Interview: Jacob Osborn’s Mission Through Media

Greetings and welcome to the Faith Chapel Podcast. My name is Jason and I am

the pastor of Faith Chapel.

In the podcast today, we will be hearing from Jacob Osborne,

a local Huntington North High School and Huntington University graduate who

has been called into the mission field to serve with the organization TWR.

Jacob begins this interview by telling us his background that got him interested

in radio broadcasting and production.

Thanks for joining us today.

I'm a broadcast graduate of Huntington University, part of their digital media arts department.

I fell in love with radio actually in middle school. We used to have these tape recorders.

We used tape recorders and recorded a little show or whatever in our tech ed classes.

And that was one of our one of the units with mr moore salemone actually,

and so i recorded a couple of those and thought they were really fun and then

in high school because huntington north is blessed enough to have their actual

their own radio station which is sick it's so nice,

I was able to expound upon that. I was able to go from tape recorder to actual

radio station, and it was a great time.

And so I decided to go to college, to Huntington University,

to get a broadcasting degree so that I could, again, expound upon that,

and be able to learn about Jesus and learn about Christianity myself.

I've been a Christian my entire life. My family has raised me Christian,

But it was really nice to be able to, at Huntington, be able to learn about

Jesus, myself, others, and even other religions.

Because we had classes like world religions and stuff like that and be able to expound upon that.

But what happened in 2020 was I had a 12 credit hour, which was my entire semester

of just going to a radio station and being their promotions,

like a promotions intern.

And so I, at that time, was their promotions intern. And then our promotions

director quit about two weeks into my internship. I had nothing to do with it.

It wasn't my fault. But what happened was about two weeks, two or three weeks after that, COVID hit.

And I don't know if you know anything about promoting at radio stations, but you need people.

And if we can't have more than 20 people in a room,

That's not very much of an event. So I had to go home.

A lot of the employees got to stay at the station, but I had to work from home.

And I basically did nothing.

For a 12-credit hour class, I did nothing. Which, I mean, that's all right.

It's not like they could have done anything about it because it's unprecedented

times, as we've heard time and time again.

After that, I didn't feel like...

I was prepared to go into a workforce or like a workplace that didn't need me.

People still listened at that time, but they don't like there was nothing to promote.

And that's that's how radio stations get a lot of their funding is through that.

And so I had also thought about creating a like a media company for people with

disabilities. For those that don't know, I have cerebral palsy.

I use a wheelchair to get around and I can walk a little bit.

It's called being an ambulatory wheelchair user. But I, at that time,

didn't feel like going into the workforce. So I wanted to create a media company

for disabilities, for people with disabilities.

I didn't have any, no pun intended, role models growing up. There was nobody

in a wheelchair with a disability or anything like that that I looked up to.

And I really wanted that for myself and for others.

And so I wanted to create a media company.

God had different plans. He still told me to do it, but he had different plans.

So I went to went back to Huntington for a marketing degree.

And in that first year, I failed an accounting class, so I had to take a step

back and go for an entrepreneurial small business degree with a minor in marketing

because I had taken enough marketing classes,

finished it up, finished getting that next degree in two years.

I had also felt like I didn't want to leave Huntington because at that time,

or like still, a lot of my life was there.

Like I didn't really have that many friends coming out of high school and going

into college and coming out of college. I had a lot of friends and I loved it.

I loved college, it was great. But in that last year of getting the entrepreneurial

small business degree, man, that's a mouthful.

Ukraine was invaded by Russia. I know that's a severe tone shift.

So they attacked that night in February. I can't remember the day,

but they attacked at night, our night, like Eastern Time night.

And so that next day, I was still kind of worried about it. I was like,

what's going to happen? We don't know if this is World War III.

Plot twist. It didn't happen. Nothing's really come of it. But during that day, we had a missions fair.

And TWR, Transworld Radio, a global media missions organization,

which I'll spoil it a little bit, they're the best.

They had come to promote TWR and get interns and things like that.

And I had a friend who was going to intern there that summer.

And so I sat down and talked with Mark and Debbie Blosser from TWR.

And Mark and I had a conversation about like end time prophecies and all this sort of stuff.

And then I wanted to switch the conversation over to TWR and like how I could

fit in there because I have two loves, Jesus and radio and media.

And so fusing those two things was a no brainer.

And so I got to talk to him and he was like oh yeah I can get you connected with our,

short-term missionary HR person and she can help you figure things out and figure

out how we're gonna raise you're gonna raise your support and stuff I was like

okay cool and so that was 2022.

