This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 251: Broadcasting Hope: Farid Garas.
[01:28] JONATHAN: Today we have a special guest, an in-house guest here at Leading The Way. Farid Garas is the senior director of the Kingdom Sat. The Kingdom Sat is our 24/7 satellite channel for the Arab-speaking world, taking biblical teaching and different types of programming through satellite television and internet to the Arab-speaking population. He has become a good friend and I am so honored to have him joining us onCandid Conversations. Farid, thank you for joining us.
[02:06] Farid: Thank you, Jonathan, and I would say congratulations. This is the first podcast after being Dr. Jonathan Youssef. So congratulations. It’s an honor to be with you.
[02:16] JONATHAN: Well, it’s an honor to be with you. And you are doing some doctoral work yourself. And we can get into that a little bit later for those who are listening, you’re from Egypt. Tell us a little bit about growing up and your life story and then we can transition into how you got into broadcast ministry.
[02:39] Farid: Yeah. I feel I am a minority of the minority, an evangelical Christian in Egypt. And that was a great blessing. I didn’t like it in the beginning, feeling that minority I’m not like everyone else, but it was great. My father was a scientist. He studied science, and he didn’t like all the Christian religious ideas at that time, talking mainly about the traditional Coptic traditions or Christian traditions. And he always thought that those Christians are cheesy and he didn’t like that.
So his two sisters invited him to a Christian conference, and he said, “Okay, I’ll go. But after the first day I will not like it and I will go back home.” So he tried to flee from the conference three times, and those good Christians would go after him and bring him back.
[03:42] JONATHAN: Kicking and screaming.
[03:44] Farid: Yeah. So God grabbed his attention through Bible study, and also because of the witness of those Christians that went after him. He discovered that those Christians are really good people. They are professionals. They are not cheesy. They are very intellectual, they are funny, they are successful. So he was attracted to God by the witness and the Bible study. The following year, after studying the Bible for one year, he became very excited about this paradigm shift that God allowed him to go through just by knowing the Lord, and he led the conference the following year. He invited eighteen people from his family, young people, and long story short, they all became Christians. They confessed … they gave their lives to the Lord.
[04:36] JONATHAN: Were they from a Coptic background?
[04:41] Farid: Yeah, they are nominal Christians, mainly. And many of them are leaders in the Christian ministry now. And he played a great role in my life, not just by the Christian teaching, but by his example to me. And he showed me it was a balance between unconditional love and discipline. And it’s like your father played a great role in your life, and that prepared me to know the Lord more and to be ready for ministry.
[05:14] JONATHAN: Yeah, yeah. So tell us a little bit about your upbringing. Your father’s obviously grown into leadership roles within the Christian community, the evangelical community. You’re grown up in a covenant home, where you’ve heard the Word taught. Tell us a little bit about your faith journey.
[05:37] Farid: Yeah. So my father and mother brought us in a church setting and in a covenant environment, and they prepared us to hear the word of the Lord in house and also in church. But as a teenager, even a kid in an evangelical church, you get to hear the salvation message more than one time. But one time I remember, and the teacher has related with me, it was a play about the end of days. And the last line in the play, the main character talks to the audience and says, “What if Jesus came today? Are you going to be here or there?”
And of course, it was so dramatic. And so I went home and couldn’t sleep. I was thinking of all the events of that day. Is my life really Christian? Am I up to the standard that God accepts? And do I enjoy His redemption just because I want to get released of the … get out of … get out of hell?
[06:50] JONATHAN: Yeah, sure. Get out of hell.
[06:53] Farid: If only that reason, not relationship. So I couldn’t sleep, thinking about all these things, and I had to go to the school the following day. I was so tired. So I came back after the school, had a nap, woke up, found I’m home alone; nobody’s home. So I thought, “Uh, oh.”
[07:14] JONATHAN: It’s happened.
[07:16] Farid: Yeah. So this was one of the times that God not only grabbed my attention I think He was preparing me for how media ministry could be a tool in evangelism and in Christian life.
[07:34] JONATHAN: So the impact of that performance left a mark on you that you wanted to continue to build upon that.
