"Their Only Access": How TWR Uses Media to Reach the Last
[estimated reading time: 4 minutes]
A member of the Somali people of Northeastern Africa, the first unreached people group highlighted by TWR's new Reach the Last campaign. [photo by Ismail Salad Osman Hajji]
When it comes to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ with unreached people groups, media is sometimes not just the best way, it’s the only way.
“There are some people groups we can only reach through media,” said Jon Fugler, chief content officer for TWR, also known as Trans World Radio. “This is their only access to the gospel.”
As an organization dedicated to reaching the world for Christ through mass media, TWR recognizes its calling to reach places where traditional missionaries can’t always go. That’s the thinking behind a long-term campaign TWR is launching this month called Reach the Last.
That theme speaks to our origin story. In 1948, Canadian evangelist Oswald J. Smith Jr. challenged those attending an international Youth for Christ conference in Beaten-berg, Switzerland, for focusing too much on the “front rows,” where Christians were already in place. Who would reach out to the people in the “last rows”? Smith asked.
Among those who heard that challenge was a 30-year-old Youth for Christ director named Paul Freed. Within four years, he would start what became TWR. He used a radio station in Morocco to broadcast the gospel to Spain because at the time Spain was closed to on-the-ground evangelical witness. Although his background was not in media, Freed saw that media was the best – if not the only way – in that time and place to bring the gospel to Spain.
Today, with a multimedia presence in 190 countries and 230 languages, TWR is used by God for discipleship as well as evangelism. But with Reach the Last, we want to especially draw attention to the 42% (7,385) of the world’s people groups with little or no Christian presence, as tabulated by Joshua Project, which specializes in raising awareness of unreached peoples.
To do that, we’re offering in-depth reports in our TWR Magazine and on our website, a full-length documentary on two tribes in Suriname, a prayer guide, the release of a book on the recent history of TWR, profiles of countries and individuals, and a check-in on our latest TWR MOTION animation, which will present the gospel to Buddhists in Thailand. We’ve even developed a Reach the Last board game, designed to illustrate what it takes to reach people groups through media.
In addition to Thailand and Suriname, we’ll travel via words, video, audio and art to places such as Türkiye, Nigeria, Bosnia and Afghanistan. We began our series this month, focusing on the Somali people. We’re featuring the work of artists, writers, designers, editors, videographers and photographers from the TWR family in Singapore, South Africa, Slovakia, Paraguay and the United States.
Lauren Libby, president and CEO of TWR, noted that the apostle Paul, in Romans 15:20, sought “to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named.”
“We are committed to bringing the good news of Jesus to those who haven’t heard and encouraging those who are struggling to deepen their walk with him,” Libby said.
Learn more at our online page dedicated to Reach the Last, and stay tuned – the site will keep growing as the year goes on.
Images: (middle, right) Dr. Paul Freed, founder of TWR, (bottom, left) TWR's new Reach the Last board game, designed to illustrate what it takes to reach people groups through media.
This article is part of a bigger series called Reach the Last. We’re calling attention to unreached people groups in the world – those who lack enough Christ followers and resources to evangelize their own people. We’re showing how God is using TWR’s media ministry as one of his tools to call the last people to himself.
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