“Good things continue to happen in the Bangladesh ministry to rural audiences. It’s so good that technology has brought the mobile phone to the villages of Bangladesh, even if the poorest do not own one yet (though they do call from the village shop). With levels of literacy quite low, the phone does give these oral communicators the opportunity to contact us,” says Ed Larby, Media Consultant.

The phone is ringing

Wanting to inspire more listeners to communicate with his radio staff, Sayed, Bangla Programme Coordinator, introduced a phone-in segment. Listeners are always happy to hear their voices on air, and so he invited their questions, comments and suggestions. Starting on 25 April from 9am to 5pm on Sundays the phone is open for people to call in and have their questions answered. Sayed found that many of the listeners’ questions were on medical issues, not his field of expertise. So he decided to bring in his wife (a nurse) for the last 2 hours from 3 to 5pm, by announcing, "If your question is about health then please call after 3." The calls are recorded and edited down to a 30-minute segment for broadcasting on Wednesdays, and with interest growing some calls may air daily.

Programmes in the rural Bangla dialect are broadcast every day: one in the morning and one in the evening. While the programme in the mornings is for young believers (supporting their development of meeting together in house churches), the evening programme is for the majority community. The evening Lighthouse programme is a 30-minute drama that includes many segments: thought of the day based on Proverbs, health issues, stories with teaching on the prophets. And since April they’re broadcasting the listeners’ calls from Sunday’s phone-in time. Sayed says: “We are not just acting but we are demonstrating the teaching from the Bible, and people are listening to this programme and they are responding to us. Many of them do call us and sometimes they ask, ‘Could you please explain it a bit more,’ so from different places people are communicating with us.”

When the phone-in time was launched only 3 calls came in, but now they are up to over 30 each Sunday, with over 50% new listeners calling in. Mostly they ask spiritual questions about prayer, Isa (Jesus), Mohammad, the holy books…

Ed says: “Our Coordinator [Sayed] is well equipped to handle those questions [as a believer from a Muslim background] though they are challenging. Now he sees the need to train others to handle a growing ministry which will soon be too large for one person to manage.”

“I found through the phone-in-programme [PIP] that many listeners were listening to our programmes but never communicated with us until they called me in the PIP,” says Sayed. “I asked them why? They said, intentionally I didn’t do it because I wanted to see where your programme would go finally.”

Listener comments

• Thank you, your health programme is very helpful for us.
• Lighthouse is the best Bengali programme I have ever heard; please do not stop this programme.
• Where do you get such a nice content of your programme?
• Your programme has created an impact in our village and we listen in groups every day.

Sayed says: “What has moved me by talking to my listeners is that they found our programmes as their ‘trustworthy friend’ on air which is meeting their spiritual need.”