Radio Ministry Continues
Radio seminars and Bible studies are held weekly on the local network that reaches the church members at their homes and work places. The testimony of this story is that this same radio network was designed, built and used for political propaganda by the Communist Party. For 45 years trained political leaders defended and proclaimed the atheistic message of the Communist Regime teaching people that there is no God. But God has proved that indeed He exists and controls kings and kingdoms. Today, this same radio network is used to proclaim the message of the life and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through our radio programs, people are taught to revere God and to obey His words. Every week our team receives hundreds of calls, letters and e-mails with questions about our faith and the Bible. Our broadcast reaches thousands of people in their homes and at their work places, but even more important the message of Christ reaches directly their hearts.
Mega Youth Rally in Varna
As apart of the ten year anniversary of the creation of Bibliata.com, we were invited to hold another Mega Youth Rally in the city of Varna near the Black Sea. One of the goals of the National Bible Tour has been to unite youth groups regardless of any existing barriers including denominational ones. Since the opening of the tour in Stara Zagora, we have been able to witness how God is the uniting force which brings people together regardless of differences. The event in Varna was hosted by the First Assemblies of God, while virtually every other evangelical congregation in the region was represented in a 400+ attendance.
The service began at 6:30 with worship which continued for over an hour. The message entitled the King Can’t Sleep was based on the book of Esther chapter six. The sermon was followed by a tremendous altar call where more than 400 youth rededicated their lives in service to the Lord. The praise and worship continued past 10:00 pm.
There has been something distinctly different about each of the youth rallies we have held as part of the National Bible Tour. We are thankful for this uniqueness of each event which is a direct result of leadership of the Holy Spirit. For only the Spirit knows what is needed for a particular time and a particular people.
Viara TV Board Established
On September 5, 2006 the Spiritual Advisory Board of the new TV channel, Vaiara TV (Faith TV) was established and constituted in the capital Sofia. The board will be working on the new program strategy with television shows reaching a maximum public of the Bulgarian-speaking population in the country of Bulgaria and abroad.
Blagovest Belev, president and executive producer of the Shalom TV Production Company is chairman of the board. The writer Boris Ditchev and the publisher Dimitrina Nikolova will serve as board members. The young actor Daniel Angelov will be responsible for public relations and contacts, while the legal council Valery Zhdrakov will secure the legal side of the project. Dony Donev, author of the popular Christian websites www.bibliata.com, www.propovedi.net and www.hvalenie.com, will serve as a board member responsible for Internet and media.
Viara TV will reflect on the religious convictions of the Bulgarian people with respect to all delicate topics and in search for a new paradigm of religious tolerance. The faith within, as an alternative for the lack of spirituality, sinfulness and denial of moral values, will be the guiding light in all television productions shown by the new Christian channel.
The Faith Channel
A new Bulgarian TV channel with Christian orientation was launched in the beginning of the month. The “Faith Channel” will be running on the 7 Days TV Bulgarian national network. The channel will be featured on the Bulgarian Eurotour SAT and Eurocom, as well as by a number of local cable companies. It will reflect on issues connected with history, ethnology, folklore and religion among Bulgarians in the country and abroad. The “Faith Channel” is a multi-thematic media addressing the spiritual life of the country. A great deal of its’ production will be provided by the Shalom TV Company. The team claims no political independence and religious tolerance in the shown content.
Radio.Bibliata.com
July 16, 2006 was the official release date of Radio.Bibliata.com – a web-based radio promoting Christian values to Bulgarian Christians in Bulgaria and around the world. The web-based radio has been a long-term goal of our team. Many years ago, when this technology was still innovative we developed a module for progressive play of MP3 files purposing to present several Bulgarian gospel series. Since they were available for a free download from the website, we left the idea for web radio aside. Then, during the development of the Bulgarian Audio Bible in 2002-2003, we renewed our work on the project with the goal to play continuously Bible verses and chapters.
Finally, when we released the website for audio and video sermons, our team decided that we have the needed content to begin a 24-hours radio broadcast. The radio station was released and accepted with great interest. Currently, a 24-hour Bulgarian gospel play list is available online. We are currently working on four new options as follows: (1) Audio Bible modules, (2) talk shows, (3) sermons and (4) news block on the hour.
