At this year’s International Conference, delegates will hear of a number of new developments in getting the preaching of the message of the cross onto
new and different media platforms.
In an interview, Gilbert Grant gives CTMI Today some insight into what the Media Department is currently involved in…
• Other than the website and CTMI Today, what other means are you using to spread the preaching of the cross?
Today, 7 years after our first TV broadcast on TBN Africa, and 5 years since starting on Radio in Bujumbura, CTMI’s programs can be seen or heard in more than 45 countries across Africa, including Mauritius and the Indian Ocean Islands. We’ve even received feedback from someone watching Adonai BN channel in Yemen! Without a doubt, it is these 2 platforms that are increasingly reaching believers everywhere. We’ve also realised that a message recorded for TV can in fact become an article in JOY! Magazine. What is interesting is that it can also be used as the basis for a booklet or brochure to be distributed at Leaders’ Conferences.
• Would it be fair to say that reaching our ‘audience’ in Africa is quite different to reaching people in France?
Yes, as none of us has any real media or mass communications background, we’ve had to learn in the field, asking questions wherever we go, and researching. Today, we are aware that we must find appropriate ways to reach a faithful CTMI Partner in Bukavu, as well as someone in Paris. Radio works well for the former, while the latter can receive last Sunday’s message from Mauritius, directly on his computer via our Podcast service.
• So what are you doing exactly in order to achieve this?
As a result of Audrey’s vision many years ago to begin recording all of Miki’s preaching at conferences and seminars, today we have a vast library of messages only ever heard by a tiny group of people at each particular event. Now, we are busy editing these messages to use on both TV and Radio everywhere. I recently reviewed a series in English, with Swahili interpretation, recorded in Nairobi in 2004, where Miki, Peter and Stephen shared. I can tell you that seldom have I heard the gospel imparted in such a simple, yet effective way. We cannot allow such revelatory preaching to gather dust in a cupboard; we must do our best to make it available to the widest possible audience! As a start, these messages are now on TV in Burundi, and are being broadcast on a number of stations by Trans World Radio in Kenya and across the region.
• Radio and TV seems to be the way forward for Africa, but what about the more developed countries?
You are absolutely right! It has taken us some time to realise that we had two completely different ‘audiences’; that the means of reaching them are not only different, but are also evolving all the time. For countries with high-speed Internet access, the great success story has been our Free Downloads page on our website. In 2008, the equivalent of 47 000 hour-long messages were downloaded. This has already reached almost 50,000 downloads for the first 9 months of 2009. We’ve seen that visitors download from such places as Argentina, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. Over the next few months, we plan to put online messages on free sermon websites. Our biggest restriction is our ability to upload such heavy bandwidth files from Mauritius at a reasonable speed, but we are working on a solution.
• Tell us about the CD compilations you are offering at the conference…
Previously, each message was only available to purchase on 1 CD, which made it expensive to acquire the full set of 5 or 6 messages for an event like the Durban Family Camp. At this year’s conference, we are offering for sale compilations of messages on 1 CD in MP3 format, from over 20 different events recorded over the past 4-5 years. For example, it’s possible to buy the entire 9-message series “The Church Needs To Know” (over 10 hours of preaching) on 1 CD at a very low price. Even more importantly, this lower price allows us to get the gospel out to many more people. The added advantage is that it will now be possible for each of the Partner Churches to hold 1 master CD of each compilation, as well as messages from all the other events to come, and to duplicate them for resale in their local churches.
