Podcasts are proving to be a potent tool for penetrating Iran. They overcome obstacles that Iranians face with internet blocking, expensive cellular data service, and unreliable internet connections.
Our podcasts are showing up on searches for topics like “Christianity” in Farsi. Listeners who are not familiar with Radio Mojdeh but are curious about Christianity are finding our podcasts and listening to them.
We doubled our daily podcast shows from two per day to four beginning in May. Shows we air now include: New Life, Message of Love, Voice of Salvation, and Children of Light.
Voice of Christ Media Ministries has always targeted Iranians living inside the country. So it is encouraging that 35% of our podcast downloads are listeners inside Iran.
In late May we were at 240 downloads per week and trending strongly upward. We have a substantial number of episodes that are now available for download — more than 300 so far — and that number grows at the rate of four per day. So users can search through past months and download episodes that address topics of interest to them.
One of our producers has been finding creative ways to publicize the podcasts on social media. Because it is easy to link to any specific episode, he is able to scan the master list of over 300 episodes that are available and pick out titles and series that seem especially relevant. He creates an attractive Telegram or Facebook post that draws attention to the topic, and posts it with a link that the social media reader can click to get the podcast. It is a great way to address quickly changing world, social, or religious conditions.
Our most popular podcast episodes so far are a two-part series recorded by Gilbert Hovsepian as a part of our “Youth Roundtable” programs on challenges facing young people. Entitled “Peace and Joy in Life”, they garnered 80 downloads between the two episodes.
Pray that Iranian “spiritual seekers” will find our podcasts and download them. Pray that Muslim Iranians will come to know Christ and that Iranian Christians will grow in their faith. Pray that our contacts inside Iran will spread the word about our podcasts and that many will listen.