Celebrating a WORLD Watch milestone

WE RECENTLY CELEBRATED Episode 1,000 of WORLD Watch, our daily video news program for students. And when I say “celebrated,” I mean we acknowledged the milestone, then started work on Episode 1,001. Daily programs are like that.

It would be wrong, though, to leave it there. Our production team may not have had time for a party, but our sense of gratitude for God’s goodness, your support, and the WORLD Watch crew’s hard work demand a pause for greater recognition.

The crew’s hard work: What started out four years ago as a team of four has expanded to an even dozen. Still, 12 people to research, report, write, edit (the writing), record, animate, shoot, edit (the video this time), and distribute a daily news program—that’s no small achievement. They do it as an act of worship to the Lord, for the love of their audience, which is made up mostly of families with teens.

Your support: I told you early on that you would need to help us get this program off the ground, and you did. In those early days—in the first three years, really—we didn’t have enough subscribers to cover the program’s costs. You gave us what we needed. You did it as an act of worship to the Lord, for the love of our audience.

We now have enough subscribers to keep the program going on its own, but you kept giving this year as WORLD Watch “spun off” a separate program designed for public schools, The World from A to Z. That program is now in more than 20,000 public school classrooms every day, and it still needs your support (more about that another time).

God’s goodness: I don’t have room here to tell all the stories of the ways God worked in the launch and continuation of WORLD Watch. For one thing, there are stories behind God’s work to bring every one of those dozen people to the team. There are stories about how God brought us the funding to launch the program. There are stories about how the onset of COVID-19 and the closure of thousands of schools pushed us to launch an early version in the spring of 2020, and how the educational environment in the fall of 2020 made more schools and homeschools receptive to a daily video program.

There are also stories—thousands of them—about the encouragement our team has received from viewers whose families have benefited from the program. Whether you have watched WORLD Watch or not—hint: you should!—would you celebrate Episode 1,000 with a prayer of thanks to God for what He has accomplished?