by Knud Jorgensen

In a survey carried out in preparation for the International Christian Media Commission's (ICMC) consultation on The Role of the Media in Evangelism the respondents were asked to suggest media evangelism issues that were important to them. At the top of the list, I note, were questions about the effectiveness of the media for communicating the Gospel (21% of all responses).

The Problem: This poses an interesting dilemma since, on the one hand, the people in the sample readily use media for evangelism; while on the other, a significant number of them - and us - question how effective these media are.

Such a discrepancy between practice and belief may be acceptable up to a certain point. In fact it can be a healthy sign to question our methods so long as we do something with our questions. But in relation to Christian radio I see the discrepancy as a danger sign. While living with our doubts for so long we have been serving our supporters another, much more success-oriented story based on listeners' mail. In the end such double standards become hypocrisy.

As I read more in the ICMC survey, I noticed three other findings which may provide clues to our dilemma:

1. We have neglected Media Studies. In our use of the media for affecting change, we evangelicals are still where scholars of change, especially the diffusion of innovations, were 15-20 years ago. As a result we often place too high a value on mass media and expect them to do far more than what they are capable of.

   The diffusion-of-innovation studies in their original form back in the 60s (first published in 1962 in Everett M. Rogers Diffusion of Innovations) were part of a developing paradigm where development was a question of economic growth and of profit motives. Centralised planning at the top level was therefore encouraged while self-development at the grass-root level was considered unlikely. The focus was on quantity and on the short-range perspective. It was this paradigm that media communication was expected to serve. The big media, and especially radio, therefore became vehicles for conveying information and persuasive messages from top to bottom, from the centre to the periphery. In my youth we looked at the media almost as a magic multiplier for change. And some of us took this view of the powerful media with us into Christian communication, especially as we thought that our belief in the media received confirmation from increasing literacy and from the availability of transistor radios in every village. We had heard a little about a man called Klapper who questioned the effectiveness and potency of the mass media, but we quickly reached the conclusion that his research was western, and later, as we studied him more carefully, we found that the same Klapper also talked about conditions under which the media may be very powerful.

   When (in the early 70s) the old development paradigm collapsed, many of us, and especially evangelicals, maintained its view of the powerful media, both because we wanted to keep the illusion alive and because we are slow in exchanging our theories with more adequate ones.

   Our Goliath method with big Christian transcontinental radio stations fitted well within this view of the powerful media, with the potential to broadcast to a number of peoples in a number of languages.

   Today many of us realise, however, that the role of communications within this view tended to be conceived in narrowly informational or persuasive terms, or was based on unexamined assumptions about the horizon-broadening or aspiration-raising properties of the big media. On the one hand, our view of radio was exaggerated; on the other hand, too little attention has been given to understanding the overall functions of media in society and especially the long-term effect of the media on people in their social context.

   By the same token, we have neglected the potential of the smaller media and of the existing traditional folk media.

   Where does that leave us today? Personally I have recently gone back and re-studied the findings of the diffusion-of-innovation studies (in the 1983 edition of Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations), and I have found that there is a lot to learn, not only about media, but also about opinion leadership and change agents. And in spite of the weaknesses, there are potential tendencies of the media worth noting. These include the need for a certain time-sequencing of media use combined with with using multiple channels simultaneously. It does seem that the mass media, including radio, are starters of the adoption or decision process, i.e. they are most effective at making people aware of new ideas. Interpersonal forms of communication, including group communication, seem on the other hand more effective at persuading people to adopt new ideas, and combinations of media and communication settings should be used to reinforce decisions.

   But even more important than these tendencies and generalizations is the question of trust and credibility . The function of trust is a cross-cultural constant in the sense that all persuasive communication has to be built on mutual trust. And mutual respect and acceptance is th efoundation of trust, also in broadcasting. Without trust as a bridge, Christian change agents have no chance of creating any impact/change. And this also has to do with channel credibility: which media have relatively higher credibility in a specific context? The response of our audience will largely depend on whether we as communicators and as radio operators are credible and trustworthy. In this sense both we ourselves and the medium we use are part of the message. If this is true in secular media communication it is even more true in Christian communication where the heart is a God who became credible in Jesus Christ.: in Christ he has gained access to my attention by taking part in my life. And the centre of his credibility is a cross.

   In general I think our so-called crisis of communication is more a crisis of credibility — also in Christian broadcasting.