I think 2022 into 2023 raised support for that became what they call an embarker

which is a short-term missionary went into North Carolina for six months,

worked with their global content team,

What I did for them was, in that first six months, I was just their workhorse,

basically. Anything that somebody couldn't put on their plate came to me.

It was mostly a radio program for a station in Singapore that we have.

It was called Connected.

I did the Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday program. Wednesday was a longer program, but.

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday was a 15-minute program with three songs,

a promo for TWR 360, which is our online website that you can go to, and it's also an app.

I got to put all that together, and then they played it that next week or whenever

it was scheduled to play.

That first six months I didn't feel like my creative juices weren't flowing,

because you're just putting together a puzzle and it's puzzles aren't that creative

your juices don't flow during a puzzle my boss noticed that and so,

at six months I had to come back here to Huntington because my embark was over and so,

at that six month mark they're like you can go for another six months and then

come back and then we can see if you enjoy the this next six months and if you do we can go long term,

that next six months i still worked on connected but they also had me working

on a program called mission 66 which is as the name implies,

a like road course basically through the 66 books of the bible it's two people john paul from the uk.

And esther she's from south africa very very cool people and so they host that

program and i was tasked to be the social media coordinator slash manager for that,

so i created like a ton of social media posts for them so that they could use them while I was gone.

And so that was really fun. My boss a couple months ago told me that I'll be

working on podcasts and things.

I also forgot to mention that I'm going long term.

I'm going to be a career missionary with TWR.

A little bit about TWR is that they cover 85% of the world in radio waves with

towers all over the world.

Some towers, which is very cool, some towers aren't allowed to be known like

where they're at because they're in very Christian adverse areas.

And so we still broadcast into those areas, but nobody can know where those towers are.

We actually had an intern the last summer that I was there go to a place that

nobody was allowed to know where he was at.

Only his family. His family and some higher ups at TWR were allowed to know, but nobody else was.

Because we can't let that slip out because it would put them in danger.

So that was very cool.

One of the cool things that we do that's actually something that we have done.

Since TWR was started was that we put towers in Christian-favorable places.

And broadcast into those places that don't like Jesus. Because everybody needs Jesus.

I mean, it's Matthew 28, 19, spread the gospel to the ends of the earth,

making disciples and baptizing.

That's the Jacob version. That's not like the actual word for word.

The way that TWR started was we broadcasted from Morocco because our founder,

Paul Freed, he wanted to reach Spain for Jesus.

But Spain at that time in the 40s, I think, they were very Christian adverse.

So he built a tower in Morocco, not knowing anything about radio.

Got all the equipment, actually asked somebody to come on his team to actually

teach him how to broadcast and things like that.

And so that's how they started. They started in Morocco, broadcasting into Spain.

Now we broadcast over 85% of the world.

We also reach, I think the number is like 4 billion people with that 85% or 85%.

It's a very cool thing to have be a thing. Like, it's not something that I would

have even thought of that was an option.

You are in the process of raising the funds to be able to go full-time.

Yes. That's monthly funding. That pays for literally everything.

So that me being a missionary, I don't have to worry about that.

I don't have to worry about insurances and where my money's coming from or anything

like that. It's just raising support.

Is the journey of getting those monthly sponsorships something that you found

super challenging or has that come really easy to you?

It's very challenging. I mean, I've been raising support for two years.

It's a mix of being in my own way and not knowing a lot of people.

And being in my own ways, meaning like there's a part of you that though people

are telling you, hey, you should reach out to everybody that you know or have ever known.

It's like, I haven't talked to Phil from fourth grade in like 20 years.

Why do I, why should I contact him? But at the same time, God can use anybody.

I mean, if you look at me, I'm a 28 year old dude in a wheelchair.

How's God going to use me?

One of my favorite songs, I think it's called Nobody, but it's Casting Crowns

and Matthew West, I think.

They're just going through like the history of the Bible and how God uses the nobodies.

I mean, the one singer mentions Moses had stage fright.

David brought a rock to a sword fight and Jesus picked 12 outsiders to change the world.

I mean, if you look at the disciples, they're all outcasts. They're not some

high and mighty, big, burly Goliath men. They're just writers.

They're either writers or fishermen or tax collectors or doctors.

And that's the cool thing. That's the coolest thing that I've found.

What are some of the jobs you're going to perform? Is it all producing behind the scenes?

Will there be any on the air stuff for you?

