Discipling Cultures Through Media

Whether we’re showing Tanzania’s first Swahili animation to 400 children in an Arusha primary school or representing one of East Africa’s best Christian bands at the top secular music festival in Zanzibar, Pamoja Ministries is successfully influencing cultures throughout East Africa with top notch Christian media.

Discipling Cultures Through Media means focussing our time on creating products like the En-kata photobook and taking the En-kata choir on tour in the USA, creating Nipe Jibu, which may be Tanzania’s first musical and releasing it at the Zanzibar International Film Festival. It means creating Yoeli, an animated film for kids, and showing it in schools around the nation. It means releasing Sauti Ya WaMaasai (The En-kata Choir) and Cheza! (The Sowers Group), and bringing the Sowers Group to perform at Sauti za Busara, the largest music festival in East Africa. And now it means recording a new album from The En-kata Choir called Hope of The Maasai, and releasing it world wide. This is just the beginning.

Discipling for 20 Years

East Africa was a very different place when Sig & Joy Feser began partnering with World MAP on a book called “The Shepherd’s Staff” over 20 years ago. Since then we have distributed more than 50,000 copies of this book to Swahili-speaking leaders throughout East Africa. The ministry is as vital today as it has ever been, and we continue this literature ministry (we believe 2010 will be the best year ever) and at the same time, we are adding new discipleship tools to target various demographics including leaders, children, and youth.

Cultures Are Changing

With the advent of the personal dvd player, the cellphone, the growth of urbanization, and the ever-increasing percentage of youth and children, East African culture is in a state of rapid change. In an article entitled, “Opening Africa’s Creatives Spaces”, our Director of Operations, Jeremy Feser, writes on the incredible changes happening here. Pamoja’s Missionaries are watching the trends in East African culture – we know that every new change gives us new opportunities and new challenges in how we engage the cultures around us, and how we present the Gospel message, and we are eager to embrace the challenge of engaging the next generation.

Media Engages People

Media is an effective tool for spreading the gospel starting from a person’s first contact with the gospel in a Christian movie, to early discipleship in children’s cartoons, to engaging youth in Christian culture with the message of powerful music, to dvd-bible school training and print resources for church members and Christian leaders. Pamoja engages people from within the context of the culture they live in. Pamoja engages people using every media tool at our disposal. Pamoja engages people with the eternal truth of Jesus Christ, His Message, and His Life.