Documentary Explores Evangelicals' Missionary Work

By PREETOM BHATTACHARYA

Religion News Service

LOS ANGELES - A new documentary film on the strategies behind one

evangelical Christian missionary group shows the power of mass media and

marketing to reach even the world's most remote outposts.

"The Tailenders," which debuts July 25 on PBS, is a portrait of Global

Recordings Network (GRN), an organization committed to recording Bible

stories in every one of the world's 8,000-plus languages and dialects and to

evangelizing with those recordings around the world.

"I think the film is about media and how powerful of a tool it can be in

changing whole belief systems," the film's director, Adele Horne, said in an

interview.

GRN, which was founded in Los Angeles in 1939 by Joy Ridderhoff, has a

vault of recordings with Bible stories in more than 5,400 languages and

dialects, including some that are seldom spoken or nearly extinct. The

missionary group reaches out to "tailenders" - people yet to be visited by

Christian missionaries and whose languages are fading as globalization

continues to extend its reach.

Alex Shaw, a GRN missionary, is seen in the film training others to

follow "the five steps of selling," in preparing a program: getting

attention, holding interest, creating conviction, developing desire, and

helping decide.

"One of the things I learned in making the film was the extent to which

GRN uses the principles of advertising and marketing," Horne said. "They do market research of the audiences, trying to get the message that is best

suited for a particular group - their hopes and fears and desires - much

like advertisers do."

GRN missionaries also learn to build trust, using language as a common

link to make the "tailender" comfortable. According to the documentary, GRN can bring a taste of home to migrant workers who are far from their native land and no longer have the opportunity to speak or hear their language.

The documentary also highlights the GRN missionaries' use of low-tech

means, such as cheap, durable hand-powered radios, because they often travel to areas with little or no electricity.