Audio Bible Impacts
Bill Smith and his wife Lori Smith are both missionaries who are highly involved in church planting through medical evangelist & theological education with the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE) in Papua New Guinea. Bill is also the chancellor of Goroka Baptist Bible College and his wife Lori runs the Seigu Baptist clinic in the Eastern Highlands Province of Goroka.
Bill and Lori have directly and indirectly been involved in the planting of 9 churches plus many more through their Bible College graduates. Their aim is to establish PNG’s local churches that will lead people to Christ, strengthen Believers, and reproduce other reproductive churches.
They believe that Church planting can be best developed in four major components which includes – evangelism, discipleship, leadership development, and reproduction of both churches and church leaders. Bill emphasized that the Bible is the centre of all of this and our people need to know the Bible.
Bill Smith was ten years old when he came to PNG in 1973 as a missionary kid with his parents whom at that time were working as missionaries with the New Tribes Mission (NTM). Bill came to know about CRMF (now MAF Technologies) later on in 1990 when he moved back to PNG with his wife and their oldest daughters to serve as missionaries with ABWE.
During that year, CRMF was based in Rugli, Mount Hagen, but ever since CRMF moved to Goroka, Bill Smith has been a constant customer and friend of ours always following up with the latest technologies to use in their ministry and for Bible distribution.
Bill adds that, “There are many other things apart from the projectors, printers, computers and 2-way radios etc that CRMF offer that helps to assist in the ministry.”
PNG is a very oral and visual society and much of what a Papua New Guinean learn is through audio and visual means. The audio Bible is an excellent tool for the older and illiterate PNG population but it is also very helpful with the educated population as most PNG citizens learn best through audio and visual means and not written forms of communication.
The audio Bibles are usually distributed to those that ask. These includes individuals and Churches located all over the Goroka area as well as the Simbai area of the middle ramu district. Bill and his team have distributed audio Bibles to the elderly who cannot read because they are illiterate or cannot see due to eye problems.
Recently Bill distributed the audio Bibles to a group of handicap people, some of which are Blind. They are also looking for ways to distribute to churches as a tool of evangelism to local villages. “I believe the audio Bible will be listened to more than people will read the printed Bible… I would like to see the 100 + Baptist churches that we have in PNG get them because this will strengthen the churches.”
Bill recalls buying his first Audio Bible in 2016 or early 2017. After witnessing the impact of the Audio Bible and seeing the effectiveness he said, “… I believe if 100,000 were available and people caught the vision of how they could be used it would literally turn PNG to the Word of GOD in the larger Evangelical churches in PNG.”
The Audio Bible are not only distributed to the remote communities, even people living in the urban settlements at Goroka Town need the Word of God and Bill has made it his mission to reach out to this ordinary People by sharing and distributing the Word of God to them.
Earlier this year Bill Smith donated a number of Audio Bibles to the Officers and Security Guards at the Goroka National Sports Institute in town.
“Papua New Guineans are oral learners- Hearing the WORD of GOD changes lives. The Audio Bible is simple to use but so profound on how it can affect lives! Praise the LORD!”
Bill concluded that he looks forward to many other opportunities to see CRMF develop technology to strengthen and grow the PNG Church! And like wise we continue to look forward to work beside Bill and Lori to provide the best and latest technologies to help enhance their vision to see the Word of God being distributed all over our Eastern Highlands Province and the middle Ramu district (Simbai), to strengthen the existing Church and plant new ones.