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April 2021

Global Bible Apps

  • by Joshy K

God is limitless. Access to His Word, the Bible, should be too! The mission of Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH) is to provide people everywhere with free access to God’s Word through Audio Bibles in every translated language.

The Global Bible App initiative makes the Word of God available to the worldwide community of Android smartphone users. The major focus is on people who are not connected to the internet. Global Bible Apps are designed and built by Faith Comes By Hearing using SIL’s Scripture App Builder tool for Android devices and contain the Bible text and audio in the language of preference. These standalone Bible Apps synchronize the text and audio in a “karaoke” style, enhancing the user experience.

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How to Make Oral Communication More Effective

How to Make Oral Communication More Effective

Communicating effectively to non-readers

Author: Rick Brown
Publisher: International Journal of Frontier Missions (21.4 Winter 2004)

In seeking to free ourselves from the biases of a print-oriented culture, we need to consider, not only the kinds of media and discourse genre (e.g. narrative) that are most appropriate for oral cultures, but also the most effective ways to use those genres and media. What do non-readers like to see and hear? What do they enjoy listening to? Their choices will not necessarily be the same as those of print communicators. If the styles of presentation are ones which oral communicators prefer, then they will be more likely to listen, to understand, and to remember what they hear.

In this paper, Rick Brown argues that oral cultures have their own preferences for ways to communicate truth, and that these are often different from what print-oriented people prefer. In order to share the message most effectively, we need to find out what media and methods work best for them. In most cases this will include a multi-media approach with an emphasis on memorizing the Scriptures with the aid of high-quality recordings from skilled actors or voicers.

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Simplicity Gone Astray

RadiAid, a spoof campaign with a serious point

In 2012 I took a media team to a country in central Africa to get stories about Bible translation projects in the country. We stayed in a guesthouse at an educational institution, and nearby was a school for the students’ children.

“Put away your cameras!” a man shouted to one of the photographers traveling with me. “We don’t want you showing our children as poor and hungry on the internet.”

We had obtained advanced permission to photograph on the campus, but we took this parent’s concerns seriously. The cameras went away, and the matter was discussed with the parent and the educational institution president. We came to a mutual understanding of our purpose and received permission once more to take photos.

This parent expressed a widely held view in many parts of Africa: Western nonprofit organizations want to show people across Africa in the worst light in order to raise money. People feel exploited.Read More »Simplicity Gone Astray