Lunaba Radio Drama
From SPARK
Brief Summary
Radio drama shows the relevance of Scripture to everyday life.
The Lunaba* radio drama team developed a weekly radio program in which they taught the people through means of drama. They taught how Christians have resolved the problems that they have met in their lives by doing what God teaches in the Bible. There's a link at the bottom of this page to an uncondensed version that gives much more detail about rationale and how things were done.
Key Factors:
- Many people speak the Lunaba language as their first language. Even more people speak it as a second language.
- The people do not consider reading to be important. They do not want to read as part of their daily experience. They do not want to take the time to learn to read because they do not need to read to live.
- The Lunaba learn from each other by talking and telling stories.
- They enjoy drama.
- Many people entertain others with songs and with dramas.
- Others teach the children proper ways for living by telling stories that imply the proper ways to behave. Everyone enjoys the traditional stories. They listen to them again and again.
- Most of the Lunaba people follow another major religion. There are many who do not want to know about what Christians believe.
- The Lunaba people live in many places over a very large area. But they are hearing the dramas through their radios.
Information about how the team did it
The team communicates the teaching of the Scripture orally. They developed audio dramas for transmission as radio programs. They have used the voices of several people who spoke as they experienced trouble and as they survived the trouble. They also use music with the teachings.
They made each program an audio drama. Each program lasted a half-hour. In each story, someone has a difficulty. Then a friend or a neighbor says something like, “You aren’t the first person to have this difficulty. May I tell you a story from God’s Word about someone who had the same difficulty?” In that way, they tried to show how someone obeyed a teaching from the Bible with the result that God helped them. They were trying to convince the people that God loves them. They wanted the people to understand that God can help them in their everyday problems.
Results
The team has writers, actors, and actresses. They developed the radio dramas entirely in their own language. They have also duplicated those dramas on audio cassettes. The team also goes to places where someone invites them to present the dramas as plays.
* Pseudonym
