Mark Gillmore: Hello once again, and I’m Mark Gillmore here with our GoMission podcast. It’s a privilege to sit down here today with Brother George Zarris, who for a number of years was a pastor, and then God led him to be involved in radio broadcast ministry with a ministry that he founded called Christian Radio International. I’ve known of his work and enjoyed fellowshipping with him repeatedly over these years, so it’s good to have you sitting down with us today on our podcast.

George Zarris: It’s great to be here. Thank you.

Mark Gillmore: I’m just excited to share your story with many young people who listen in regularly. Brother George, you were a pastor for a time, and where was that?

George Zarris: I pastored while in college at Tennessee Temple, up in the mountains outside Chattanooga, and Tracy City, Tennessee.

Mark Gillmore: Now, if you don’t know where that is, shame on you. Well, one thing that tells me about you is that you didn’t, so to say, let any grass grow under your feet. Even as a college student, you were on mission for the Lord.

George Zarris: Oh, yeah. Pastoring. Yeah, God burdened my heart under the preaching of Jack Hyles, and I surrendered as a teenager to serve the Lord as a preacher. As a pastor, I thought of a church, and later God led me to work with radio stations.

Mark Gillmore: So how did the Lord, after your years of local church pastoring, get you involved in radio ministry?

George Zarris: We probably ought to go back first and talk about how I got saved. The Lord really used a Christian song sung by, I think, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, but if not, some old-time Christian singer: “Open Up Your Heart and Let the Sunshine In.” I remember, as a boy—I was about eight years old, I think—when we first got a radio. My mom and dad—we were poor. We lived in the slums of Chicago, in a building that had a central bathroom. That means several families used that bathroom. You locked the door when you got in so that you could take care of business and everything.

George Zarris: I remember getting this radio at Christmas time. I was infatuated with it. It was a box radio that was dark colored and had a dial that went across the top of it. I’d go up and down the dial as a young boy, and there was one song, “Open Up Your Heart and Let the Sunshine In,” that captivated my heart. It just brought goosebumps to me personally. We didn’t know the Lord. My dad and mom did not go to church at that time. We knew nothing about it. I remember going daily to that radio and trying to find that song. I was so disappointed when I finally found it: they were done singing, and I didn’t get to hear it. I realized that God was preparing my heart to be saved, and God was using that radio and that song those people sang to prepare my heart for the gospel. I was so grateful.

Mark Gillmore: That’s amazing, because I think the echo of your encountering Christ in that radio song is now what’s happening through your ministry—probably millions of times to folks with no Christian background, just flipping the dial or turning the channel. They can’t catch something, and God is just speaking into their lives when they don’t even know who He is yet.

George Zarris: Yes, exactly. I pastored for about 20 years, and I praise the Lord for that opportunity—people that I pastored at school at Tennessee Temple in Chattanooga, pastoring up in the mountains of Tennessee, and then in Aurora, Illinois. God blessed our church; He really did. I was always affected by radio. We had a radio program when I pastored in Aurora, and God used it to win people to Him. We had a senior citizen who got saved because she heard me on the radio. I had one of my deacons who heard me and got saved as a result of the radio program that we had. I realized that radio helps you to speak not just to one individual, but literally thousands. If it’s a really powerful station, it may be tens of thousands, hundreds, maybe even millions of people at one time. God knit my heart to it.

Mark Gillmore: Amen. So you started Christian Radio International about 20 years ago or so. What was your vision in starting that ministry? What was God laying on your heart?

George Zarris: God was laying on my heart to go into different countries and build radio stations, speak to people in their language—the gospel—so that they could be saved. I figured I was a soul winner. My preacher, Jack Hyles, taught me how to win souls. I was soul-conscious, and it made sense to me that I could talk to one person at a time—and I do. When our church goes out soul-winning on Saturday, I’m there; we’re talking to people. I believe in personal soul-winning. But I would much rather talk to a thousand people at a time, or two thousand, or a million people at a time, than one, because it’s just the law of averages: numbers. You’re going to reach more people that way. God gave us this tool to magnify the ministry of the gospel, to get the gospel out to more people.

Mark Gillmore: Amen. You’re involved in regions of the world like Africa, the Middle East, the Philippines, Mexico, and South America. You’ve been in China and India with some of your ministries.

George Zarris: Yes.

Mark Gillmore: Maybe tell me something that, in one of those regions—perhaps Africa—what’s happening in that region?

