Media Missionary Focus

Connecting and Disconnecting Through Media

I was just walking through the Bangkok international airport terminal and thinking about the people going by around me, and the various conversations I have been having with people, and the article I was just reading on the plane.

I’m on my way back from Manila in the Philippines. I was meeting with two other missionaries who head up Asia Pacific Media Ministries. We were meeting about a couple of different projects we are working together on, but primarily about some work we are doing for the World Missions Summit. This is an event that will be held over new years, and is designed to expose college students to missions and the short term missions opportunities around the world. So my conversation with these missionaries drifted toward what we could do with a two or three month short term worker.

Working with media, there is often a significant learning curve associated with our production work, so a one or two year worker could be pretty useful, but what about a one or two MONTH person? I brought up the need to always be looking toward emerging media. There is always something new on the horizon, and it’s difficult to keep up with all the new technology. Today, the big emerging media is web related. Blogs and podcasts are the hot thing today, tomorrow who knows. But chances are that college age kids will be the ones who know about the newest thing, so why not use them in it? For instance, why not use them in developing blogs and podcasts and other web related media in order to keep in touch, and help educate our supporters about what is happening in our ministry here.

So then on the plane I picked up the latest Newsweek and read an article on the growing disparity between the rich and the poor in Asia. It definitely mentioned the growth in the major Asian economies, but it also mentioned the more rapid growth of the poor class who live on $1 to $2 per day. This is something we clearly see in Cambodia, and all the other countries around us. With that being true, we need to reach out to both ends of the economic spectrum. So while we have to look for the next emerging media opportunity that will speak to the emerging well-to-do, we still need to look at what types of media we can use to reach out to those who continue to struggle to find a way to live day to day.

So now we come to the airport. I’m walking down the terminal concourse past various shops, listening to Christmas music on my iPod, and I start noticing the people walking around me. Our new web-site tries to incorporate many of the emerging media opportunities I have mentioned, all in an effort to be more connected with people around the world. But yet, at the same time, especially when I am traveling, I tend to use these types of emerging media to keep people who are five feet away at a “safe and comfortable” distance. If I am listening to my iPod, or surfing the web, or whatever, I don’t have to talk to the person in the plane seat next to me, or the traveler who looks confused in the airport concourse, or whatever. New technology and new opportunities for using emerging media and all of that can be good, and they can be bad. Like everything else, it comes down to balance. There aren’t easy answers in any of these issues. You can’t make a blanket statement about rich vs. poor situations or high tech vs. low tech, and expect it to be true across the board. Each case has to be worked through individually. That’s where we live here on the missions field. As I think about various things I have written about on this blog over the last few months, I realize that I raise various questions, but don’t give many answers. In some ways I wish I could give simple answers. That’s what pastors and missionaries and “professional” Christians are supposed to do, right? But the reason I started this blog was to try to give an honest picture of what missionary life is like, and a missionary’s life is a lot like your life; struggling to live each day in the place you find yourself in such a way that God’s grace can be seen in you.

posted by Troy In Cambodia @ 2:33 PM