Bulgarian Evangelical News
Cup & Cross Ministries just released a new website in service to the Bulgarian evangelicals around the world. The web address is www.evangelsko.info. This site incorporates leading web technologies to build an up-to-date press center for various religious news and events from and about Bulgaria. A dynamic personalized column is also implemented to present interviews with evangelical experts in various professional fields and to strategically build an image of the current profile of the average Bulgarian evangelical.The website is next in a long series of strategic website for Bulgarian evangelicals released in 2006 as follows:
January 16, 2006: PastorBG.com – a website dedicated to the work and ministry of the Bulgarian evangelical pastor
February 16, 2006: Protesntantstvo.com – a website dealing with Bulgarian protestant history
March 16, 2006: Kapelanstvo.com – a website presenting chaplaincy
April 16, 2006: Hvalenie.com – a website for Bulgarian praise and worship, with downloadable gospel music and the only Top 10 Bulgarian Gospel List
May 16, 2006: Propovedi.net – a dynamic web database with audio and video sermons by Bulgarian ministers
The Story of Jesus for Children
June 1st in Bulgaria is the National Day for children. Cities all over the country participate in festival celebrations which are held in honor of children. In the second largest city, Plovdiv kids from all ages gather to paint a three kilometer mural which stretched between the Council of Ministers office building and the Art Academy.
On this day Bibliata.com in cooperation with Agape Bulgaria was able to release an online version of the Story of Jesus for Children. Within the first twenty-four hours alone, the complete film was downloaded over three hundred times. We are currently working on releasing online the original version of the Jesus film.
New Ministry Websites Released
Regardless of the busy traveling schedule which our ministry demands in Bulgaria, our team has been able to outsource and finish several major websites which have been released in Bulgaria during the past 60 days. Two of them offer free audio and video Christian worship and sermons, as well as entire Christian programs and Bible studies in the Bulgarian language. They have successfully reached a rating between 650-980 visitors per day just in the past month alone.
A website which presents a large volume of Bulgarian gospel songs (www.Hvalenie.com meaning “praise”) is an old dream of ours. We have begun working on it some five years ago as a sub department of another one of our websites, www.Bibliata.com. After much work and anticipation, the time came to release a stand-alone web interface which offers visitors a large database of Bulgarian gospel music to listen to and download free of charge.
The second website (www.Propoved.com meaning “sermon”) is surprisingly building a much larger audience than anticipated. It offers audio and video sermons online also free of charge. This is the first Bulgarian website to create and offer a nationwide database of video sermons by Bulgarian ministers. The website can be viewed on a regular computer as well as on internet enabled cell phones. This technology is so innovative, that we are being persistently asked by secular media companies and independent producers to partner in its future development and implementation. Although the website is in Bulgarian, you can also watch the current episode by opening www.Propoved.com and clicking on the “PLAY” button which will appear on the right hand side of your computer monitor or cell phone display.
Bulgarian Audio Bible
Several years ago, our team at www.bibliata.com adopted a very valuable project to record the Bulgarian Bible in audio format. The project was managed by Hristo Hristov from Shumen, an old time friend of ours and founder of the Prosteveten.com Project.
When we first started working with Hristo in 2002, he had begun recording the Bulgarian New Testament. Our team quickly implemented the audio files into a subproject of our website at: http://audio.bibliata.com. Soon after, the complete New Testament was ready and we were able to freely distribute it online to our visitors who downloaded over 3,000 complete copies of it in the first month alone.
The whole Bible was recorded in the Bulgarian vernacular in 2003 and became the first Bulgarian Audio Bible ever. Through our website, www.bibliata.com our team was able to distribute the Bulgarian Audio Bible free of charge for the next two years.
During our National Bible Tour in 2005, we released a new version of the audio Bible making the product more user-friendly, easier to navigate and download through a streaming media server. The intention was to include the audio Bible in the online parallel of Bible versions hosted by our website. This vision was realized in 2006, when 20 text versions of the Bible were included in the online parallel along with four audio versions of the Bible (KJV, Hebrew, Greek and Bulgarian).
Since then, over 10,000 copies of the full Bulgarian Bible have been distributed over the internet. This amounts to 30,000 GB of information or the equality of some 40,000 CDs. Two larger projects will be implementing the Bulgarian Audio Bible in the near future. One will be its official DVD release next month, and the second will be its incorporation with a live broadcast through a dedicated radio station. Until then, the Bulgarian Audio Bible is available for free download and use by all visitors of www.bibliata.com.
You can listen to Psalm 23 in Bulgarian here.
The Jesus Film for Children
The Jesus film for children premiered in Bulgaria in the beginning of April and so far it has been shown several thousand times. The film has met some resistance from Eastern Orthodox circles and nationalistic political representatives. Nevertheless, the overall presentation has gone better than expected as over 220,000 have seen the film in the movie theaters alone and close to 400,000 volumes of literature and DVD have been freely distributed.
