option to provide our viewers with live feeds from almost anywhere in the region.

As we look to the future of “television” in our part of the world, it is clear that thinking people will increasingly want to selectively watch programs of their choice, when they want, where they want and on a device of their own choosing.  It is this that is driving SAT-7’s new “TV Everywhere” strategy.

However, this is not just another delivery platform for our existing channels or programs.  This is a different media, being used in a different way, by a different audience.  They will only watch shorter, quality videos or live events this way.  They increasingly want the ability to interact with and share content.  This is perhaps the future of much “television”.

But, ultimately, no one knows where social media is heading or what will be the next big thing on the Internet, or whether it will be a threat to or a great new opportunity for sharing the good news of the Gospel in the Middle East.

Until then, there remains a big audience in the Middle East for the simple, linear broadcast of quality; relevant live and pre-recorded television programming that brings hope to millions!