[07:44] Farid: Yes. After that, I was becoming like a dedicated Christian. Okay, I need to study the word. I need to practice all these things. And as a result for that, I was invited by the Christian religion teacher, in the middle school, to talk. We have those Christian classes. They separate Muslims and Christians, each group in one class, and there is a curriculum, but he would finish the curriculum and then ask me, “Okay, Farid, tell us what you think about this.”
Mainly, I’m the only evangelical. He wanted to know what those evangelicals say, so I would share. And then mostly it went all right, apart from one of my colleagues who was very rigid, very extreme, and he would say all those things, “Oh, you evangelicals say this.” “Oh, you say that.” And long story, but it ended up that we became best friends and he gave his life to the Lord. We used to study every night together and so on. And after he became Christian, he has these leadership qualities and he became also excited. And together we started this evangelistic drama team. This drama team grew very fast because it was very effective. We wrote our own plays, we performed in churches, in youth meetings. Even we started our like independent Christian theater festivals. Like we would do three plays in three nights, and it was very well received. Like most of the nights we find that we have double the number of audience, so we need to perform twice and so on. And we even came here to Atlanta in 1996, during the Olympics, to help in evangelistic campaigns for the Arabic speakers.
[09:59] JONATHAN: Wow. I don’t know what to call it. The drama bug had been captured and you’re seeing this as a tool for evangelism, for outreach even internationally., I think you start to recognize that this is only a small stage. Explain to us how the doors opened up to having a bigger reach and a bigger audience.
[10:30] Farid: Yeah, the drama bug is only like a tool in evangelism. And in the Christian media I’ve been for many years, you would find like two extremes. One extreme you would find some very interesting, exciting but shallow content. On the other side you can find very good, deep teaching, very sophisticated, spiritual, biblical but sometimes boring.
[10:57] JONATHAN: This is through television medium.
[10:59] Farid: Yeah. And the theater and radio. So, I mean what was special about this team that God showed us how He could use the good content, because the gospel is the core. And when we started presenting the gospel in the drama tool that would communicate to people in our age, we found that it needs to be like this formula. We cannot let one play to be just popular because it’s funny. And we found that God is growing the work.
So it started with theater, then we started to do some radio with TransWorld Radio, like doing drama on radio and so on. And we went to television. You know in Egypt in those years, early, until early 90s, there’s no Christian content available for public audience, even Christians. We are 10 to 15 percent. But the national television would allow a Christian Mass only on Christmas, so it’s like one hour per year.
So we said, okay, how can we break into television? And it was hard. There was no way. So we tried to read books, practice, and we started like drama schools. We don’t know anything, but we start inviting people to teach us. And I wanted to study more about media like in a professional way, so I saved money, worked for eight years, then came here to the States, studied digital filmmaking school, did some internship. Then went back to Egypt, completed more studies, did the diploma in film production and directing in the American university.
[13:00] JONATHAN: So your heart was always to go back to Egypt. Yeah.
[13:03] Farid: Yes. I mean, it was very good over here. I studied in Hawaii, then internship in San Diego. The goal is to do ministry, so I went back to Egypt and completed this study, which allowed me to be part of the cinema syndicate and also to have my own production house. So it all started from just the first play that introduced me to the Lord, and then it continued to do more. Now I have to do more work for the mainstream media and the Christian.
And this production house was very successful. God gave me favor in my vendors and producers and it went fast because mainly I learned here in America a different style than the Egyptian national television. Minimum crew doing quality work in a different way. Of course, technology and so on. And I got the hands-on experience. So I had still the main goal was to do ministry using media, but I was able to fund the Christian work from the secular work I used to do—mainly corporate videos, advertisements and documentaries and so on. So they complemented each other. And it grew like for 2003 to 2009 like for six years.
[14:44] JONATHAN: Wow. Wow. Sort of paint a picture for us. What does it look like, up to that point, before there’s television broadcasts, evangelistic broadcasts being allowed in the country? What did sort of radio and drama team, what does that kind of penetration into the population look like?
