Two Media Teams Unite to Preach the Gospel in the Pacific Islands
Technicians from Hope Channel Solomon Islands joined the local church team for an evangelistic campaign in Kiribati.
Jeanne DamasioKiribatiSep 13, 2026, 3:15 PM
During Kiribati for Christ, media teams livestreamed the daily Bible preaching on Facebook and YouTube, from sites across Tarawa, the country's capital atoll. Meetings at Bairiki Square, the main site, also aired on FM radio while each afternoon the teams would move their equipment to other local meeting sites and rebuild the broadcast.
The media department running the coverage had three staff members, one seriously ill through the campaign and another on maternity leave. Five volunteers joined the work, along with two technicians from Hope Channel Solomon Islands who came after the local team asked for assistance.
The teams worked across a country that is almost all sea. Kiribati has only 313 square miles of land, spread across more than 1.1 million square miles of ocean, according to the Kiribati National Tourism Office. Tarawa is a coral atoll with no high ground, so people live along the rim.
Bible meetings ran at three sites across Tarawa, and media teams broadcast them with only three cameras, a video switcher, a streaming encoder, lights, audio equipment, and Starlink internet equipment. Tarataake Angiraoi, director of media and communication for the Kiribati Seventh-day Adventist Mission, coordinated the operation.
“Kiribati is a small country by land and an enormous one by water,” said Sam Neves, vice president for Advancement, Communication, and Marketing at Hope Channel International. “Our teams there have less equipment than the work requires, and they have not treated a single island as ‘too far.’ Every person on those islands is someone Christ died for.”
Kiribati teams broadcast from three sites at once
One team worked at Bairiki Square, in South Tarawa. A second streamed from the Kiribati Mission headquarters in Korobu. The third was mobile, moving among campaign sites around Tarawa. The meetings from Bairiki were broadcast on Hope Radio FM 89, a station that reaches more than half of the population of Tarawa, according to Angiraoi. He said the mobile team’s vehicle was too small to carry all the equipment the daily setups required. The teams also needed additional cameras and lighting to cover each major site properly.
“Every afternoon, all three teams travelled to their assigned locations and carried out the necessary setup,” Angiraoi explained. During the day, the Solomon Islands technicians recorded music and filmed additional material for the campaign’s online audience. They had traveled from the Solomon Islands, about 1,180 miles from Kiribati. Their arrival added two experienced hands to the operation.
Asked which day had been the hardest, Angiraoi did not choose one. “I would say that the entire campaign was challenging because we were working with limited personnel, equipment, and transportation while trying to maintain quality media coverage every day,” he recalled. The support from the volunteers and the Hope Channel Solomon Islands team, he said, made the difference.
Audience follow-up continues after Kiribati for Christ
Kiribati for Christ had more than 300 followers on Facebook when the meetings began. By August 29, Adventist Record reported nearly 1,600. By September 8, the page had reached 2,100. “The media work was a significant part of helping the message reach people beyond the physical campaign sites,” Angiraoi said.
The meetings were held in the evenings, and broadcasts ended at night. The following day, the team posted campaign updates, answered questions and comments, and directed interested people to partner churches for follow-up.
The page has announced a second phase, aimed at additional sites on South Tarawa and Betio, and then the outer islands. “We believe that we will cover every part of Kiribati because this is what Kiribati for Christ is,” Angiraoi concluded.
Photos courtesy of Hope Channel Solomon Islands (1, 3) and Hope Media Kiribati (2).