I'm hoping there's on air stuff. That would be very cool.

I know that my boss, Scott, he said that I'll be helping with podcasts and stuff.

And so I think that means I'll be on air or like not on air,

but hosting or recording the podcasts. So that that'll be very, very cool.

And being able to be on air is a lot of fun. I don't know if you've ever done

it, but I mean, we're doing it right now, kind of.

So it's, it's, it's a lot of fun.

So what are you looking forward to about joining with TWR?

Being able to fuse my loves for radio and media with Jesus, but also being able

to see the friends and the family that I made out there.

It's been two years and I miss a lot of them. My best friend is actually living

out there and we're supposed to be rooming together.

And it would be really, really cool to see them again and be able to not,

and this sounds bad, but being able to start my life. I mean, I'm 28 years old.

And at this point in my career, I have no career.

And that sounds really bad but yeah that's i

i really want to get out there and be able to help twr as well being i'm the

youngest on our team at 28 which is surprising i'm the youngest person on our team being able to,

bring in fresh blood and fresh ideas and things like that into the Christian

media space is very, very cool.

Being able to do that. We have a new CEO.

Our last one had to step down because he had a stroke.

So we have a new CEO and it would be very cool to be able to,

you know, shape TWR into the future because TWR, it was Transworld Radio.

And now that we're not just radio, we actually shortened our name to TWR.

We're a whole lot of stuff. We're an animation studio.

We translate different pastors' English sermons into different languages.

We do a ton of stuff. That's just two of them. We also have TWR 360,

which is, I think, the largest collection of Christian media on the planet.

It is in 200 different languages. It's very, very cool if you wanted to check

it out. It's twr360.org.

But you go to the little like earth, I think it's either in the top right,

top left, I don't remember.

But you click on that and you can scroll through the 200 different languages.

And as soon as you click on one that's not English, because it comes up in English,

it'll come up and it'll have translated the entire page into that language.

And it will give you sermons and resources and things in that language instead of English.

The one thing that TWR does very well is to meet people in their heart language.

So like, say I'm living in Poland.

And my main language is like Ukrainian, and my second language is Polish,

but my language that I have to use at work or outside the house is English.

How do you think you should reach them for Jesus?

Do you reach them in their work language or do you reach them in their home

language, whether that's Ukrainian or Polish?

You reach them with their home language. You reach them with Polish or Ukrainian,

or whatever home language it is.

Because, and I'm thinking about this now, you don't want them to think that

Christianity, this is ironic, is the job.

As you've been discovering more about TWR, what is their impact beyond the reaching

85% of the world? What stories do you hear about how it impacts people for Christ?

There's a lot. There's so many, and I can send them to you.

But there's one story.

There's a guy, his name's Kenji. He was a second-generation believer in what

he calls a new Japanese religion, Christianity.

There's a sutra reading and meditative chanting was part of his family's daily

routine, which isn't Christian.

Their home contained a magnificent statue of an idol, but he was made to read

books related to that religion and was sometimes tested on their contents.

He says, then as I grew up, I realized that such things are completely useless,

he said in an email to TWR Japan.

Instead, Kenji is being drawn to Christianity through radio.

On nights when he can't sleep, he listens to Power of the Gospel,

which is one of our radio shows that we have.

He says, I like the Christian saying, love thine enemy, and I know my household

is in complete opposition to it.

Kenji wrote, if I could, I would like to go to church and speak before Christ

about my behavior from birth until now and ask for forgiveness.

It's crazy to hear stories like that because as I said earlier I'm from a Christian

home like I don't know that kind of opposition and that conflict that goes on,

the reason that that story tugs at me is because I enjoy the Japanese culture

I watch anime and read manga and things like that and it's crazy to me that

the Japanese people are the second.

Largest unreached people group it was insane to learn that and i was like how because if you like,

if you watch different watch or read any different kind of japanese media like

anime or manga any kind of media like that you see a lot of christian parallels i mean you,

there's always in different mangas and anime there's always a hero and he's

always jesus like he's always perfect and it's very cool and weird,

to see that parallel where it's like you guys almost have it you guys almost can see jesus,

but yeah it's it's very interesting that they're the second least reached so

that's one thing i want to be able to do with twr is reach reach japan it'd

be very cool to go visit twr japan because we have an office there

we have an we have offices all over the world the office that I'll be primarily

working in is our North Carolina World Headquarters office.

It's in Cary, North Carolina, southwest of Raleigh.

