Focused communication units, using extant audiofiles

Communicating the Christian message though focused communication units for radio and mobile devices,
utilizing extant audio recordings

Why should a programmer for radio or mobile devices communicate the Scriptures differently from the ways that have been practiced in the past?

This help is designed to help radio program developers to communicate Christian worldview to the people in a new way.  We expect that it will be pleasantly effective. With this help, programmers can utilize existent recordings of Scripture in any local language for communicating effectively in meaningful portions for their audiences.

Most audio recordings of Scripture are presented as whole documents.  We suggest that there is a more effective way to communicate to oral learners.  It is better because it avoids some mistaken ideas about God’s message, ideas held by literates, those who know how to read.  Being literate, they generally assume that the whole world will eventually learn to read.  

• Thus, many assume that God’s message should be learned from the whole documents of the New Testament.
• Not only that, they generally assume that only the printed form of Scriptures is trustworthy.  
• When they allow an audio version of God’s message to be distributed, they assume that it must be an echo of a printed version.

The proposed guide also avoids some mistaken ideas about the listeners, the people we hope to bring to faith.

• Many people assume that listeners can learn to read by listening to other person reading.  
• They forget that new readers cannot follow at the speed of the recorded speech.  They also forget that, a new reader cannot internalize the message at the same time that he or she is attempting to recognize the shapes of letters and words (the exercise of reading).
•  Many assume that an illiterate person who hears the Scriptures being read aloud will want to becoming literate.  There might be some small desire, but it is very short-lived.
• Many assume that anyone can learn easily from listening to someone reading a printed text, even though such texts were formed for reading silently.
• Many people misunderstand how oral learners come to faith.  They have forgotten that lasting faith comes by hearing and that spiritual growth comes by repeatedly hearing.

We suggest that radio programmer should assume that he or she is communicating God’s message to people who are interested in that message when the programs first begin.  With that, he or she can also assume that the interest and trust of the listeners can be gained by presenting each radio unit in a personal way.

There are four steps in the process of oral communication between humans:

• The speaker presents the content of the message.  In a live interaction between a speaker and one or more listeners, the speaker communicates through shaping sounds with his mouth, throat and nose.  He or she supports the sounds with body language and sometimes visual materials.
   
• The listener understands the message through hearing the sounds, interpreting their general significance and thinking about the implications of such a message.
   
• The listener evaluates whether the message is valid.  Children generally accept anything spoken by an adult as valid.  As people grow older, they learn that some messages are not valid.  Thus, in every audience, some will be inclined, to varying degrees to believe, while others will be resistant to believing, to varying degrees.
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• The listener finally accepts or rejects the message as valid for himself or herself.

Issue 1 in our presenting audio Scripture over radio or mobile devices

We must recognize that an audio communication of the Scriptures is not a book.

We Christians have had what we call the “New Testament” as a canon for so long, we regard it as a single document.  However, it is many documents. 

We have developed an elaborate system of titles, introductions, chapter and verse divisions, section headings, cross-references, footnotes and special notes.  These are tremendously helpful to readers.  They are the indexes with which we can return to a specific sentence or we can search for a sentence that someone has told us that it exists.  However, most of those devices are irrelevant or useless to oral learners.  We who wish to communicate the Scripture effectively to oral learners must develop a whole new system of indexing.

Issue 2 in our presenting audio Scripture over radio or mobile devices

We must not assume that oral learners will be remembering the content of a previous message, even one that they heard the day before.  Each program must be a communication unit.  But we can assume that the deeper messages are accumulating in the regular listeners.

Oral learners learn best in short sessions.  They retain best the teaching on a single topic.  They can re-tell a short lesson easily.

Issue 3 in our presenting audio Scripture over radio or mobile devices

We must recognize that the audio-recordings of a person reading a printed text simulates the speeches of Christian leaders as they read to their people.  We are mistaken to assume that the listeners will recognize that the Apostles were the original speakers.  

