WMB Spotlight: Swarger Shidi: "Ladder to Heaven

Rev. Tushar Manna leads the team that produces World Mission Broadcast’s Swarger Shidi “Ladder to Heaven”, a 15-minute Bengali-language radio program that airs every Thursday morning at 7 a.m. on two short-wave channels (25 and 41) in East India. Listeners include Bengali speakers throughout India, Bangladesh and Nepal. The ministry team follows up with listeners by writing letters, calling listeners and visiting different areas where they’re invited to share more. They’re also training new believers to continue follow-up in their localities.

“There are 207 million Bengali-speaking people,” said Manna. “It is our desire that our Nazarene Bengali radio program will touch them and they will come to know Christ in their lives.”

Since the ministry began, the team has produced and broadcast more than 900 episodes; 52 of those were this year. This past year, 90 people have come to know the Lord through this program; 50 of those were involved in follow-up discipleship (mostly from Malda, Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri and Koch Behar districts of West Bengal).

Manna conducted one “Listeners Get-Together” for 40 listeners in Malda District last year. All come from unreached villages and non-Christian backgrounds, and have responded well to the music and messages in the program. The team continues to follow up with listeners there, including a program for 100 schoolchildren.

“They are much more interested to know more about Christ and they had many questions,” said Manna. “We talked to them many things to arouse their interest and answered their questions. They requested us to broadcast the program everyday.”

As a result of the radio ministry, 18 house churches have been planted among the Rajbanshi and Poliya people.

While the people of West Bengal were having their Centennial celebrations, Manna took the opportunity to visit some of the listeners in North Bengal last October. He conducted three follow-up meetings for the listeners and met another 20 listeners in the small groups during the trip. One hundred ten listeners attended the follow-up meetings.

“They were excited to see me and hear the gospel,” he said. “I had good interaction with them. They have requested me to broadcast the radio program every day. They also want me to visit them again with music CDs, books, calendar etc.”

From October 4-14, Manna visited another people group called Aguri in the Burdwan District. This people group is completely unreached; so far there are no known Christians in this people group, but several listen to the radio program.

“God is using Nazarene Bengali Radio program all over West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand, Bihar, Assam, Sikkim, and Tripura and in many other parts of India, Nepal and Bangladesh,” said Manna. “We are thankful to all the prayer partners and donors. I am thankful to World Mission Broadcast, all our district leaders, pastors, and all our church members for helping me in the Nazarene Bengali radio ministry.”

---Simone Finney, Regional Communications Coordinator, Eurasia Region