Mission through media: NGU students use their skills for Christ in Africa
Samantha Meyeres, Staff Writer
For North Greenville University students, spring break consisted of trips home, beach visits, travel and missions. Over the break, NGU’s Missionary Media Ministries class made their way to a village in Western Africa.
The purpose of this mission trip was to shed light on the work of Trans World Radio (TWR) in Benin, Africa, by producing content for the station. TWR is an evangelical Christian media organization with locations in multiple nations dedicated to sharing the gospel with unreached people around the world.
Because of the region that the Benin TWR station is located, they have outside sources produce content for them for security reasons.
The team/class from NGU comprised four communication majors, one intercultural studies major, one interdisciplinary studies major and associate professor of communication Andrew Stevens.
Prior to the trip, the class practiced setting up and conducting video interviews. They also learned about the culture and how to interact with the people they would meet.
Stevens said, “In one of our pre-trip meetings, we asked our host if there was anything we need to be aware of, so we don’t make some major social faux pas or something like that. And he just said, ‘Say hello. They want to be acknowledged.’”
The team saw this immediately when they arrived in Africa, as they were greeted everywhere they went with “hellos” and genuine smiles.
Once they got to the station, they put their media skills into practice. The goal was to gather content so that the students could then use the rest of their semester to create projects to send back to the TWR station.
One of these projects will be a look back at the station over the past 20 years. The team conducted interviews with Garth Kennedy, the current TWR station director, and his wife Fiona.
The Kennedys have been directing that station for the past 20 years. The mission team’s goal was to capture content about how the station has grown and developed over the two decades that they’ve been there.
Another project will be focused on the aspect of stewardship at the facility.
Stevens said, “The idea of stewardship is ‘this is what God owns and he has provided. So how can we use it to help other people’s lives be better?’”
At the facility, they have two cashew groves. One grove is to raise funds for an education fund for the staff who work there, so that their kids can go to private schools and the other is being planted to raise money for a women’s ministry.
In that region, there are some areas where power lines will not allow the planting of trees, so the guard of the facility plows the area so staff can plant their own family gardens. The facility also built a lake to capture fish during the wet season for the families in the area.
The concept of stewarding the resources the Lord has given them is prominent at the TWR facility and that is why the mission team chose to focus on that aspect for one of their projects.
Other projects include interviews with members of related ministries in a larger city of Benin that will be edited and produced to send back to TWR to help their mission of spreading the gospel.
Stevens said the aspect of the trip that most left an impact on him was how it shaped his view of culture. He said that culture is just how different people groups solve common problems.
“They have narrow roads and they don’t have as much money, so everybody rides motorcycles. A lot of their buildings are made out of mud brick. Why? Because they have a lot of mud there,” he said. “I was just impressed with how people solve the problems of daily life. They take advantage of the resources that they have.”
As far as the trip as a whole, Stevens said he was impressed with the group of students and their infectious excitement for sharing the gospel.
This mission trip was Meg George’s first time out of the country. She is a sophomore strategic communication major with a concentration in media ministry. She intends to pursue missionary ministry in some aspect, whether that means going overseas and interviewing missionaries that go unseen or staying and doing event planning for missionary groups.
George said that she chose to go on the trip because she saw it as a perfect opportunity to see if missionary ministry is what she wanted to do with her future.
“How can I say this is what I want to do if I’ve never done it?” she said.
Along with helping with the interviews, George and the other women on the team also had the opportunity to visit a women’s HIV clinic and support group. This clinic is not advertised as such for the privacy of the women, but is instead known from the outside as an information center.
Keeping the clinic a private matter allows women with HIV who have been abandoned or outcast to come and get treated for the virus as well as be loved by a community of Christians.
“These women get to have just full freedom to actually have community and actually connect with other people,” George said.
Some of the women walk around 50 miles to get to the clinic, where they have both their physical and spiritual needs met.
When women first come in, they are there for around two hours, getting treatment. Then they’ll speak to the evangelism pastor before they leave.
George said that a lot of the women are at the point where all they have to do is walk in and get their meds and leave, but they still stay the two hours to go speak to the evangelism pastor and hear the gospel and get advice from him.
“In the same way that when Jesus was healing people, He met their spiritual needs first and then healed them, they are meeting their spiritual need while healing them,” she said.
George said that the trip was full of special stories, one of them being a moment she shared with a group of girls on the beach.
The team had a free day and George said she persuaded their driver to take them to the beach.
As they were walking along the beach, George said she saw a group of young teenage girls and made the decision to stray a bit from the group and go and talk to them.
“I remember making the choice in my head, saying, ‘No, you’re on mission. Even though it’s your free day, that’s not why you’re here.’” She said, “So I went down there, and immediately they started talking to me.”
George did not understand the language that the young girls were eagerly attempting to speak with her. However, one of the girls spoke English and was able to act as a translator.
Even though they did not speak the same native language, George was able to show love to the girls through her smile and choice to spend time with them.
“They were pinching my cheeks, touching my hair, my earrings, and it was so sweet. And they were just holding my hands, telling me that they loved me,” she said.
George said that she had been wrestling with whether or not she should drop her studies of communication and go into full time missions, and in that moment that she shared with the girls on the beach, she felt like she should go into full time missions.
She said that driving back from the beach she prayed for God to make clear to her what she should pursue.
“I remember praying ‘Is full time missions what you want for me?’ and He was like, ‘Can you not do that where you’re at?’” she said. “So I think that definitely reaffirmed that these communication skills that I’m developing are going to be useful in whatever He wants me to do.”
For her contribution to the class projects, George is writing a journal of what happened while they were on the trip. She said that each person has an individual project based on their skill set.
Aside from the projects being produced for TWR, the students will also have to present a case study on global ministry as their final in the class.
Stevens said that the goal is to develop a missional mindset and to look at media as a tool rather than a goal.
“We don’t have a TV ministry. We have a people ministry,” Stevens said. “TV is one of the many tools we can use, and that’s important because we get so hung up on the tools, and we don’t realize that Christ didn’t die for the tools — He died for the people.”
Photos courtesy of Andrew Stevens