George Zarris: God is just blessing unbelievably in Africa. At the turn of the century, in the 1800s, there were only about nine percent of the African people who were saved or claimed to be saved. Africa was really in the hands of Islam at that time. But Christian missionaries started going into Africa, and we don’t tell the story. We may know about one person or two persons, but we don’t know the whole story. Africa is ablaze with the gospel of Jesus Christ. The people are hungry and open still to the message of the gospel, and it’s almost everywhere you go—they respond. Now Christianity is probably twice as popular and has twice as many respondents as Islam, though Islam has been there a long time working. We are grateful for what God has done. We’ve built several radio stations all over the country. We’ve had other people come to Christ—a terrorist during the 14-year civil war. He was the most feared man in Liberia. He came to Christ, and now he’s a preacher. He went to Bible college, and he’s a preacher of the gospel of Jesus Christ. He was a terrorist who terrorized the country for 14 years, responsible for numerous people being slain, maimed, and everything else, but now he’s preaching the gospel. What a miracle.

Mark Gillmore: Yes. In these different places, you partner with basically a local national preacher or a missionary who is residing and ministering there, and they really run and broadcast; the programs come out of their ministry.

George Zarris: Yes, exactly. We find a key man. You always have to have a key man, and if we don’t have a key man, we don’t do it. We figure we’ve got to have a key man, and he promises to work with us. We promise to help him build the station, raise the money for it, keep it financed, and keep it filled with good programming too. That has worked out quite well.

Mark Gillmore: I know a lot of folks, when they think of the Middle East, sense the spiritual tension and turmoil that’s there. God’s really opened up some amazing doors for your radio ministry. I’m thinking of Iraq. How many stations now do you have in Iraq?

George Zarris: We have five stations, but we’re building two more.

Mark Gillmore: And two more.

George Zarris: Yeah, and it covers right now probably 80 to 85 percent of the country.

Mark Gillmore: Yeah, and when we get these other two on, we’ll be hitting over 90 percent of the country. They’re broadcasting in the Arabic language?

George Zarris: Yes.

Mark Gillmore: And English too, or all in Arabic?

George Zarris: They have some English programs, and Arabic too.

Mark Gillmore: Very—

George Zarris: Oh, I’m sorry. In Liberia, it’s all English.

Mark Gillmore: English in Liberia.

George Zarris: Yeah, that would be their common language. I was going on to Baghdad—sorry about that. In the Middle East, Arabic.

Mark Gillmore: Arabic, yes. Five, soon to be seven stations, and just to think—

George Zarris: Pastor Meher is our key man there, and I work also with missionary Eger Fagali.

Mark Gillmore: Yes, and Brother Fagali is Lebanese, a graduate of Bob Jones University, missionary par excellence—just a great, great man with a great ministry.

George Zarris: Yes, and we work together in many situations.

Mark Gillmore: I also think of some of your ministry going by satellite into that realm of the world too, right? How does that work, and where does that reach?

George Zarris: Our station in Iraq is also on satellite delivery. That means that people who speak the Arabic language all over the world can hear that same program that’s being broadcast either in Baghdad or Basra or one of the other cities that we’re reaching in Iraq.

Mark Gillmore: So literally millions.

George Zarris: Millions.

Mark Gillmore: I think it’s a satellite television station that they would be tuning into.

George Zarris: That one would be radio—satellite radio.

Mark Gillmore: Satellite radio. All right.

George Zarris: They do have satellite TV to reach into the Farsi language, the Persian language, and that is doing a great job too.

Mark Gillmore: Now over in the Philippines there’s an amazing open door for radio. How are you involved on that side?

George Zarris: We work with Rick Martin, who is a veteran missionary, again, par excellence. When you say “the Philippines,” Rick Martin is the next word to come after it. He’s been giving his life for over 40 years to the Filipino people. Because of the nature of the Christian man that he is, he got permission from the Philippine government to build as many Christian radio stations as there were frequencies open. It was carte blanche to just go and charge and get it. We’ve been endeavoring to help him fulfill that commission to evangelize the Philippines through radio and TV. We’re working on the radio side. So far we’ve put up 12 radio stations in the Philippines. They don’t simulcast because the languages in different parts of the Philippines are different. They’re in the common language of most of the people in the area where they’re being broadcast. We’re hoping this next year to add two or three more stations. It is literally wonderful how God is reaching the Philippines. God has had the Philippines as a special nation for over 100 years now. It is just a special place. You go there and immediately fall in love with the Filipino people. They’re so gracious, and out of them can come great missionary movements into other regions of the world.

Mark Gillmore: What has happened is Rick Martin and other missionaries are training the Filipinos, and they have become a major force in world missions. They’ll go anywhere, and they go where you and I, as an American— a white American—could not even go.

