Enhancing Missions Through Media

ENHANCING MISSIONS THROUGH THE USE OF MEDIA

Purpose:

With Christ as the example, we strive to blend message and medium into one. This will be done through the establishment of the Africa Regional Center that will aim to work with Christian leaders across Africa to develop culturally-appropriate leadership training materials for the peoples of Africa.

The disciples were not commissioned to construct church buildings, but they were challenged to carry the cross and follow Christ. Nor did the commission list satellites, colleges, printing presses, camps, video programs, four-wheel drive vehicles or a host of other things. But what marvelous tools these can be when properly used to “disciple the nations” and to “build up the body.“

Christ and the disciples used various methods to accomplish that which God had set before them. The ultimate goal was not to feed or heal people, but to point them to Christ.

The purpose of GNPI – Africa is not to be distracted with solar, satellite or telecommunication technology, nor to have production or regional centers, but it is to proclaim the gospel to the peoples on planet earth.

Our goal is to use th se tools “so that by all possible means we might save some.” [ICor 9:22] and again to “Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage–with great patience and careful instruct ion.” [2 Tim 4:2].

Objectives:

•            We are partners, co-communicators, with you and will work together in designing, developing and delivering the message of Christ.

•            We are here to assist and equip you in your ministry of evangelism and discipling. We dialogue with you to determine the way to do this which will glorify Christ.

•           It’s not that we will assist indiscriminately and produce anything anyone requests. Rather we will adhere to the standard the Holy Spirit has in John 16:14, to glorify Christ.

•            We are facilitators (people who make things in a process go easier) with you in preparing the culturally appropriate materials which you need in your ministry. If your experience is the same as ours in Kitale, many times you need these materials but fail to find the time in your busy schedule to prepare them.

•             We will help you train your national leaders because we know you may feel you don’t have the time to train them to use these new materials.

•           We want to assist the church in Kenya as more teams turn the work over to national leaders. It may be after these transitions that they will have an even greater need for various teaching materials.

•           We want to enhance your ability to communicate the gospel cross-culturally in Africa. “The communicator’s responsibility is to tell the story of Jesus in such a way that it is understood.“ James Engel, Will the Great Commission Become the Great Ad Campaign. CHRISTIANITY TODAY, April 26, 1993 pg. 27

Regions Served:

•            The potential in Kenya

•            filmstrips in vernacular languages

•            courses and other teaching materials on video cassettes

•            training men to write and produce for the church of the 21st century

•            development training materials; “Dual-Purpose Goat Project”

•            distance learning tools via extension courses [Wendell Broom et al]

•           vision builder as the Kenya church becomes a “missionary church”

•            church spots on TV in Nairobi

•            TV broadcasting

•            The potential beyond our borders of Kenya

•           Zaire – new filmstrips

•           Rwanda- refugee camps [Nyamirangwe]

•            Zimbabwe – AIDS patients’ family counseling

•            Ghana – video tapes usage and rental

The potential of media:

•            Percent of retention by audiences via various medium

•            We learn 11% from what we hear. We retain only 20% of that knowledge.

•           We learn 83% from what we see & hear. We retain 50% of that knowledge.

•            433 people reached for a penny in India!

•           “Telecommunication is to education what polio vaccine was to medicine. It will revolutionize distance learning education.“

•            Forms of media we can use

•            Drama – very effective traditional form; communion is a drama reenacted

•           Pictures/ Flip Charts – Oneal’s example of posters, calendars and tracts

•            Audio cassettes – like radio, it enters the “theater of the mind”

•           Filmstrips – combination of pictures and audio cassettes

•           Video – personal, group and community medium. A tool for distance learning

•           Printed – used and accepted world wide, yet half the world is functionally illiterate or non-readers [p. 186)

•            combinations of the various forms of media, e.g., record a drama on video

•      Philosophy of production

•           The audience is priority. Viggo Sogaard, associate professor of communications at Fuller School of World Mission.

•           You select your culturally-effective, field-tested material [Pulse article]

•           The message is first. The medium is the servant or carrier.

•            Today we are able to preserve and increase a lecturer’s outreach by putting it in various fonns of electronic medium

•           We should make the materials as pan-Afric as possible

•      Materials available & slated for production

•            Filmstrips

•            Repentance series [give brief outline of the six filmstrips]

•            The Christian Family [marriage, parenting et al]

•            Videos

•            Dramas, for urban youth and otherwise

Other areas in which we can assist:

•           Mkristo – provides a national, printed voice, thus the ability to teach the church country-wide on any given topic, such as servant leadership.

•           Computers & Email – ease flow ofinfonnation. Used judiciously, they can increase our productivity. Used otherwise, they can be a black hole of time. We need to use them carefully. We need to remember the principle in Rom 14:17 that the kingdom of God is not “living online”, rather righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Also,

there is the saying: Occasionally it helps to remind yourself that at the end oflife, no one has ever said, “I wish I’d spent more time with my desk.“

•            Email can greatly increases our ability to move teaching materials around the country of Kenya

•           MAF email: if just one missionary on each team was on MAF, then it would greatly ease communication within the country. Teams on-line are: Nairobi, Sotik, Kisumu, Meru & Eldoret. Upcoming is the Coast.

•           Local database of courses and materials available within Kenya.

•           ACU database: we have dialogued with Richard Chowning about establishing an extension of ACU’s database of missions infonnation

•           Disengagement – transition to national leadership

•           Exposure to trends and ministries that could assist your ministry

•            Training of national brothers in the use and maintenance of materials & equipment

•            Use of solar-powered filmstrip projectors and cassette players

•            History of use in Kitale

•           Follow up on them at Chimoi, Kenya meeting 26 January 1995

•           Its cost & effectiveness as compared to variqus ways in which we sometimes help churches: tin roof for a church building, tile making machine, school, cow, capital to start-up a small business, etc.

•           600 viewed the filmstrips at Bwanga in the Kitale region of churches.

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