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Since 2008, the Bible Society of Papua New Guinea has distributed over 800 “Proclaimers” featuring audio versions of the New Testament in both English and Tok Pisin.

In this joint project with the Faith Comes By Hearing ministry, staff from the PNG Bible Society distribute the Proclaimers to isolated churches through the four ministers fraternals operating in Papua New Guinea.

What is a Proclaimer?
The Proclaimer is a digital player dedicated to playing God’s Word in the local heart language.

• An installed microchip contains Scriptures in the heart language; the chip will not erase or wear out from frequent playing.
• The battery will play for 15 hours and can be recharged enough times to play the entire New Testament more than 1,000 times.
• The Proclaimer has a built-in generator and solar panel to charge the battery.
• The solar panel, in addition to charging the battery, will run the Proclaimer even without battery power as long as there is sunlight.
• The sound is digital quality and loud enough to be heard clearly by groups as large as 300.

The Proclaimer was developed primarily as a playback device for poor and illiterate people who may not have any other source to hear God’s Word.

PNG Bible Society Vision

The PNG Bible Society has a vision and a passion to see more young people involved in reading and hearing the Scriptures – especially in their own language or ‘Tok Ples”.  They have plans to build a studio in their existing warehouse in order to make audio recordings of the New Testament.  There are over 800 different languages in Papua New Guinea and they have determined that the best place to start is with the Enga region tok ples, which amazingly is spoken by the one people group.

On Friday I visited the Christian Leaders Training College (CLTC) in Banz, Papua New Guinea.

I met with Mr Philip Bungo who is the co-ordinator for the TEE (Theological Education by Extension) program being run by CLTC.
CLTC has designed this program to cater for lay workers, elders, pastors, local Bible school teachers, and church leaders to study towards their “Certificate of Christian Foundations”.

“The need for sound Biblical teaching and training of Christian leadership is one of the most urgent issues in our country and the South Pacific Islands today” says Mr Bungo.  Mr Bungo came to Christ through studying a TEE course when in prison many years ago.

The Certificate of Christian Foundations is a course which is designed to integrate Biblical knowledge to equip and enable a student to become a true disciple of Christ.  The courses also equip a student to minister to their churches and families.  Students are able to learn in their home community and not leave home or travel across PNG to study.  This also allows students to remain active in ministry while they study.

There are three main components of TEE study:

1. Home Study – a goal set of one unit per week (approx. 4 hours) with students studying at home using learning material provided by CLTC. Workbooks contain learning notes, questions and revision tasks
2. Practical Assignments – Each unit of study has a project or practical assignment to be done i order to put their learning into practice.
3. Regular Small Group Seminars – these provide opportunity for students to share together what they have been learning.  Led by a tutor, these groups are occasions of mutual encouragement, fellowship and spiritual growth.

He currently has over 1000 students across the country studying various courses on topics including:

• Discipleship
• Worship
• Marriage and Family Life
• Life of Christ
• Childrens Ministry
• and 11 other topics

Each of these courses costs less than PGK40 (40 Kina is about AUD$17) and yet despite the low costs many Papua New Guineans in remote areas simply cant afford to take the courses.  If you are prompted to help support the training of isolated PNG church leaders by covering their costs for some or all of their TEE courses contact me.  The courses are made available in both English and Tok Pisin and can be studied in a group of 7 – 12 led by a tutor or in isolated student mode.

As these students grow spiritually, the Church in Papua New Guinea becomes more spiritually mature and better equipped to be used by God to reveal Himself to others.

Pray that all those wanting to study, learn and grow will be able to with the removal of whatever barriers they face.

We’ve just started a teaching series on the book of Acts in church today.  I created a Wordle out of all the text in Acts 1 – 28 just for interest.  Wordle is a free online tool for creating “word clouds” out of a selection of text. The frequency of a word in the text being ‘wordleised’ determines it’s size in the resulting Wordle.

Interpret it below:

What impressions do you get when visualising the entire text of Acts in a Wordle?

At BibleTech 2010 I attended a presentation from Aaron Linne (from B&H Publishing) who presented the Bible Navigator X – a Bible reader for the X Box 360 – not only is it the first Bible for the XBox 360 – it’s also the first book…….

Bible Navigator X includes a complete HCSB Bible, has search and bookmarking features and can be purchased for USD$5 or 400 Microsoft Points.

Aaron demoed the app on Saturday night and I liked how it looked. The highlighted verse changes as selected by the XBox controller, the theme can be changed to different colours, the font sizes easily changed, when shown on a widescreen HD television its a great resource for a small group looking at different passages. I can see our youth in front of an LCD TV Xbox plugged in, getting plastered with scripture. Cool.

Now that the text is on – who knows what we should be looking out for next:

• incorporated games – fighting battles alongside Joshua?
• movies, images and audio enhancements?
• virtual tours or interactive fly-overs across some of the locations mentioned in Scripture?
• shared online reading and discussing of scripture?
• game level styled Bible reading plans?

Great work by Aaron and his team!