[15:07] Farid: I mean, you could easily say there is none official media for Christians. They would allow some official magazine or newspaper from the Coptic Church and some from the evangelical, but mainly they would be accepted only in a church setting. So there is no mass media, no radio. So we had Christian radio, TransWorld Radio, that was being broadcast from—
[15:40] JONATHAN: South of France, yeah. Monaco.
[15:41] Farid: So you could only receive it at like 10:30 PM to 11:30 PM, and you have to be in an area where there’s not a lot of buildings and so on. It was a great blessing. Many people knew the Lord from it. But it didn’t serve the mass, those true seekers—Muslims, Christians, nominal Christians. So that was the case until ’96 when Christian satellite was there as a technology. The government didn’t allow it, but it was there.
[16:16] JONATHAN: So that’s kind of your introduction into the television world in terms of Christianity.
[16:24] Farid: Yes. I mean, it’s now available. Can we break into that? After the study and this production house, I was able to share in lots of production. And before that, God had prepared me with working in dubbing Christian media, likeJesus Film,VeggieTales,Super Book, as an actor. And it was a great experience.
[16:55] JONATHAN: And where were those being broadcast?
[16:58] Farid: In one of the production houses that actually it’s like a Christian place but also recognized as a production house. So I got some training in that, and when the satellite started, I was one of the first ones that were ready to do a part.
[17:19] JONATHAN: So let’s kind of move the timeline forward as Christian media is now being produced. And at what point does the government allow satellite broadcasting?
[17:35] Farid: You know they didn’t allow it because satellite is broadcasted from abroad. So in order to stop it, they had to stop all the bouquet of channels, so they couldn’t do that. So it first started on one of the satellites that was Europe-based, but if you have a big satellite dish and receiver, you could receive it at home.
And it’s different than here in America. I mean, satellite in the Middle East is free to own. So you just spend maybe $15 or so to have a device recorder and you receive about two thousand channels. So among them are one Christian channel, so if the government wants to stop, they have to stop everything, so they couldn’t.
[18:31] JONATHAN: Right. There’d be too much backlash. [18:48] So let’s fast-forward. It’s 2009. You’re very busy. Tell us a little bit about what’s going on in that year.
[18:57] Farid: Yeah. It was a very important year. At that time, I was busy doing production with different now-Christian satellites. They are more than one now and I already started as a part time in one of the satellite ministries out there and at the same time I was having my production house. And I read a book in one of my visits to Europe and America about Muslim testimonies. You never read those in Egypt, so I thought maybe I should film some. I was naïve. I didn’t know everything is like under surveillance. So I had this studio in my production house. I was doing lots of projects, but this one I said, okay, I need to be careful just in case, so I’ll do it in a secret environment.
But it wasn’t. So I filmed those testimonies and the following day I started to get visits from the national security. And the way it was done, it wasn’t like—they didn’t come and say, “We are the national security. WE want to investigate those Christian projects.” No. First they would send like one department of some kind of police, checking the social security or checking the telephone or electricity.
[20:40] JONATHAN: They were spying on you.
[20:42] Farid: They were—I mean, in Egypt, I mean, not all the businesses would have all the papers right. So the plan was to find something wrong to make a case against this office without saying it’s religious, just to keep the face for the media in the West. So they didn’t find anything wrong. It took like five weeks, several visits. So the last one they said, “Okay, there is a censorship case against you.” Usually, those are copyrights or not using original software, which is very common in Egypt. But my software was original. I had no violations. But the case was still there.
And then the national security officer called me in his office. I mean, before all that happened, God prepared me. I had this shooting day with kids at 9:00 AM.
[21:45] JONATHAN: Filming, yeah.
[21:46] Farid: Yeah, it was prepared and everything is in place and I had a dream or vision that I woke up early, like 5:00 AM, very alert with this impression that an officer or someone from the security will come and ask about me. And I knew this was from the Lord because it came with a sense of peace. It should be scary because I know what could happen.
