Reaching More Than Ever Before

On the set of The World of Jonathan Singh

From 2001:

The IMM children’s series, The World of Jonathan Singh, was broadcast in Bangladesh — on the Muslim nationally owned television station. This came about after a strange set of circumstances.

The local missionary, Larry Smith, asked to view master tapes at the national television station. Keep in mind this was a time when programs had to be on specific high-quality tapes for broadcast with special machinery.

When the station manager saw the quality of the children’s programs and that it was in the local language, he asked if they could air the program. Larry was able to say he could get in touch with the “distributor,” that would be IMM, and “secure permission” for them to use them without paying for the high-quality program. In this way, he was doing a favor for the station and raised the value of the children’s programs as a special offer.

Each week the broadcast had an actual viewing audience of over 50 million people in Bangladesh. Missionaries Larry & Sharon Smith reported that in one broadcast they had reached more people than in their entire missionary career up to that point.

In addition, this same series went on to be dubbed into many languages; such as Arabic, Russian, and Ukrainian. Our CBN partner in Kiev, Ukraine said, "Every Sunday we broadcast on the Russian National channel that covers 190 cities ... and regularly on the regional channels. We'll distribute the program on all the channels we cooperate with all over the CIS (about 120 channels)."

IMM fought many battles to bring The World of Jonathan Singh project to completion and it is such a blessing to know it had these audiences and many more in the years following, including recently in Indonesia!

God’s Word for Today:

“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’” Matthew 19:14

Pray with us:

  • Pray for those working with children’s programming online.

  • Pray for IMM’s new planning for children’s programming in the coming years.

  • Pray for your local church to be creative in reaching kids.

Have a need that you would like us to join you in prayer for? Want to join our Prayer Team? Click the “Pray with us!” button to sign up and submit prayer requests.