{"id":5902,"date":"2015-10-07T08:58:31","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T12:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/?p=5902"},"modified":"2015-10-07T08:58:31","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T12:58:31","slug":"central-asia-21st-century-media-strategies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/?p=5902","title":{"rendered":"CENTRAL ASIA: 21st Century Media Strategies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: International Mission Board, September 15, 2015<\/p>\n<p>\u201cJamilya\u201d perches on a boulder, the highest spot on the mountain pass leading to her home beside a glacial lake. When she holds her cell phone just right, she gets a signal strong enough to call her family in the village five hours away.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRahat,\u201d living in another isolated corner of Central Asia, doesn\u2019t have running water, but he keeps a computer charged using a solar panel atop his family\u2019s felt yurt. During his summer break from university, he spends evenings messaging his friends and watching pirated movies on the Internet.<\/p>\n<p>Evan has spent the last 10 years trying to get the gospel to people like Jamilya and Rahat\u2014Central Asians who are isolated behind physical, political, and spiritual barriers. For a long time he wondered, \u201cWhy isn\u2019t something really cool happening?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When two years ago, a co-worker showed him a website created for the purpose of making Scripture available in the language of the Central Asian people group Evan is trying to reach. To his surprise, the site was getting 1,000 hits a day.<\/p>\n<p>By the end of the first year, nearly 25,000 Scripture downloads were recorded. Workers recognized they needed a full-time team comprised of members \u201cpassionate about seeing people get access to the Bible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Evan explained, \u201cWe aren\u2019t using other evangelism tools; we are just connecting with people, trying to get them reading the Bible and then corresponding.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur vision is that when people get access to God\u2019s Word and begin reading it, that\u2019s going to transform lives,\u201d he said. \u201cCool things start to happen when people get access to God\u2019s Word.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s exactly what Evan is seeing among this hard-to-reach people group.<\/p>\n<p>\u00bb <a href=\"http:\/\/centralasianpeoples.imb.org\/stories\/view\/21st-century-miracle\" target=\"_blank\" data-cke-saved-href=\"http:\/\/centralasianpeoples.imb.org\/stories\/view\/21st-century-miracle\">Read full story<\/a>, which is quite encouraging. See also <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jesusfilm.org\/updates\/150922\" data-cke-saved-href=\"http:\/\/www.jesusfilm.org\/updates\/150922\">Short Films Open Hearts in the Middle East<\/a> (The JESUS Film Project).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: International Mission Board, September 15, 2015 \u201cJamilya\u201d perches on a boulder, the highest spot on the mountain pass leading to her home beside a glacial lake. When she holds her cell phone just right, she gets a signal strong enough to call her family in the village five hours away. \u201cRahat,\u201d living in another &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/?p=5902\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">CENTRAL ASIA: 21st Century Media Strategies<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5902","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5902"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5902\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5903,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5902\/revisions\/5903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}