George Zarris: That’s true. They can go there because they’re dark-skinned. They’re not looked upon as the aggressive enemy or something like that. They’re like stealth Christians, going in and establishing churches and winning souls to the Lord. They’re great people.

Mark Gillmore: I know radio has opened doors down into the Spanish-speaking Latin America venue, down into South America. I know you were mentioning Mexico City and just how radio is impacting there. Tell us about that.

George Zarris: We started in Mexico City working with Rick Martin—no, Kevin Wynn. Kevin Wynn, I’m sorry. All of those guys are number one and number two as missionaries. Kevin Wynn, if you’ve never met him, is really a strange guy. He’s my friend, I love him, but I’d say that if he was sitting right here. He just is unusual, but God has knit his heart with the Mexican people. He has built the largest Baptist church that I know of in the world, running over 15,000 people. It’s amazing, a beehive of Christian activity. It’s like you wish every church would be. They are out after souls.

Mark Gillmore: Yes, and radio’s a part of that.

George Zarris: Radio is a part, but Kevin came kicking and screaming with radio. I came down, and he let one of his assistant pastors spend a day with me. I was checking out what we could do, whether we could get a station in Mexico City. We visited a number of secular radio stations in Mexico City, Brother Onorio and I. We checked around and tried to find out whether there was time to be bought, whether a station might be up for sale, or anything like that. I thought our time had not worked out well, and I left and continued on wherever I was going. Unbeknownst to me, Brother Onorio got the burden for Kevin Wynn to be on the radio. As an assistant pastor, he stayed and pushed the idea. Suddenly, one of the radio stations offered Kevin Wynn time on Thursday night—a crazy time, like 11 or 11:30 at night—to do a half-hour program. And he did it. The funny thing is, Mexicans started coming to Christ in great numbers. They later renegotiated, and Kevin did Sunday morning, I think it was at seven or 7:30 in the morning, in Mexico City. The station was an AM station that reached from the east to the west coast. North and south it didn’t reach the whole country, but east and west it did. Over 100 million people could probably hear the station. In the area where we were, there were 4 million people who could hear it. Kevin Wynn, on Sunday morning, Sunday night, and then their midweek service on Thursday, every week as a result of his radio program, adults—many adults, sometimes more than two dozen—would walk the aisle in a week and profess their faith in Jesus Christ by listening to Kevin Wynn on the radio first and then coming to the church and getting saved. A great opportunity.

Mark Gillmore: I’m thinking in Romans 10 it says, “How shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard?” Radio fits that very point of letting people hear. We’ve got a young audience that’s listening, and we kind of think of podcasts or Spotify, audio that flows through internet apps and so forth. Radio is still a powerful communication channel.

George Zarris: Yes, but you are speaking truth too. Going on to the internet, we almost now, without exception, when we build a radio station, also put it on the internet. You stream it onto the internet.

Mark Gillmore: Yes, and it can go global.

George Zarris: Global, just like that. Immediately. We were in India broadcasting on regular radio stations in India for ten years and had literally tens of thousands of Indians saved as a result of that. The owner passed away, I think, and it stopped our opportunity. We’re looking now, and I’ve got a young man who’s Indian in our local church, First Baptist Church in Hammond, Indiana. He’s saved, teaching a Sunday school class, and we are prodding him and working with him and trying to develop him. We believe he may be our Indian broadcaster to broadcast out to the people of India. We can do it right from where we’re at, streaming right from here and streaming on the internet.

Mark Gillmore: India certainly is a realm where many folks are going to have that technology and access that way.

George Zarris: Absolutely. They are very into that type of thing.

Mark Gillmore: Well, Brother Zarris, thank you for sharing with us what God’s doing. Our global population now is about 8.1 billion. When we think about getting the gospel to every creature, which is our command, some folks may think, “That’s not even possible,” but actually it is totally possible.

George Zarris: It totally is.

Mark Gillmore: When we think of these technologies—radio streaming, the gospel is reaching all the corners of the earth.

George Zarris: I believe that within a few years, using technology—radio, TV, internet, satellite, anything they can think up, because it’s beyond my comprehension—we will have the ability to preach the gospel to every creature on planet Earth.

Mark Gillmore: Amen. That is an encouraging reality, and I think it’s the perspective we need to have. Young people, as you think about your future, realize that getting the gospel to every creature is at the center of what God is up to, and He wants to use you. Some of you have skills in technology, and God can use those in gospel broadcasts. So remember, the only way to stay at peace in a world of turmoil and uncertainty is to stay on mission with Jesus in His GoMission.