Nagpur, India – Five young people hunched over an array of metallic objects and cords spread out before them, trying to figure out what went where. Two of the young men assembled a high-end microphone while another inserted the cords into a boxed dotted with plugs and buttons, and connected it to a laptop computer.
The group was learning to set up and use a portable “backpack radio studio” during the India Field’s first ever communications training conference June 25-29 in Nagpur, India. The conference involved one district superintendent and 18 pastors and lay leaders from across the field.
It was followed the next week by a two-day communication training in Chikhli for 20 additional lay leaders and pastors from the Central Maharashtra District, which then launched its own communications team – the first district communication team in India as well as in the Eurasia Region.
In both training events, the participants learned how to: gather stories about God at work through Nazarenes and how to tell those stories effectively; conduct interviews; perform communications ethically; plan and develop a radio program; write a radio script; and use radio production equipment.
The events made history for the India Field, which now has 38 volunteers, plus one field coordinator, dedicated to communications ministry in India, making it the largest combined group of communications personnel in the Church of the Nazarene denomination globally.
“[India] is vast,” said Dolphy Biswas, field communications coordinator. “We have way too much area. It is not possible to cover all that is happening by one person. The Church is operating in every corner in the country. So much happens and the global Church should know about it.”
The new volunteers spent significant time developing a field-wide communication strategy and a district-level strategy. The groups set specific goals they will strive to meet at the field and district levels within three months, six months, one year and five years.
According to Biswas, the overarching three objectives are to: work with the field strategy coordinator in reaching out to the nation of India evangelistically; second, within the Church to help connect the various ministries with each other and develop resources for them; and third, to support districts’ evangelism strategies through communications resources.
“Basically, we’re working inward and outward,” she said. “Inward towards development of the Church, and then outward to the development of the nation.”
The field’s team launch has been in the works for the past 18 months. She spent nine of those months pursuing government permissions and completing the necessary paperwork to get approval for launching radio programs in every state of India, so that once the teams were formed, trained and had prepared program scripts, they wouldn’t have to wait to begin broadcasting.
The new communication ministry is a kind of dream come true for Rajnikant Gaikwad, a pastor in Kalyan Church of the Nazarene.
“Radio ministry played a very big role in my life, when I was in marketing before I was saved,” he said, following the training. “Radio programs – that was the number one source for our office; we didn’t have television. I used to hear a program … very regularly and after that I came to Christ. So I know the value and importance of radio.”
The Church of the Nazarene in India has broadcasted several radio programs in past decades, but the pastors responsible for them retired in recent years. Currently there is no Nazarene radio ministry in India.
The sessions on storytelling were eye-opening for Rev. Vijay Bhalerao of Nagpur.
“I had a different understanding of story, that we can get the stories of only the great heroes and the great people or stories of people in the Bible,” he said during the evaluation time. “I did not have any understanding that we can get the stories from the people we are living around and the stories of those people can be a great encouragement to us or life changing to us or challenging to us.”
“Story writing and understanding its importance for the whole field was really important for me to understand,” said participant Pastor Amit Ulhas Nade. “It’s not an easy work and one person cannot do it. I feel this kind of seminar should be done regularly and more and more people should be challenged to be in this.”
On July 2, the new communications ministry in India officially kicked off at the Central Maharashtra District’s training time, when Biswas published the India Field’s new websites: indiafield.org and indianyi.org.
“It’s been our vision for several years to see every field in Eurasia take initiative in sharing the news and stories of what God is doing in their districts,” said Dennis Mohn, Eurasia Region communications coordinator. “The India Field is leading the way.”
In 2011, the Western Mediterranean Field also launched a communications team made up of young people from Portugal and Spain who envisioned a ministry that would support and resource local churches in evangelism and more efficient communications.
