Integrating every church media platform to impact lives across the region.
As he tells it, Ahmad’s journey didn’t begin with anything unusual.
“One day, I was browsing on my phone” — quite normal for a young man in the Middle East, where the average person spends 230 minutes a day of their personal time browsing on their mobile device.*
What stopped Ahmad mid-scroll, though, was the catalyst that has changed his life.
“I saw a link for researching the reliability of the Bible,” Ahmad said. Curious, he decided to click. To his surprise, he found an automated study showing how the Bible has been preserved and can be trusted. It’s not corrupted, as he’d been taught.
“Although the content was against everything I had been told to believe as a non-Christian, I went through every single presentation,” Ahmad said.
With each lesson, he was eager to know more about the Bible.
“At the end of that series, there was an option to study more about Jesus from the Bible with an online instructor,” Ahmad said. “I was totally astonished by the miracles, compassion, and love of Jesus. I told my instructor I wanted to study more.”
Ahmad was pleased when two men began visiting him each week to study the Bible in person. After several months he readily accepted their invitation to attend a small study group in their home. Friendship and spiritual life have followed.
His carefully directed journey in God’s Word has not been a series of coincidences, though. While it does mark the miracle-working power of God, it also represents prayerful effort of the Middle East and North Africa Union Mission (MENAUM) to develop an intentional strategy to meet a generation of Middle Eastern young people who are facing tremendous challenges and are heavily influenced by digital media.
“Digital media has altered the way non-Christian young people think, live, and build relationships,” Rick McEdward, president of MENAUM, said. “We see the emergence of non-traditional values and cultures as an impact of the media.”
One of MENAUM’s early steps, taken in 2018 and related to these trends, was a field survey of the region conducted by a professional research firm. The survey identified the region’s core audience, the language they understand best, and the most effective platforms for connecting with them.