How small speakers are making a big impact

In India, our partner is using speaker boxes known as ‘Portable Life Changers‘ to share the love of Jesus for the first time with remote communities. We spoke to Karan*, who leads this work, to find out why they are such effective tools for sharing the gospel.

“My name is Karan. It’s been 20 years that I’ve had the privilege of partnering with Feba UK in this mission of proclaiming God’s word through radio, mainly to the hard-to-reach communities, marginalised communities and mostly in the remote and underprivileged parts of the country, often in places where access to Christian resources is extremely limited.

So I just want us to picture in our minds a people group who are hidden deep in the mountains, tucked away in a forest or probably far away in a desert. Let’s imagine this place – no internet, no Bibles, no Christian resources, no local pastors or missionaries. The only school or medical centre is hundreds of miles away.”

“Now what if I say the only thing needed to take God’s word into such a community is a simple portable speaker box. And this speaker box will now act as a local missionary. It will now act as a pastor, carrying God’s word to communities that are hard-to-reach.

So what we did is we began setting up listener hubs in the north part of our country. A listener hub is nothing but a gathering of six to ten people who gather at a place, like where families sit below a tree, neighbours welcoming one another into their homes or people from the village coming together to listen, to learn, to pray, to discuss the message of the Lord Jesus, to reflect upon God’s word, to meditate upon God’s word, to discuss and apply God’s word in their lives.

So what we do is we deploy audio boxes to marginalised communities to convey the truth from the Bible in a way people best understand and respond. We call this project the PLC – which is the Portable Life Changers. 

Our vision is that we want to build communities that are shaped by Kingdom values and healthy living. Most of them are the ones that don’t know Jesus, who have never heard the name of Jesus. They include the dalit communities (the lowest tier of the caste system in South Asia), commercial sex workers, tea garden labourers and visually impaired people – these are some of the groups we are working with.”

“Many have turned away from their bad habits such as alcohol abuse, smoking, witchcraft, practices of sorcery. Families begin experiencing stronger relationships, there is greater love within the family. There are virtues like forgiveness. As a result there is a noticeable change in their attitudes, behaviours and lifestyles. We see individuals and families beginning to live with greater integrity, compassion and hope and others begin to notice the difference.

Encouraged by what God has done in their own lives, many listeners now want to share their testimonies with their families, friends and neighbours, helping others to discover the truth of the gospel.

I would just like to pick up one story which is close to the international border of this country. It’s a people group that is so isolated, so remote that there is no electricity, no internet, no phones. It’s actually a jungle. We started an initiative to reach out to these people with the gospel of Jesus Christ using the PLC devices. Initially we started off by giving them Bible dramas based on the life of Christ in their language.

The background is they believe in worshiping the trees and the forest gods. Every house has a forest god, so it’s really challenging to work amongst them. So we begin distributing these speaker boxes and very interestingly as people begin to hear the gospel God begins to work and many people came to faith! Peoples’ lives begin changing and out of that there is this story of this lady whose name is Iji.

Iji is one of those people whose life was changed. She was unable to read and write because there is no one who is literate over there, everyone is illiterate so everyone is an aural learner – they love to learn by listening.

So when we distributed these [speaker] boxes in her village she wanted to know more about who this Jesus Christ is. She had a deep burden in her heart and a desire to read the Bible, but she could not read it. When we gave her the player she was super excited about it!

Through the support and through the ministry of the speaker box her longing to engage with God’s word was fulfilled. We thank God for making His word accessible to her and for the positive transformation taking place in her life.”

*Name changed for security reasons