‘A miracle of God’ is an unlikely description for most television networks, but that’s the way one TV station is being seen as it takes the Christian message into the far reaches of the Middle East.
That TV station is SAT-7, a Christian satellite broadcasting service with a potential audience of some 400 million people across the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe. And Sarel du Plessis, General Secretary of SAT-7 in the Southern Hemisphere, has no hesitation in describing the service in such lofty terms.
Since joining SAT-7 in January last year, Mr du Plessis says he has been amazed at the impact the service is having in parts of the world where Christianity has traditionally had almost no voice.
“There’s no human that can take credit for it,” Mr du Plessis says. “The scale of it is too big. If you think about how small the team is and the amount of work we get through, it is a miracle.”
After starting out in 1996 on air for two hours a week, SAT-7 now broadcasts 12 hours of programming every day. Airtime is purchased from a satellite broadcaster to the region, meaning that any household with a satellite dish can view SAT-7 programs.
Programs include children’s shows, documentaries, talk shows, an Arab soap opera, a sitcom, a quiz show and a magazine-style show for teenagers. More than half of these programs are now locally made and broadcast in indigenous languages. “It is politically, socially and religiously sensitive to Middle Eastern society,” Mr du Plessis says.
He says the development of uncensored satellite broadcasts is a strategic breakthrough for the gospel. “Because literacy is so low, radio is successful but is not the ultimate solution. People’s education levels are so low, their ‘mental picture’ is extremely limited. Television gives you the ability to communicate the picture and make it complete.”
Mr du Plessis says that in North Africa there is one known Christian believer for every two million people – the equivalent of having ten Christians in all of Australia. In the Middle East the figure is one Christian for every one million people. But while this may seem a hopeless situation, Mr du Plessis believes SAT-7 is a great encouragement to the many ‘anonymous Christians’ for whom expressions of their faith may be either illegal or dangerous.
“Those are the people I serve – the many people who we will only see in heaven. We will never hear from them and we will never receive anything from them, but they will be our viewers forever and we are there to serve them.”
In this environment, SAT-7 aims to foster a degree of unity among Christians across the Middle East, helping them to see that they are part of a wider Christian fellowship with people all over the region and the world.
“The Christians in the region definitely feel like a secondary society, but SAT-7 has given them an identity which they never had before,” he says. “I don’t think we at SAT-7 even have any idea how strategic it is.”
Operating on a shoestring budget, SAT-7’s most urgent need is purchasing airtime from the satellite broadcaster. Mr du Plessis says anyone giving money for airtime ‘can say to your friends that you are sharing the gospel with people in the Middle East, today’. But he quickly adds ‘we need a lot more prayer than we need money’.
Even in a volatile region, Mr du Plessis says SAT-7 aims to remain constant in its programming, rather than being ‘as erratic as the region’. The war in Iraq had little impact on their broadcasts, with the continuation of normal programs providing a powerful statement on the constancy of the gospel message amidst the world’s chaos. “Our people need to see stability from us,” he says.
For more information on SAT-7’s ministry, visit www.sat7.org