2. We have over-emphasised Reaping at the expense of Holism. This second finding in the ICMC survey which may give us a clue to our uncertainty about effectiveness was that most of the respondents (of us) are still bound by a traditional evangelical, western approach to evangelism which emphasises imparting facts or information about the Gospel. We refer to it as "preaching" and "proclamation". The survey clearly shows that most of us evangelical broadcasters do not stress life-style evangelism or personal example. Neither do we stress any audience orientation - a message that is relevant and understandable to the audience or interaction with the audience. The so-called holistic approach to evangelism, including the meeting of felt needs, is absent from our evangelical thinking.

   Why is this problematic? Because it implies that we largely think of evangelism as a one-way traffic from us to them, from centre to periphery, from sender to receiver. Our views of evangelism smell of the hypodermic needle model of communication and rule out genuine interaction with the audience, let alone the whole question of ascribing meaning. Communication has to do with the meaning people give or assign to a message. And these meanings are more in people than in my message. I must therefore communicate out of a receptor-orientation where I am deeply concerned about the meanings and responses in my audience - if I want to see these meanings changed.

   Secondly, our narrow view of evangelism also implies a narrow view of the sort of change we look for. Change comes to mean conversion exclusively. We are so focused on the reaping stage of the process that we are unable -- and uninterested too -- in looking for other changes than those that have to do with making decisions for Christ. And that is a grave fallacy. Rather we should look at any movement towards spiritual maturity and growth as a measure of change and effectiveness: If I by my radio programs can help move a people group from being apathetic about the Christianfaith to becoming interested that is a change - an enormous change. If I can expand forward what we call "the latitude of acceptance" within an audience, that is a change, not overnight but over time. And such changes can be measured by simple research. Without research we shall never know either where our audience is in the first place, or whether we have moved the audience a little closer toward spiritual maturity. And when I talk about moving people, I include both the cognitive and the affective dimensions. Information works on the cognitive while trust and credibility influence the affective dimensions of people.

   I strongly believe that radio can change people. But I also believe that such changes can happen at other stages than the reaping stage. And I believe that changes in the effective part of people are at least as important as cognitive changes. So I speak as much to people's heart feelings and needs as I speak to their heads.

   And I speak primarily to their values and beliefs, rather than attacking their world view because I believe it is easier for most of us to change values than to change world view. In due course value changes will lead to changes in other parts of people's conceptions, including their world view. My own experience, from various African and European contexts, is that the more a person or a group becomes consciously aware of a contradiction between values and world view, the greater is the likelihood that it will lead to both cognitive and affective change and, in due course, to behavioural change. Generally values fall within what I have called our latitude of acceptance, whereas world view most often falls within our latitude of rejection.

   So let us think of change in a broad sense. Christian radio, viewed in this perspective, need not be ineffective in bringing about change. Neither need it be true that it only tends to reinforce existing opinions and beliefs. Such claims have grown out of western media thinking, but do not even always apply in a western context if we think of long-term effects. I think it is more correct to say that while radio may not produce drastic attitude change under stable conditions, it may be powerful in affecting change when the conditions are ripe. This is especially so under conditions where the audience is looking for new values and beliefs. Examples of this abound in places such as China, Ethiopia, and among many unreached people groups in Europe, India, Indonesia, the USSR.

   That in turn means that we need different programs for different groups. There must be a correspondence between the audience's view of the Christian faith and our various types of programs.

3. We need to integrate Radio with other Channels of Communication: This clue that I found in the ICMC survey is the need among evangelical broadcasters for combining interpersonal and group as well as traditional media with the mass media radio. Or let us rather think in terms of combining communication channels and communication settings within a larger communication strategy: where communication channels, including radio, personal contact, local church and service projects have been coordinated and integrated in form and content, the response has consistently been shown to be significantly higher than when these communication channels independently.

   What we are pushing for is thus not just multimedia, but a multi-communication strategy. Such strategy does not start with media, but with people and their need within culture. Such a strategy requires detailed planning and coordination of target group, aims, methods, and media. If we want radio to be part of a process of change, as it has the potential for being, there is no other way than to engage ourselves in such costly planning of strategy. And I believe that we have the tools for making such strategies — we have insights from communication theory, psychology, anthropology, sociology, church growth and from research, insights that make it perfectly possible to plan new strategies of Great Commission change.

Concerted Prayer

For that to happen, and for Christian radio to become a vital part of this change process, we need once again to go back to what brought about the great awakenings: Concerted prayer among God's people — prayer for the Spirit to move us and others to see Jesus and to see the world, the fields which are ripe for harvest.

Major new strategic steps would result if we as evangelical communicators, gave ourselves to concerted prayer for the guidance of the Spirit and for humility to reshape our present plans in the direction of being involved in direct or indirect church planting.

(Taken from Ricefields Journal Vol II No. 2)

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