I met today with the manager of a TV station operating in the Mongolian countryside. He came to UB to meet with us and ask if we would provide their station with Christian programming. The man is apparently a believer and wants to use his TV station to win people to Christ and help disciple them. As you can imagine, we agreed to provide them with as much ministry programming as they are prepared to take. Our next job is for me to sit down with our ministry department director and plan how and specifically what we will distribute to the station.

I’m very grateful for this opportunity to distribute our ministry programming in this manner. This is an opportunity to reach completely new people who don’t know the Gospel. That means we will probably provide entry level programs like Christianity 101, Together Through The Bible, Colors of Life (a testimony program), and some basic discipleship. A good dose of our Bible reading program, What Does The Bible Say, should also go a long way to introducing the Bible and its context to these new viewers.

It’s estimated that 99 percent of Mongolia’s population is literate. However, in the countryside Mongols tend not to be big readers. Therefore reaching them through audio and video projects is very successful. Our Steppe-by-Steppe field ministry has demonstrated this to be true. Therefore, we believe our Bible reading program, What Does The Bible Say, can be highly effective in reaching countryside Mongols. On Eagle TV, which primarily reaches city Mongols that tend to be more urban, the program is rated number one in its time slot against all other TV stations. Mongolians are hungry for the simplicity of God’s word! So I expect the program to perform just as well, if not better, in the countryside.

As I was thinking about this opportunity to spread the Gospel through this new TV opportunity my mind immediately turned to Luke 16:10,

“One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much.”

May God count us and our new programming partner faithful with this latest opportunity to bring Christ to areas where his name and work is yet to be fully heard.

Five new episodes of Together Through the Bible have been uploaded to the Vimeo server and are available for viewing. These episodes include:

• Effective Change
• Biblical Unity
• The Attributes of a Spiritually Mature Church
• The Superiority of Jesus Christ: Jesus Personhood, and
• The Superiority of Jesus Christ: Jesus’ Character

You can access all of the videos on my Vimeo page here, or click the above links for each episode. All episodes are in English. Mongolian versions of these programs will go online this fall.

Together Through the Bible airs weekly on Eagle TV. Season 2 begins in September. A sample of episode 2 is below. The subject is Effective Change.

Effective Change from Tom Terry on Vimeo.

A short blurb in today’s UB Post that has some wondering if religious freedom in Mongolia may encounter problems.

The Mongolian immigration authority is examining religious missionaries in Ulaanbaatar with the help of the Metropolitan Police Department and General Taxation Office in regard of recent complaints lodged against Christian activities.

The authorities said any temple or church that breached Mongolian law will see forced closure. In Ulaanbaatar only, there are around 180 religious churches and temples operating. Around 90 of them are Christian and 60 of them Buddhist, and the rest of shamanistic practice.

For nearly three years we’ve wanted to present Eagle TV’s Bible-centered movies in a format that would help our viewers understand the Bible’s interconnectedness and depth. We came up with a concept for creating what amounts to a study Bible on TV.

Other than the daily newspaper, most Mongolians are not big readers. The culture is not necessarily oral, but it comes pretty close. If you live in the city Mongols tend to be well educated and very literate. But as you go farther into the countryside things change. Literacy is still in the 90 percentile range, but the actual practice of reading isn’t that big. The most effective way to share Christ, at least for our ministry, has been to use the storying approach. Our ministry is unique in that we use a series of Bible-centered movies to do the story telling for us.

Now we are moving our set of movies up to the next level. Instead of simply showing the movie on the screen, we are creating a unique visual format that will not only display the movies, but also add unique graphics, scripture references, and historical information to the presentation. In effect we are creating an on-air study Bible loaded with information to help deepen the viewer’s experience with the scriptures.

The only thing that has held us back from producing the programs prior to this time has been manpower and time. I thought of recruiting some of the missionaries locally to help with the project, but that didn’t work out so well. Most are already up to their eyeballs in ministry projects and relationship building. So, being the behind the desk, nose in The Book guy that I am I decided this was just one more project I needed to do myself. I don’t mind it, in fact, I love it. It simply gives me more time to explore the scriptures in depth. I’m already scriptiny my regular teaching program, Together Through The Bible, and spending 90 minutes to three hours nightly on seminary study. How much more Bible can I ingest? I think I’m finding out. My guess is that somewhere between 6-8 hours a day is being spent in Bible study for teaching, scripting, and schooling. But thankfully, since we have a full time station manager keeping watch over the station my time is freed up to do exactly this kind of work.

This afternoon I began the scripting effort on the first movie, The Bible, circa 1962 with John Huston. Yeah, it runs a bit slow at first, but the new visual elements we are introducing will really spruce things up. And to my surprise, I was able to script the first 15-minutes rather quickly, in about two hours. That may seem rather slow, but believe me, this is a complicated chore so two hours is pretty spiffy.

This Sunday Mongolia holds a hotly contested presidential election. While I’ll be on hand at the station from 7am until the election is over, most of my time will be spent scripting Bible 2.0. There’s a lot of ground for me to cover. I need to be able to script eleven movies with about 26 hours of content. A while back my assistant did a calculation figuring out how much time it took me to script an hour’s worth of programming and the number of total hours needed to complete both my TV show and Bible 2.0. When she was done she held up the numbers to me and said, “If you want to finish scripting these programs by the end of summer you’ll need 336 work days to do it” (or some such outrageous number).

Yikes.

Oh well. This is one of those times when you just look at the challenge in front of you, you grit you teeth and say, “Bring it.” Seriously though, if I manage to get this all finished before the end of August  it will truly be a God thing.

I had a great time at the Casas Missions Fair this year. Today was the first day of the week long activities focused on foreign missions and missionaries that are part of Casas Church in Tucson, Arizona. I was amazed by the number of people who frequented the Eagle TV booth to tell me they are praying for our family and for Eagle TV. A great deal of people, in fact, remembered my presentation with Roger Barrier during last year’s missions fair.

Stefani was there to help man the booth for me and she, frankly, was the hit with visitors. She broke out her ankle bones and started showing everyone how to play. It’s amazing what amazes the kiddies.

The Supermom video was also a hit. People were continually amazed that we could produce such a good quality product for television with so few resources. In case you didn’t know, Supermom is the most popular children’s television program in Mongolia.

There are events and activities scheduled for the whole week for the Casas missionaries. I’m looking forward to spending the time with everyone.

On the 21st I drive to Albuquerque for a weeklong visit then it’s back to Tucson to prepare for my return trip to Mongolia.