Social Circle, GA: Synergy Initiatives has been in an ongoing dialogue with Renew World Outreach since finding out about their audio/video ministry in late 2008. It is our hope and intension to use short films and feature length movies in our community ‘Movie Night’ outreach events. The movie nights will be hosted at the Christian Training Center on our Circle of Light community sites.

As the new Christian Training Center is being developed for Mozambique, we have been dreaming about ways to expand the opportunities to share the love of God along side the tangible development resources provided at the Circle of Light Energy Store. With that in mind, we have become more intentional about providing the necessary resources to take advantage of the available technical resources. Included in these resources are print materials, audio bibles and now video materials and equipment that can be used to teach the Bible to small and large groups who don’t have the literacy proficiency to read the Bible or print material.

Since the 1980s, there has been a growing awareness of the special, sophisticated nature of oral cultures around the world. This new awareness has drawn upon the extensive collection of oral traditions present in many African countries. Academic trends since the 1970s have reflected this new interest and a seriousness about the characteristics of oral cultures and the related concrete-relational worldview, in contrast to the linear, analytic western worldview. This growing awareness in the field of orality has created educational models and resources that not only teach people to read but help preserve and expand our understanding of the value and role oral communication and literature have and continue to play in the human story.

Christian Missions have given great attention to the topic of Orality, arising out of anthropological insights from missionaries into oral cultures, oral traditions and oral literature. Many current approaches and programs have been developed on the basis of cross-cultural insights learned by these missionaries. Their various observations and emersion into cultures they ‘live in’, ‘communicate with’ and ‘relate to’ in the mother-tongue of different people groups have yielded invaluable understanding and respect for the complex nature of God’s creation know as mankind.

C.S. Lewis was asked, after writing the space trilogy, “Do you enjoy writing science-fiction books and will you do it again?” Lewis is said to have answered that he had no intension of writing in the genre again because he disliked modernity and considered himself a “pre-modernist” in his philosophy and writing preference. The follow-up question was asked, “If you dislike the genre, why use it in the first place?” To this he replied, “I want to get as many hooks in the water as possible.”

Regardless of what anyone thinks of using modern video technology, it is undeniable that it is here to stay as a significant way we tell our human story. Also, the impact of such video projects as the “Jesus Film”, and others like it, can not be denied as a significant tool to share the life and love of Jesus all across the globe. Therefore, along with ministries like Renew World Outreach, we hope to make the good news of God’s love—demonstrated through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah, and His indwelling Spirit—more accessible to those unable to read it for themselves. So along with helping them learn how to read and write, we’ll give them an opportunity to sea and hear the gospel story for themselves. It is another hook in the sea of soul’s hungry for God.