A GOD STORY FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA: The Lohkan (name changed for security) are a highly persecuted unreached people group. Generations of persecution and discrimination in their home land has caused them to scatter around the world. They can now be found in over 30 different countries as refugees. While they have suffered unimaginable tragedy, like most people, the Lohkan are increasingly using smart phones. Facebook has become the online community that connects them across borders and keeps them in the loop on news from their people.
Traditionally, we have searched out Lohkan who are spiritually open by visiting tea shops and building relationships in our community. However, you can only drink so much tea in a day and the challenges of sharing the gospel with a people group scattered across the globe calls for creative solutions. Using Facebook to find people interested in the things of God and connecting them with Christians around them became an amazing opportunity and allowed the Gospel to reach far beyond our geographical location. In Pioneers we call this Media to Movements.
We begin our Media to Movements Facebook campaigns with hopes of connecting with people that were open to the Gospel and willing to meet in person with Christians in their area for follow up. To some extent this did happen and continues to happen, praise God for this. However, even as we continue to pray and followed the plan for Media To Movements, we see God working in unexpected ways. On average our videos and ads would get several thousand views, it was amazing to know that people who had never had access to the Gospel were hearing God’s word in their heart language.
One of those people was Alam, an influencer among the Lohkan. Unbeknownst to us, Alam liked our videos so much that he was somehow illegally downloading them from Facebook and reposting them on his TikTok account that has over 7,000 followers and over 70,000 likes! Every video we posted, he would repost and share. Amazingly, our videos were getting thousands of views, some even over 30,000. We could see the comments and watched as people “hearted” “liked” and “thumbs upped” God’s word. This was certainly not a part of our strategy, but it was certainly God’s plan.
However, people started to criticize Alam, and called him derogatory names for posting “Christian content.” Not to be swayed Alam took to his TikTak account with a live broadcast! He defended his actions saying things like “Why are you attacking me, I like these videos, they teach about Jesus. Please show me one place where in these videos it is wrong and bad? If you don’t like Jesus, then just stop watching my videos! I will keep uploading them.” Alam, continues to upload our videos to this day.
Though not a believer – yet – he is displaying courage to the Lohkan, that they too can have the freedom to listen to and think about God’s word without fear of judgment or condemnation from others. Then, we hear news from Chris, who works with Lohkan refugees in another country. Apparently, several of his friends are coming to him with these amazing videos from TikTok that speak about Jesus! This has opened the door for Chris to see who amongst his Lohkan friends are seeking God and continue Gospel conversations with them. Still, another teacher at a school for Lohkan refugees let us know, one of her students came in exclaiming “Jesus can heal the sick!” and showed her one of the videos. Again, another opened door for a worker on the ground.
Even when we can’t see it, God is continuing to work, seeds are being planted in fields we don’t even know about, and in ways we could have never imagined. All praise to Him.
