So they why do I work for a Bible translation agency? Because until we have the language, we can't do anything with video or audio. During the process of translating the Bible, we develop the dictionaries and all the written aspects, but we also develop videos and recordings to share with people and partner with other agencies who do it well. We provide the engine that feeds the language understanding into all these other wonderful ways to prove to people the YES GOD KNOWS YOUR LANGUAGE TOO!
The Luasanne congress has occured 3 times in history. The best minds of missions strategy come together. This year in Africa. In my reading through the conference notes, I came across this nugget:
REACHING ORAL LEARNERS a. What is the need? The subject of Orality, or reaching oral learners, is one of the break-‐through ideas in mission strategy that is just starting to gain momentum. Two-‐thirds of the people throughout the world are oral learners. That is, they prefer to learn through proverbs, music, poetry and especially stories
Page 9 of 20 As mission leaders, we must rethink how we are delivering our evangelism, discipleship and church planting strategies. We need to follow the pattern of Jesus from Mark 4:33-‐ 34, which records that ␣he did not say anything to them without using a parable [or a story]␣␣
There are 41,000 denominations throughout the world and 4,700 mission agencies.19 We need to begin training them in how to teach the scriptures using stories from the Bible. When people are trained effectively, they will see every person involved in a Bible study able to repeat the story without error to their family and friends. One of the best ways to build pastors effectively for the millions of house churches will be to teach them how to tell stories from the Scripture. The staggering thing about Orality is that even in media-‐sophisticated countries, the majority of people want to get their information through oral means: films, radio, television, and the I Fifty-‐eight percent of high school graduates in the United States say they will never read a book voluntarily after they graduate. Forty-‐two percent of university graduates say the same thing.20
1) We all need to learn how to share the Gospel through stories.
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I'm excited about this because this strategy taps into two of my interests:
-technology
-video/audio production
I should share with you the story of my friend Chris, who thinking it may not amount to much, recorded the New Testament in his village's language onto some mp3 players called Megavoice. What happened is that over the coming months the village passed around the mp3 players for story time and gathered around and listed to the Gospel in their own language.
Three little mp3 players, reached a large group of people with the Word of God.
It required:
-the Word be translated
-the Word be spoken and recorded
-the Word be played back
imagine the amount of work gone into producing a device like the Megavoice that could be used in this way? Imagine all the people working to translate the Bible, to record it?
You need skilled people is so many dozens of areas to accomplish it.
GOD will accomplish His work. WE are honored to be along for the ride.
I am very excited about His asking me to use my skills in this area.
I am excited about the missions world understanding audio/video as a strategy and deploying it.
I am very excited about the leaps in technology allowing us to do it more effectively and affordably.
I'm SUPER excited to be bringing back a demonstrated kit I've built of different technologies to show people in PNG about how we can make it ultra portable!
