Cheshme app: a Gospel gateway in Iran

By December 15, 2023

Iran (MNN) — Working for the Lord in a place like Iran isn’t easy.

Government spies are everywhere, and saying the wrong thing to the right person could get you arrested, tortured, or killed. Yet Iranians are desperate for truth.

Two years ago, Transform Iran launched a free mobile app called Cheshme to help meet the need. People can scan a QR code to download the app, avoiding government detection.

“This isn’t about making a profit,” Transform Iran’s Lana Silk says.

“This is about making sure people can access the Gospel in an easy, convenient, and safe way.”

Today, the app has been downloaded thousands of times and is used frequently across devices. Learn more about Transform Iran’s media ministry here.

Cheshme app
(Photo courtesy of Transform Iran)

“The idea with the app is to create a one-stop shop for people to access a whole range of Christian resources,” Silk says.

“People can access our online meetings, whether it’s a digital church, prayer room, or an apologetics center. They can also download the Bible in text and audio; they can access sermons, books, articles, worship songs, and materials for children.”

Pray for house churches to be started in ethnic minority communities as people learn from God’s Word in their heart languages.

“Thanks to generous funding, not only have we been able to translate unfoldingWord’s Open Bible Stories into 18 languages of Iran, but we have also been able to complete the Gilaki New Testament, and several Gospels of John, and there is more on the way,” Silk says.

“However, the key for many of these translations is the provision of the audio dramatization to ensure the most remote and the most illiterate can access and understand them. We currently have an audio dramatization of the Gospel of John in Balochi, Bakhtiari, Laki, Luri, Gilaki, and there’s more coming. We have also been able to dramatize the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke in Gilaki.”

Help reach the unreached of Iran by investing in Bible translation here.

“The great need now is to secure the funding to be able to dramatize all that has already been translated as well as pressing into more essential translations,” Silk says.

 

 

 

Header image is a representative stock photo courtesy of Clay Banks/Unsplash.


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