Lausanne World Pulse – Perspectives Articles – Media that Transforms Nations
By Carol C.
June 2009
As technology slowly infiltrates even the most unlikely of places, media “disciples” the nations in cities and villages around the world. Tragically, it can be a tool of evil (e.g., pornography, violence). Gloriously, the Body of Christ is also utilizing it to bring righteousness, joy, and the life-changing message of the gospel.
Contextualized Media
At Create International we focus on producing media tools to communicate with those who have the least access to the gospel. The 6,800 distinct unreached people groups of the world reflect the incredible complexity, diversity, wonder, and greatness of our God. One media form, or one message, will not reach them all. We need to culturally contextualize our message to make it relevant.
Media producers should seek to both distribute media and to facilitate personal contact or follow up. Media producers are primarily enablers who work to make resources available and to train people to effectively utilize media in their witness.
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Contextual media is the best form to ensure continued use by the audience. This was demonstrated to us during a project in West Sumatra, where our team was filming a dramatic rendition of the “Prodigal Son” parable. One of our actors happened to be Muslim, but at the end of the filming he gave his life to the Lord. Part of what impressed him was that our team cared enough to make a film adapted to his Minang culture.
During the filming, he heard the gospel and was personally witnessed to by a Minang Christian. When this actor, a prominent singer and entertainer in the Minang culture, proudly showed us some of his music cassettes, we challenged him to produce and sing God-honoring music for his culture.
Two years later, a team from Singapore was visiting that same area in Sumatra and heard of a local dance and music performance. They all attended and were overjoyed to hear the gospel woven into the presentation in a way that was non-offensive (and yet professionally done) to the majority Muslim audience. They went up to the manager after the show to congratulate him and to ask how he was able to do this type of presentation in a predominately Muslim people group that was less than one percent Christian. He proceeded to share his experiences with our Create International team, who had challenged him and showed him how to use the arts to present the gospel. He continues to rise to the challenge, winning people to Jesus using Minang cultural art forms.
We are continually discovering ways in which we can best use the indigenous arts of a culture to convey the gospel message. However, much more could be done in this area. Christian workers around the world should be paying special attention to how this can be encouraged and promoted in their work, especially among the unreached nations.
Working with the Culture and the Audience
Serious consideration must be given to the non-technical media already available in the audience’s culture. The Christian message conveyed through a familiar indigenous expression is far more likely to be embraced by the audience than the same message introduced through a strange or foreign media. Traditional cultural forms such as music, art, storytelling, and dance can be redirected to reveal one’s true relationship with God and to communicate his message of love and salvation.
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Carol C. and her husband, Calvin, have been serving as full-time missionaries with Youth With A Mission since 1978. They are the founders/directors of Create International, a transnational ministry of YWAM focused on producing audio visual resources for frontier missions. For the last twenty years Carol has served as a full-time media missionary to over fifty-six nations, trained hundreds in media and mission schools, and produced over 150 films focused on reaching out and calling forth missionaries to unreached peoples. Now living in Thailand, Carol continues to serves on the YWAM frontier mission leadership team and the Lausanne Strategy Working Group. |