Overcomer Ministry on 5900 kHz: American preaching around the clock via Bulgaria

What you hear

Tune to 5900 kHz on almost any evening or night and you will hear a man preaching in the voice of the American South, often at length, often angry, with Bible verses, warnings about the end times and the state of the world, and the ministry's name, the Overcomer Ministry, repeated with a postal address in South Carolina. Music is rare; the programme is almost entirely speech. The style is unmistakable once heard, and it has been on the shortwave bands for so long that listeners who have never sought it out still recognise it in a few seconds. The preacher, known on air as Brother Stair, died in 2021, and the broadcasts have continued since then largely from recordings of his sermons, which gives the station a strange timeless quality: the same voice, the same warnings, year after year.

On 5900 kHz the schedule runs from 17:30 to 18:55 UTC, then again from 20:05 UTC through the night until 06:00 UTC. The gap between 19:00 and 20:00 UTC is not an outage: the frequency belongs to other programmes then, including Radio Taiwan International in German at 19:00 UTC. By day the ministry moves to 9400 and 11600 kHz.

Who transmits and why

The Overcomer Ministry is a religious community based at Walterboro in South Carolina that has bought shortwave airtime for decades, on transmitters in the United States and abroad, as the core of its outreach. The European transmissions come from the commercial transmitting station at Kostinbrod near Sofia, Bulgaria, which sells hours to anyone who pays; buying a large block there gives the ministry a European and Middle Eastern audience for the cost of a small FM station. The purpose is evangelism as the ministry understands it. The history of the community and its leader has been controversial, and this guide leaves that to other sources; what matters for the listener is that the signal is one of the most consistent things on the 49 metre band.

When and where to listen

5900 kHz lies in the 49 metre band, and the long night-time block means the station is available across Europe from early evening until dawn. From Bulgaria the signal is very strong in the Balkans, Italy, Austria and Hungary, strong in central and western Europe, and still solid in Scandinavia and Britain through the night. In the Middle East and North Africa it is heard well too. The daytime frequencies, 9400 kHz in the 31 metre band and 11600 kHz in the 25 metre band, cover Europe while the sun is up. From North America the night block on 5900 kHz is sometimes audible on the east coast in the hours before European dawn, in winter.

The catalogue mode is AM. The audio is speech, so a narrow filter in upper or lower sideband loses nothing and helps when a neighbour appears on 5895 or 5905 kHz.

In ShackDeck

The entry sits under Station catalogue → Shortwave broadcast → Overcomer Ministry 5900. ShackDeck picks a public receiver whose range covers 5900 kHz, tunes it and sets AM from the catalogue, so you need no receiver, antenna or account of your own. Any receiver in Europe will do after 20:05 UTC; if you land in the 19:00 hour, what you hear is a different station using the same frequency.