Zulu broadcast brings Upper Room devotional to new audience
Feb. 14, 2006
NOTE: Photographs are available at http://umns.umc.org.
A UMNS Report By Linda Green*
Snap. Crackle. Pop.
No, it is not the sound of a breakfast cereal but the beginning of the first isiZulu translation and radio broadcast of the Upper Room's daily devotional.
The broadcast is found on frequency 1170 MW on TransWorld Radio, transmitted out of Swaziland into KwaZulu Natal, one of the provinces in South Africa, via Medium Wave receiver.
For the first time, the Upper Room devotional is being broadcast in an African language. "It's plain for all to hear," said Roland Rink, coordinator of the United Methodist Church's Africa Upper Room Ministries.
As of Feb. 1, the devotional is heard daily at 6:57 p.m. Swaziland time, offering "food for the soul" to the almost 9 million Zulu-speaking people in KwaZulu Natal, an area with the largest Zulu-speaking population.
The broadcast is coordinated by Africa Upper Room Ministries and the Upper Room based in Nashville, Tenn., in conjunction with TransWorld Radio, headquartered in South Africa with bases across the continent. Africa Upper Room Ministries, housed at Anathoth House, is based in Eikenhof, an agricultural community south of Johannesburg, South Africa, and is the African continental office of Upper Room Ministries.
Following the three-minute initial broadcast, Rink said, "The music fades; so appropriate; Jabulani, Jabulani Africa! (Delight, delight O Africa!). A sense of deep joy invades.
"With God's help, we've moved from thought and words to action," he explained in an update about the radio enterprise. "A joint venture of faithful discernment by people from as far apart as the USA and South Africa - 10,000 miles - is successfully completed. ... May God give us the energy, courage wisdom and resources to continue to afford every African the opportunity to spend time with God each and every day."
According to Dale Rust Waymack of the Upper Room and co-coordinator of Africa Upper Room Ministries, "we see Africa Upper Room Ministries as a new way to be in ministry internationally in real-time." The 70-year-old Upper Room is a global ministry of the United Methodist Board of Discipleship and the devotional guide is one of five magazines published by the Upper Room.
The South African population has a 42 percent functional literacy rate. This radio broadcast of the Upper Room is the first of its kind on the continent, she said.
The radio's potential to reach the Zulu people is highly effective and economical to people whose tradition is oral, she added.
"We are hopeful that people hearing the Zulu translation of Upper Room, would want a hard copy of a Zulu edition of the Upper Room," which is being projected, she said.
Radio in this area can do what printed copy cannot, Waymack said. The production cost for one day's meditation to be made available for broadcast is $25, and even if 1 percent of the 9 million Zulu population - or 90,000 people - were reached, "there is no way we can print the Upper Room for $25 a day to reach 90,000 people," she noted.
Africa Upper Room Ministries is giving TransWorld Radio the equivalent of $30 in books a month in return to broadcast to the Zulu people.
Referencing a recent BBC survey, Waymack said one of the most popular pastimes for people in Africa is listening to the radio and attending church.
"We are helping bring technology into play in disseminating the Word of God through the oral edition of the Upper Room in the Zulu language," she explained. That option gives people a choice of listening to the Upper Room on the radio or reading an African-English print edition, a cultural adaptation of the international English edition.
The Upper Room is produced in five different languages for African people. African English, French, Portuguese, Arabic and Hausa editions of the magazine are first contextualized by African editors sitting in Egypt, Angola, Nigeria and South Africa. The magazine is then translated into their language, printed and distributed locally.
The Upper Room Daily Devotional is a spiritual companion for more than 2.5 million people, according to the Upper Room's Web site at www.upperroom.org. In addition to a daily message on the Web, the daily devotional is available in an e-mail format, and people in 106 countries read the meditations in one of the 73 editions and 44 languages in which it is published.
Africa Upper Room Ministries wants to expand the number of vernacular language radio editions of the daily devotional guide to reach more people in Africa, according to Rink. He has received ongoing requests for Swahili, Sesotho, Setswana and isiXhosa language editions.
"We are on the cusp of launching a French edition by broadcast in Kenya," Waymack said.
TransWorld Radio is helping reach the most remote, rural settings, and people are listening to the broadcasts. "Radio, for some people, is the only contact they have with the world outside their small village," Waymack noted.
Although the Upper Room is part of the United Methodist Church, it offers a daily message that is international, interdenominational and intercultural to spread the good news of Christ.
"At the heart of the daily devotional guide is a message for today that is written by an ordinary Christian from somewhere in this world who is on a faith journey, sharing their story, encouraging the daily discipline of reading the Bible, studying Scriptures and praying with others," Waymack said.
Relationships play a significant role in Africa Upper Room Ministries, according to Rink. Through relationships with God in Christ and with each other, "we become vitally empowered to see the world through the lens of the eyes of Christ," he wrote in a monthly newsletter.
"We are able to offer our perspective through the filter of the mind of Christ," he wrote. "We are able to offer compassion (our energy and action) to the world by taking on the heart of Christ."
*Green is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tenn.
News media contact: Linda Green, (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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