Making communication units for mobile devices

The process for making communication units
for mobile devices 

Introduction

The goal of all communication of the Christian Scriptures is to facilitate people believing and their allowing the Holy Spirit to change their lives.  As a programmer communicates to an oral society by mobile devices, he must always keep in mind three basic guidelines:

• The programmer is tailoring the communications to THE LISTENERS.  His goal should not be to cause people to consider the Bible is holy because it is a book.  They should evaluate is as holy because it communicates God’s spoken messages.  These programs will make learning easy for listeners.  The programmer should not make the process easy for himself or herself.
• The programmer is only facilitator.  He helps OTHER people to communicate Jesus’ teaching to their people.  He is mistaken if he assumes that he is the only communicator.  Thus, success of any program will be nurtured by his facilitating OTHER people to communicate.  Of course, the Holy Spirit is the person who ultimately accomplished the change in each person and in each culture.

This proposal is designed to facilitate audio files that PROVIDE A FOUNDATION THAT THE LOCAL CHRISTIAN COMMUNICATORS CAN USE in evangelism and discipling.

This proposal is designed to help programmers in two ways:

• There exist already many audio recordings of the New Testament.  In their present format, they are designed for listeners to use as if they were a book.  They are intentionally designed to allow a searcher to find and listen to any portion. 

This proposal PROVIDES A TEMPLATE FOR PROGRAMMERS to utilize those recordings in developing effective programs for radio.  The template is designed for facilitating learning in the listeners, without their having to search for particular portions.

• The files that are generated with this template PROVIDE A PRODUCT THAT RADIO PROGRAM MANAGERS CAN INSERT into their daily or weekly schedules.

• We must remember that almost everyone learns best from what they hear.  The audiences are oral learners.  We must focus all the energies of any program on communicating in the learning styles of the people.  From that, we recommend:

Short communications—The listeners can internalize a single topic more easily than several topics.  A short learning is more deeply learned.  We should not despise short units.  Oral learners can more easily retell short messages to others if the content is short and if it focuses on only one topic.  If the person tells someone what they heard in their own words, the telling clarifies the concept to the teller.  Further, the process of replication facilitates better retention.  It even aids acceptability to both the teller and his listeners.

Focused communications—The learners should not be required to process non-focused information.   We should postpone presenting information that is in the documents that validated the historicity of those documents, “In the time of Herod, king of Judea, there was…”

The learners should be able to hear the messages without having to puzzle over Jewish historical events, like “It was just before the Passover Feast…”

The users of mobile devices should not need to think about Jewish controversies.  The details of Jewish customs are irrelevant to their responding to Jesus’ message.

Germane communications—The messages should relate to evangelism and discipling.  Audio communication of the Scriptures should not be “churchy”.  We must recognize that we are communicating Jesus’ message, not our traditions.  We would do well that the recordings do not remind the listeners of the “church”.  It is important that the oral translation communicate to an audience 15-40 years of age.

Appropriate communications for oral learners— We suggest that the recordings be heard at a rate slower than a native speaker speaks normally.  The rate of speed should be determined by experimentation.  If there are already-extant recordings, it is likely that the person speaks at a normal speed.  That speed is likely a little fast for listeners who hear a message for the first time.  We suggest that someone slow the audio recordings before they are incorporated into the programs for mobile devices.  This slower rate will help listeners to hear the sounds well and it will give the listeners the necessary mental time for them to internalize the content.  (Those audio recordings can be processed though a program such as “Audacity” freeware) or “Audition”.  The recording can be slowed as much as 20% and the pitch remains the same.) 

Personal communications—The most effective changes in the life of a human are facilitated by another human.  The messages that we help to communicate will be effective in proportion to the listeners “feeling” that a real human is telling them the messages.  Further, those messages should facilitate the listeners talking to another human about the topic or about more messages.

Graduated communications—The messages relate to the probable level of interest in the audience.   It is important that we present the Scripture in learnable units.  We should recognize that the audience in any given community continually changes, especially when the people begin to respond to the messages.  We will do well to offer to listeners a graduated series to facilitate their learning.  In this proposal, we propose four sets.  The definition of the second set assumes that there will be a response to the presentations of the first.  Thus, we have suggested recordings in the second set that likely will communicate to the needs of those who respond to the messages of the first set.  The portions recommended for the third set should help those who have begun to follow the teachings of Jesus.