What is a dream scenario for you for working with TWR? You've kind of mentioned

you'd like to travel to TWR Japan, but do you have a dream scenario for you there?

My dream is to work with TWR, like work at TWR. Since we're a very small office.

We know each other. We have daily prayer meetings. So we pray for our listeners.

Like we'll have listeners send us prayer requests and things and we'll pray

about it. Or we have prayer requests from our fellow missionaries that might

be sick or something like that. And so we'll pray about that.

It's a very personal thing, though we are a giant organization that raises a

lot of money to be able to do what we do.

It feels very close-knit it's it's really really weird it's so cool to be able

to do that we have staff meetings every thursday that we have somebody present

something that they've done or,

something like a listener story or something like that it's very very cool,

when you say that 85 of the world is covered through radio waves.

There's obviously for your sorry go ahead it's short way it's i should probably

clarify it's shortwave and am stations that cover 85.

We do do satellite and digital and fm but.

The 85% is shortwave and data. Okay. I'm thinking of what you were saying.

Like, there's obviously ways for the digital, for the stuff online,

to breach the entire world.

Do you know if the countries that you don't have those shortwave radio signals

going into, do you know if there's any connection through the online world?

TWR does so much, man. Another thing that we do is through those animations

and things, it's called TWR Motion.

They've started doing animations to tell the story of Jesus and stories in the

Bible through a different religion's lens.

So we have a biblical story through the lens of a Buddhist.

So we give that out. We give that out to missionaries on the ground.

We give that out to people, the missionaries that need it.

Like we partner with different missions organizations and we give them our programs

and things to use for their discipleship and things like that. So it's very cool.

We have contingencies for ways to get unreached people groups reached.

So with your digital media arts background, are you working on any of the animations

or is it strictly audio that you work with?

No, I work with audio and graphic design. I'm not really an animator.

I have made a lot of different social media posts I was talking about earlier.

I also did social media posts for our South African radio show called Worship Connection.

They had been making posts for a song of the world.

And so one of my favorite ones that I created was a song by Austin French called God is Good.

The way that we were supposed to make it was that we took the little pre-made

intro this is worship connection song of the week and that comes in with a whoosh,

and then he played the song well i had noticed there was like story behind the

song so like austin french telling the story of the song and so i took the instrumental.

I put part of the song and then the instrumental under him telling the story of the song.

And then he, at the end, mentions that the song is supposed to be an anthem

through peaceful rivers and raging seas or something like that.

It's a reminder that God is good. And instead of having him say it,

I took the very end of the song, which he says God is good at the end, cut that into it.

It was very, very cool to be able to do that, and it's one of my favorite things

I've ever created, ever.

So I'll be doing a lot of the graphic design stuff. I'm a very creative person, I guess.

One of the stickers that I have, it says, Be a Role Model, and it's R-O-L-L.

And behind the words, it's got a new handicap logo.

Instead of the guy sitting up straight, he's like hunched over,

showing that he's actually the one moving.

It's a very cool sticker. I created that. It's very cool.

I actually created a couple more stickers that I want to get printed. I use Canva a lot.

Being able to do that's really, really fun.

In your experience at Huntington University or even beyond there,

where has the biggest draw to this career been for you?

I mean, it's through the various like job shadowing and internships that I've been able to have.

I job shadowed with Randy Alomar, US 93.3 in high school. And that was really, really cool.

He wasn't the program director of the stations at that time,

but he is now. But he was, I think he was just a day guy at that point.

And it was very cool to just spend those couple hours with him and talk to him

and watch him do his live radio show.

But yeah, it's just, it's the day-to-day things that I was able to do at the

job shadowing thing, the internship, because I interned with Adam's radio group where Randy is at.

And so it was a very cool thing to be able to do.

I don't remember what soda came out at that time, but they had they were doing

a recording for social media and had two of the radio hosts and the two interns

that were there, me and another girl.

And we had to try the soda on on camera, tell our experience or like how how

it was or whatever. And so it was very, very cool.

Can you talk about how you have seen God use you as you are?

So I work part-time as I am raising support. I also work part-time up at Turnstone

up in Fort Wayne. It's an adaptive sports facility.

They call me a facility assistant. It's basically just saying that I'm a front desk worker.

I get to see people that look like me and act like me and being able to smile

at them and give them a good day, like make sure that they're having a good

day or make sure that they're going to have a good workout.

I've been able to, I mean, with me being in a wheelchair, I'm very unassuming.

Like, I can go up to people and just start talking to people.

