Mission Network News

India (MNN) ― One of the leading stars in India played a key role in a television broadcast that saw incredible response in India. We're talking about Book of Hope International's Indian version of The GodMan. The GodMan is the 3D animated film on the life of Christ. It's not only being translated into a number languages, but it's been contextualized for different areas of the world.

Executive Director of Book of Hope International Rob Hoskins says the contextualization is done with live actors. "One of the leading stars in India, probably the equivalent like a Jim Carry in Indian film, came to Christ about four or five years ago. He's a household name in India. When he heard about our 'GodMan' project, he wanted to be part of it."

For the first time, The GodMan was aired on satellite television across India over the Easter weekend in 12 different languages simultaneously. Hoskins says what happened was just incredible. "We had 12,974,000 households tune in, with an actual viewing audience this Easter of 50,859,000 people who tuned in to watch the story of Jesus across India."

Did they expect that kind of response? With an outburst of laughter, Hoskins says, "No, but to see that God had bigger plans than we ever dreamed of and the impact that this project is having around the world is beyond our wildest dreams." He continues, "And then to see just at Easter time this many people tune in, many hearing the story of the life of Christ for the first time, is just an incredible miracle."

According to Hoskins, Book of Hope now has the opportunity to show The GodMan on national television at Christmas time. "And if we get the same sort of share of audience, we'll be looking at literally at hundreds of millions that will be encountering the story of Jesus in India this Christmas."

Book of Hope still needs to raise about 1 million dollars to pay for airtime. If you'd like to contribute, click here. 

However, more ministry has been done since the broadcast. Book of Hope trained local Christians to host The GodMan viewing parties. Hoskins says, "We've just gotten our first reports back. They were able to show the film 694 times. 31,000 people watched the The GodMan in these homes. And of those 31,000, 11,127 people made a first-time commitment to Jesus Christ."

Their goal is to train 42,000 churches in India to show The GodMan to 12 million people in the next year. Hoskins says, "If we get a similar response to what we've already gotten in our initial stages, we're looking at upwards of 4 million people making a commitment to Christ this year."

The GodMan is currently available in five different cultural versions: Multi-Cultural, African, Indian, Latin American and Slavic. The movie has been dubbed into 31 languages.