When someone presents a message to listeners in a situation in which they can see and feel each other, the listeners participate in the communication situation.  They “feel” the events of the message.  However, when we present the Scriptures through audio recordings, the listeners cannot see the speaker.  And so, they participate less.  With less participation, there is less learning.   Thus, it is urgent that we build into each communication unit as much person interaction as possible.

Issue 4 in our presenting audio Scripture over radio or mobile devices

We must facilitate the listeners believing the messages.

The same person who introduces the messages should speak again to close the message.  He might recommend that the listeners speak to a friend about what he or she has heard or ask someone close to them if they know more about the topic of the message.
 

The listeners, through many SMALL DECISIONS about the validity of the messages, will likely choose to make a DEEP COMMITMENT to Jesus.  It is known that we all have grown in faith before we committed ourselves, as well as after that experience.
 

Even if a listener rejects the first hearing of any message, his or her having thought about it facilitates the acceptance of the next hearing of that message or other messages from the same source.

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There are some cautions that a programmer should consider.

Caution: A programmer should verify the age of the audio recordings.  If seven to ten years have passed since the days in which they were made, a native speaker of the language should review them.  Every language changes, some more rapidly than others and especially those languages that are beginning to interact with other cultures, through the radio and television medias.  The person who reviews the selected passages should be at least 25 years old but no older than 35 years old.  He or she should note idioms or sentence constructions that cause some a listener pause or difficulty in understanding.  If there are many such occurrences, it might well to made new recordings of all the passages, allowing the speakers to "retranslate".

Caution:  A programmer should use recordings with no background music.  Many of the recordings that have been distributed have background music and other sounds.  Some assume that the music helps the drama.  That concept is true of entertainment.  However, the set of programs that we are recommending are intended to help the listeners to change their worldview, not to be comfortable in their way of life.

Some Western recordings of Scripture have used music in the background.   (Listen to the audio recordings of the NIV, Zondervan, copyright 2001.)   The practice of using music along with speaking began with the silent movies long ago, during which someone played live music, on a piano accordian.  Later, when they made movies with sound, they felt they needed to put music in the background.  They assumed that the styles of the music helped the viewers to ‘feel’ the danger or the emotion that was being shown on the screen.  Still later, audio technicians felt they needed to mimic movies.  Thus, the custom was perpetuated into audio recordings in languages of the Western cultures.  However, it will be a serious mistake by radio programmers to mimick this practice.  In recordings of Scripture, other sounds distract the listeners.  Worse, in some languages, it has been proven that the tones in the background music have caused misinterpretation of the communication, sometimes the sound of the words and sometimes the meaningful tones of the syllables.

It is distracting to listeners if the programmer inserts music between the parts of the recording (in spite of that practice in recordings in Western cultures).  Consider the misinterpretations by the listeners.  When they hear the music, it is likely that they will suppose that Jesus has finished teaching or that Luke has finished his story.  It is better to put silence between topics.  Silence can give time to the listeners for thinking about the events the voice communicated.  Then, at the end of a document, the programmer  can put a low volume non-melodic sound.

The programmer should not use music in the styles of the culture.  Such a use might make the listeners more comfortable, but it also implies that the authors of the New Testament lived in the community of the listeners’ ancestors.

Neither should the programmer put music where the printed version has put chapter divisions.  After all, the authors of the documents did not mark chapters or verses.  Someone invented those markings a thousand years after the authors were dead. 

Caution: Some Western audio recordings have spoken references to the chapter numbers, verse numbers and section headings.  (Examples may be found at:
http://www.biblegateway.com/resources/audio/ .)  The producers of those recording assume that their potential users are readers and that those users want the recordings to reflect or simulate a book.  Those print media indexes are very useful in books, but they are create puzzles for listeners.  They distract oral learners from the message, largely because the listeners have no need for them, no matter how useful they are to readers.  Listeners have no way to relate them to their world.  A translation team should omit completely those indexes from their audio script.

Continue to
The process of making the communication units for radio programs
(This is still in development)

Continue to
The process of making the communication units for mobile devices
(This is still in development)

Continue to
Templates for the communication units,utilizing existing audio recordings
(This still has parts to be developed)