And that's one of the superpowers that I may not notice all the time,

but I have. Like, it's very cool to be able to go, hey, how's it going?

I worked at Walmart as a cashier for a year or two.

And I was able to do that too there. It was like very unassuming.

I was able to talk to whoever.

It's very, very cool. Can you talk about your actual time of saying,

Jesus, I'm all in for you?

I feel like I've been all in my entire life. He's the most historically dictated person alive.

He's everywhere in historical texts.

And you can't just say no to that. You can't turn a blind eye to the facts.

And the fact is, Jesus existed, he died, he rose again, and he was God.

And most of the Bible is historical nonfiction.

It's a history book. It's a whole lot of things. And it's just very cool to

be able to know that in my heart and feel that.

There was never a specific point in my life that I said, hey,

I want you to have all of me.

It's always been that way There have been like missteps And you know everybody

has those Because we're only human But just being able to,

see that and show that Jesus loves you is very, very cool.

One way that I like to share the gospel is through not telling people, just showing people.

There's a company called Jesus Loves You. It's a Jesus Loves You company.

They make shirts and bracelets and stuff.

I have a bracelet that says Jesus Loves You on it. I have shirts that say the same thing.

And there's a lot of people that see that like I went to Nashville for my brother's

bachelor party and we were hanging out and,

going around and one of the guys afterwards that was at the bachelor party he

was like yeah a lot of people I noticed were looking at your shirt like they,

they looked at it and noticed it like you could see it on their face that it

either triggered some kind of memory or triggered that's That's who I should be following instead of,

doing what they were doing, trying to fill,

a Jesus-shaped hole with something that wasn't Jesus.

So that's very, very cool. Do you have a recent experience of God that really stands out for you?

Yeah, I have quite a few. I mean, I was supposed to be aborted.

I was going to be aborted if my parents hadn't said, no, we're Christians.

We're sticking to this. we're going to keep them.

I was born a month premature. I was told that I wasn't going to live past two

and I wasn't going to be able to walk or talk. Well, I can walk a little bit

and I talk a lot. The doctors were wrong.

And I've seen time and time again that God protects. We've had close calls and

like cars and things like that.

While I was down in North Carolina, I actually flipped my car.

It was a problem, but all I had was a scuff on my right arm and that was it.

Like I wasn't damaged in any way.

And that's a story for another time. It really, it totaled the car,

but it really wasn't that big of an issue on my body.

Or my life. It was a godlike, I'll call it. It was a, hey, I'm not done with

you yet. If you're still here, I'm not done.

Stay there. Stay safe. Why do I have to keep saving you? Is.

There anything else that you would like people to know about you?

I'm just a normal guy which is really weird I'm not some kind of know-it-all.

Perfect Christian or anything like that but God chose me and it's really really

interesting to see how that how that plays out and how that will play out you

always see like missionaries and they're teaching and stuff and I'm not.

I'm not saying I'm not much of a teacher, but they seem to know an awful lot,

and they seem to walk the narrow path better than most people.

It's like, I try to do that, but I'm just a normal person. I'm not some mega-missionary

kind of guy. I'm just a normal guy.

One thing that I find very cool about TWR is that they use anybody.

You don't have to be somebody in radio.

They need people in finance. They need people in the legal stuff because we

have to know what we can broadcast in different countries and what we can't.

We have a great legal team. We have a Spanish ministry that works alongside

our South American office.

It's very cool to see the different people that God has brought into TWR because

we're not some kind of light night organization.

We're not like bringing Americans and putting them over into Poland.

We're actually bringing Polish people into our offices. We're bringing in Japanese

people into our offices.

We're bringing in those people that know the culture, know how the culture thinks and acts and is,

so that we can broadcast and tell them who Jesus is through their lit.

Can you tell people how they can support you or how they can find out more information about you?

Yeah you can go to twr.org slash jacob dash osborne osborne is spelled o-s-b-o-r-n,

you can also find me on instagram wheels on a mission no spaces no underscores

just all one word wheels on a mission,

but yeah it's it'd be very very cool to get to know you guys and get to learn,

alongside you as to what god wants us to be doing,

Thank you again for joining us for this interview with missionary Jacob Osborne.

Jacob is a missionary Faith Chapel has supported for about a year.

If you would like more information about Faith Chapel and its ministries,

please visit the website gofaithchapel.org.

Next week, we will be starting a new series on the different names and titles

the Bible uses to describe God.

Each name or title shows us something about who God is.

Join us as we start this eight-episode series. Have a great week.