Even though we are proposing a development program of four sets, more sets might be separated by an individual team:

Vital truths—A clear story about Jesus, including his teachings, with the core truths that we Christians affirm

This set of Scriptures have been selected to communicate essential Christian doctrines.  They do not require the non-western listeners to l earn the historical context of those Scriptures at the same time that they are learning the Christian truths.  The listeners should not feel that the Christian message is mystical or secretive, as if it was intended only for a few.  God’s invitation to humans is open to anyone who listens.  The messages are prepared for an audience that is un-evangelized and un-churched.

Some use the label “Harmony” for this kind of message.  We might call this a condensed Gospel, but it seems better to use something like “A clear Story of Jesus and the Truths that we Christians affirm”. 

Very important truths—The story about Jesus with more events, the narrative about the early believers, and some more truths that we Christians affirm

This includes all the passages proposed for first set, with some additional deeper teachings from the Apostles—more of the story about Jesus, the narrative about the early believers, and some more truths that we Christians affir m.  This level continues to communicate to an audience that is un-evangelized and un-churched, but  who has expressed their desire to learn  Christian teaching.  We would expect that a programmer would propagate the second grouping at a later time than the first grouping.

Additional important truths—Some truths that we Christians affirm that are more complex than the “Very important truths”

These passages communicate teachings from the Apostles that are complicated by references to the Jewish culture or the Jewish way of teaching.  This set tries to communicate to people who have begun to believe and they want to deepen their faith.  We would expect that a programmer would propagate the third grouping at a later time than the second grouping.

We recommend that the Scripture messages be presented in short units.  Of course, the length of the individual recordings will vary widely.  At all times, we suggest that the programmer should maintain in the foreground of his planning that HE IS FACILITATING THE PEOPLE LEARNING JESUS’ TRUTHS.  The core purpose of Christian communication is resultant changes in the listeners’ lives.

Sources of the truth—The whole documents of the New Testament, presented in a prioritized order  

This level communicates the whole documents.  We suggest a kind of prioritizing (to facilitate decisions as to sequence of presentation).  The passages of this level would be prepared for an audience that is churched and who wants to learn from the documents as documents .

Some cautions about scripts

We should define our presentations always with the purpose of influencing oral learners toward their committing themselves to follow Jesus.  We developers are developing a workable template or guide.  We are also developing a training program for the technicians in the field to record the audio files of the introductions and closures of the units.  Such a training program must be easily replicated.  That is, the few people we train should find it possible and desirable to train others to do this kind of communicating.  We suggest that even the native speakers of the languages of the recordings can be trained to develop the files on “Audacity”.  An experienced technician could review the results.

As the speaker introduces a unit or closes a unit, he should avoid the jargon that people often use in church.  Such language often puzzles the listeners.  He should avoid jargon such as:

• Passive clauses (which are replications of in traditional translations that represent Hebrew custom),
• Abstract phrases,  like “…in the name of…”,
• Unnatural subjunctive clauses ,
•   Statements about future events as if they had already happened , or
• Presumptuous statements about un-evangelized people, such as “…people waiting to hear”.

Probably the most difficult task for speakers will be for them to intentionally avoid referring to chapters and verses.  Our traditional references to chapter and verse are very strong in our church jargon.  However, that concept of separating chapters and verses arises out of our literate thinking.  The problem is that it puts a kind of mental smoke or fog into an oral communication.

The reasons why many communicators want to insert in audio recordings the references to chapter and verse might be:

• Tradition is strong.  Evangelicals have traditionally cited chapter and verse in order to authenticate their theological communications. 
• There is an unconscious desire to make the audio recordings more legitimate by relating them to a book, especially “The Bible”.  Too often, people assume that the printed Scriptures are the only legitimate or trustworthy source of spiritual enlightenment.  From that, they assume that the audio recording must be indexed to a printed text in order to be credible.
• Unconsciously, literate people assume that the whole world is literate.  Because literates enjoy their being literate, they assume that those who are not literate desire to become literate.  They naturally suppose that eventually everyone will become literate.  THEY ARE MISTAKEN ON ALL COUNTS!!  Thus, they are in danger of indirectly tormenting illiterates, since their attitude implies that illiterates are something less than complete persons. 
• Most churched people are so accustomed to the references to chapters and verses, they unconsciously assume that God inspired them.  They are unconscious of the fact that they were later additions to the Scriptures and that many of the divisions were very unfortunate. 

All the parts of each unit should be in the language of the listeners.  The person who introduces and closes the units should not speak in the language of wider communication (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Chinese).  Think about how acceptable to you would be the news in English on the BBC, if it were introduced in Chinese.  Would you be even interested in listening any longer?  Such introductions in another language usually imply that the language of the audio recording is inferior.