[22:17] JONATHAN: Yeah, right. And you’ve got a wife and kids and—
[22:20] Farid: Yeah. It’s … So I started praying, like reading the Bible and committing the day to the Lord, and I met my friend and production manager at 7:00 AM. I said I had this dream, so I smiled and he said, “What do you want to do? Do you want to cancel shooting today?” I said, “No, no. But if the officer came, please call me outside not to scare the kids.”
And we started at 9:00 AM filming. Everything went all right until 3:00 PM I got the visit. They mainly told me “There is a warrant against you. Come to the national security office at 11:00 PM” at night. That’s like usual part of the environment you’re put in. And at that meeting, the officer confronted me. “Why are you filming those infidels?” according to the apostate law, they were Muslims, now they are Christians, they are supposed to be under this apostasy law. Apostasy law in Islam if someone left Islam he’s supposed to be executed. It’s not applied in Egypt, but the concept is there, so it’s not allowed by the families or by the regime or—
[23:45] JONATHAN: Right. It’s an intimidation factor, yeah.
[23:47] Farid: Yeah, for the what they call the public peace and so on. And he said, “Why did you do that?”
I said, “I’m a professional director and filming what they have to say.”
And he said, “Yeah, but tell me how much would you take, I see you produce a lot of Christian content.”
I said, “Yes.”
He said, “Okay, this Christian music video,” it’s all like a lot of content from my production house. “How much do you take like to produce one?”
I said, “Yeah, like one thousand pounds.”
“Okay, what if you do like a music video, secular, mainstream one?” He said, “How much would you take?”
I said, “I will be like about fifteen.”
“Fifteen thousand to one thousand. So why would you choose to do the Christian work?”
I said, “I’d like you to watch one of those music videos, secular ones. Would you be happy to show them to your family, to your kids? I want my family to be proud about what I present.”
And he said, “Okay, why did you film those testimonies or stories. For them it’s like disaster.”
I said, “They … I mean, according to the constitution, we have freedom of speech, right?”
“Oh yeah, okay.” And he said, “Okay, do you have license for the production?”
I said, “Yes.”
And he started asking questions, and we ended up having a case of censorship. And I asked the lawyer at that time, “Okay, why is it censorship. I had nothing wrong.”
He said, “Yeah, because it’s national security, it’s classified. They cannot declare it.” And this lawyer was a Muslim. He said, “We’re going to win this.”
So God placed that lawyer after like four different lawyers, and that lawyer took maybe five months to one year, I think, until the case was resolved. And it was what was so-called Arab Spring, the revolution.
[26:00] JONATHAN: Yeah, the people will remember watching that footage back at 2011 and the revolution in the streets and the overthrow of Mubarak and then somewhat of an election that took place afterwards, yeah.
[26:18] Farid: Yes. And during that time, the case was released. And actually they had confiscated two of my editing machines. One of them had my first Christian evangelistic feature film footage and the other one had the backup, so it was unfortunate. I have many other agents witness, but then God really gave us favor in getting those back after all the police stations were burned and somehow God kept those editing suites and the footage, and this film was released and it was even screened here in America.
It’s an evangelistic movie about an immigrant who thinks that he’s persecuted because he’s Christian. He doesn’t know that his problem is he doesn’t have this relationship with God. So he comes here to America and finds that there is another set of challenges, and then he gets to know the Lord and then his life starts to take a positive turn and that film was here in cinemas in I think 2012 and it was shown in five states who have heavy Arabic-speakers population.
[27:46] JONATHAN: Well, this wasn’t your only run-in with the Egyptian authorities. You continue to produce content and then you find yourself in a similar situation—a worse situation.
[28:02] Farid: Yes. Now I have a file.
[28:06] JONATHAN: That’s right.
[28:22] Farid: Yeah, during those years, God made a great awakening in Egypt after the revolution. It was both religious, ritual, biblical and also political for young people especially. And there was not a lot of control at that time, so a lot of ministries were able to go out and do more. One of them was this Christian satellite that I was part of, and God gave us a chance to do things we never were able to do before, like this prayer night, twelve-hours prayer gathering, around 35 thousand. That’s like first time in Egypt. And they were gathered at the Cave Church, praying from night to morning, because police were not there. Usually, police does not all
