One of the ministries that helps reach people world wide who CANNOT read or who PREFER not to read is Faith Comes By Hearing. Here is the link to their free Pastor's Kit.
If you're looking for a special Lenten discipline this year, perhaps instead of trying to give up Bon Bons, it would be better to challenge your church to listen to the New Testament!
By listening just 28 minutes per day, your church members can listen to the entire New Testament in the 40 days leading up to the Feast of the Resurrection of our Lord.
Faith Comes By Hearing works with donors who will provide every member of your church a free NT in mp3 format. The CD is specially dramatized (multiple voices and some background content) but the text of the New Testament is not altered. It's available in NIV or KJV. Children 3 - 12 will be given a CD with a Children's Bible story and song collection with key stories from the Old and New Testaments in a simpler version (New International Reader's Version).
In exchange for this encouragement to listen to the New Testament, they ask your church to take up a love offering that is used completely to make Bible recordings for languages that do not as yet have such a recording. Their goal is to complete about 200 languages per year at the approximate cost of $25,000 each. They also ask that if you have older members receive participate that you help them work the mp3 player.
A portable Mp3 "Stick" player is available for $29.95.
The results may be amazing. Sadly, unless your church members are encouraged to listen to the Bible, they may never hear it at all!
What a great project as a church for Lent!
More on Faith Comes By Hearing: Around the world Faith Comes By Hearing produces digital bible recorders. They're most commonly used as follow up tools. Missionaries may go in and show the "Jesus Film" for instance. They will then identify people wanting more information and the audio players Faith Comes By Hearing provides are used to create "listening groups" so people can listen to the whole New Testament and then discuss the passage. These listening groups then form the nucleus of churches as the people are able to make deep commitments to Jesus Christ the Lord. Try the dramatized New Testament for yourself... you might decide to create your own listening group and plant your own church right here!
You can read their Fall 2007 Newsletter on the Proclaimer and how it is being used around the world.
1 comment:
Pastor,
Thank you for this insightful blog and for highlighting the audio bible ministry of Faith Comes By Hearing! We appreciate your work. You did a great job describing how we work with the local church to continue language recordings overseas.
Pastor, we also offer free downloads of every language we have recorded, which stands at 272 right now.
For those who live in Spanish-speaking places, a Spanish Pastor's Pack is also available.
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