Media Missionary Focus

Horns, Voices and Getting Your Message Heard

It is great to be home in Cambodia, and in reference to my last posting I must be in the zone! I did get the Computer replacement delivery I had been waiting for in Springfield late Friday night. By the time I was done setting it up and registering the various applications it was early Saturday morning (of course once I was back home in Cambodia I have since found a few applications that I failed to register in the States and have to do from here). But all in all things went great.

I was driving across town last night and as I was going around a traffic circle I was surprised by a loud horn that was of a variety I would associate with an emergency vehicle of some kind that you might hear in the States. I was pretty startled because it sounded like it was about ten feet from my car and I hadn't seen a thing (not to mention there aren't many emergency vehicles here to begin with). When I looked for the source of the sound I found not an ambulance, police car or fire truck, but a small 125cc motorcycle driven by a middle aged man. There was no emergency, there was no fire or criminal activity; just this guy who was announcing to the world his opinion that he should have the right of way!

This has been a growing trend here in Cambodia. Cars, and now even motorcycles, are installing extremely loud air horns that carry a sound that a driver from the USA would immediately associate with a particular type of vehicle (emergency vehicle, 18 wheeler, etc.). Somehow it all seems a bit disingenuous to me. I find it very frustrating to have one of these horns go off almost in my ear as I am driving down the road and have my heart leap into my throat because I instinctively think I am about to be splattered all over the front of a massive truck when in reality it is some little motorcycle who is ignoring the rules of the road and demanding his own way.

Actually, as I was stewing over this situation last night, it occurred to me that in one way this isn't all that different from what we do with media ministries. They install these obnoxious horns in order to stand out in a crowd and get people's attention. There are so many cars and motorcycles who are all demanding their right of way and using their horns that it all just becomes a general background noise that we tend to tune out and ignore. These overblown horns, however, are hard to ignore because they stand out.

Here in Cambodia there are TONS of different aid agency and missions agencies, and often it all just blends together into a general noise that people instinctively tune out. It's like living next to railroad tracks; after a while they don't even notice the train going by outside their windows. Media ministries is one way that we try to stand out from the crowd. By using audio and video (and more recently computer) technology to produce messages in a new format, people are more likely to focus in and actually hear what we have to say.

The trick is to stand out in a positive way that attracts people, rather than stand out in an obnoxious way that turns people off. That's where the air horns on the motorcycles and cars fail.

And that's where things stand in our personal lives as well. As Christ's disciples we try to live our lives in a way that stands out above the general noise of life so that we can draw positive attention to Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, we all know (and have probably at times been) the kind of Christians who draw more annoyed attention than positive attention.

Pray with us that what we do, in both our personal lives and in our public ministry, would be a positive message of the grace and love of Jesus Christ.

posted by Troy In Cambodia @ 7:13 AM