I Want This City

Have you ever met someone who has never even heard the name of Jesus? If you’re looking in New York City, that person might be hard to find, but hit the streets of Bangkok, and you’ll find yourself surrounded.

Missionary Doug Venn spent five years looking for ways to share Jesus in Thailand’s capital, arguably one of the planet’s most unreached cities. The opportunities were breathtaking. The limitations were heartbreaking.

One of his most trying moments came when leaders of a slum area offered land and invited Adventists to establish a church. Doug was excited until he discovered that the $30,000 it would take to build it would require two-thirds of the Thailand Mission’s annual budget. There would be no church. There simply wasn’t money.

He was challenged again while looking for Bible studies to share with unreached friends. He discovered that the only lessons available to reach the millions in this unreached city were photocopies of photocopies, so many generations out that the blotchy print was hard to read. “The literature rack at our local church in the United States was better stocked than the one we have here at the Thailand Mission to serve an entire nation” Doug said. “And there we were just trying to serve one or two cities of 50,000 instead of a nation of 65 million.”

Pastor Doug’s experiences are documented in the television series I Want This City. With cameras running, he traveled the city by water taxi, motorcycle taxi, tuk tuk, and sky train, revealing just how vast the need is in this country, which is less than one percent Christian.

Look for I Want This City on Hope Channel in October.