St Francis Magazine Nr. 3 Vol.

II (December 2006)

LIFE AGAPE - Experiment in Radio Broadcasting: 1978-1980

By Abu Banaat1

During the past 25 years, Life Agape has played an important role in Christian radio broadcasting in
the Arab World. Through its Arab staff, the organization has impacted the region with the witness
of Jesus Christ. This radio ministry began with an experiment of what Life Agape called
‘Discipleship Broadcasting’.2 This article is a critical evaluation of that experiment. It deserves to
be remembered as a testimony to God’s work in the Arab World.

Harold R. Jones: Discipleship Broadcasting
Harold R. Jones was the Cyprus-based director of
Here is Life - Middle East (HLME), a department
of Campus Crusade for Christ International
(CCCI) from 1978-1980. CCCI would later be
known as Life Agape. Life Agape followed the
‘philosophy of open sharing and discussion’ with
Muslims with an emphasis on studying the gospel
and the person of Christ with Muslims instead of a
more confrontational approach of comparing
religions.
Between 1978 and 1980, Jones developed a
series of 30 radio programs of 15 minutes each for
broadcasting by Trans World Radio (TWR). Jones
was sure that ‘many, if not the majority of [all]
converts, [were] coming to Christ through the
combined efforts of radio via Radio Monte Carlo
or Trans World Radio Ministries followed by
personal follow-up with correspondence and
finally contact by a national believer or
missionary’.3
The lack of liberty for expatriate mission
workers in the Arab world made Jones desire to
develop what he called Discipleship Broadcasting
aimed at Muslim Background Believers (MBBs).4
Jones’ goal with these programs was to produce
something that could be a foundation for a radio
ministry for Life Agape. According to Jones, his
approach was ‘mostly unconsidered’ in Christian
broadcasting and was enunciated as:
A culturally sensitive radio discipleship series from
Campus Crusade for Christ […] materials that will,
when broadcast to a predominantly Muslim
audience, yield a letter response in which 5% of the
respondees will be Muslim converts who are and/or
will be sharing the gospel with others as a result of
listening to the program series.5
The scripts were written and edited by Jones
himself. Great effort was given to insure that the
messages were true to CCCI materials and
philosophy.6 They were then translated into MSA
‘according to the principle of dynamic
equivalence’ by an Arab ‘with a background of
Muslim ministry’.7
The programs for North Africa were broadcast
by TWR from RMC-MC at 10 PM Middle Eastern
time each night during Ramadān 1980. During
the same period, but at 7 PM, the same programs
were broadcast by TWR from Cyprus on MW, but
in Iraqi colloquial Arabic. All listeners were
invited to write in for a New Testament, and to tell
Life Agape what they thought of the training and
how it helped them. For a free music cassette,
they were asked to write and answer 20 questions
(given one per night during the last 20 broadcasts)
and to include the names of 25 friends whom they
told of the programs.8 The 30 programs of Jones
were also used by the Baptists on their FM
transmitter in Beirut for broadcasting. Later these
programs were translated into some North African
colloquial languages.9
Programming Policies
Jones was, it seems, confused in his evaluation of
the predominant thinking in the Arab World. He
described the average city dweller in the early
1960s as having hoped for ‘a complete Islamic
revival and launching ahead in world dominance’.
By the time Jones wrote his thesis, in 1988, he said
that ‘the dream of Pan-Arabism that Nasser pushed
[…] had fallen apart.’10 Jones did not seem to
realize that pan-Arabism was not Islamic at heart,
and that its failure would actually launch a whole
new era of radical Islamization in the Arab world:
The point here needs to be well taken: the average
educated Arab sees that Islamic unity is more
superficial than real, once you get beyond the
cultural values. He knows that Islam per se has
not produced the Arabic peace and unity that many
Moslems believed it would.11

St Francis Magazine is published by Interserve and Arab Vision 1

www.stfrancismagazine.info - www.interserve.org - www.arabvision.org
 St Francis Magazine Nr. 3 Vol. II (December 2006)
At the same time Jones described the ‘resurgence
of the ayatollahs in the Middle East’ as a
‘weakening of the educated city dwellers’ hold on
the country’ since these educated people had not
been able to develop the Arab world into the
modern society they were looking for.12
The intended audience for the series was
literate or semi-literate people between 15-35
years old. They were considered to be urban men
and women with broad educational and socio-
economic backgrounds. Jones assumed that they
would be mainly Muslims who had become
Christians or those who were seekers. He also
assumed that ‘some Eastern Orthodox’ would be
among the audience.13 In order to attract an
audience direct mail was used to ‘direct Muslim
converts and seekers’ to the broadcasts.14
Jones listed hospitality, generosity, courage,
honor, self-respect, revenge, saving face, shame,
and aversion to physical labor, as common traits
among the Arabs. He based himself on Raphael
Patai’s book The Arab Mind. According to Jones,
these ‘archetypal values’ could be traced back to
‘the high place that every Arab holds of the
Bedouin’.15
In his programs, Jones followed the ‘non-
confrontational’ approach of HLME because of
historical sensitivities and cultural issues. Love,
affirmation and looking for communalities were
considered important.16 According to Jones:
[We] should write the scripts in a way that would
compliment his daily living routine and not
remind him of the negative aspects of it or of our
Western concepts of it. We should also show true
Islam, i.e., submission to God is yielding to his
Son, the prophet Isa (the Lord Jesus Christ). This
also forces us to use the words, the religious
words of Islam that would communicate to him
properly, true Christianity. Hence, in our script
development, we did not use a lot of Christian
jargon which Moslems would not understand, but
rather, Moslem words for Christian truths.17
Jones felt that words and expressions that would
‘offend the Moslem’ should not be used and he
cited terms such as Son of God, Lord and Trinity.
He suggested using terms that were ‘just as
legitimate that relate to the Moslem’ such as the
Messiah, the Word of God, and the One born of the
Spirit. These were all mutually acceptable terms
for Jesus. Jones did not want to use the Qur’ān
reflected that:
St Francis Magazine is published by Interserve and Arab Vision
www.stfrancismagazine.info - www.interserve.org - www.arabvision.org
We feel that the Koran would then be elevated to a
place equal with scriptures and we did not want to
get into the problems to which that would lead. Do
Moslems appreciate and love the Injil (the New
Testament)? They respect it tremendously. Hence,
we shall use that […] in the scripts.18
As regarding the literary style of the programs,
Jones concluded that shadow theatre had been
popular in the Arab world in the past. That form
of oral literature used an introduction, a dialogue
between two men of whom one was young and
fairly simple-minded and the other older, wiser
and more polished and formal. Therefore Jones
decided to also use two or three male players in
dialogue as the structure for his series of
programs.19 Jones wrote that ‘the use of drama in
Christian education on the radio was an
unexplored avenue.’20 He also believed that his
usage of a contest as part of the programming ‘to
test audience receptivity […] could be a first’ in
Christian programming in the Middle East.21 This
however was not true as the Near East Council of
Churches (NECC), in its broadcasts over Radio
Voice of the Gospel (RVOG, 1963-1977), had
used contests for obtaining information about its
audience.
Response
Jones believed he had an audience of at least tens
of thousands based on the ‘feelings of Middle
Eastern broadcasters of what their audience was’.22
He also assumed the times of the broadcasts for the
programs to be good since 10 pm in North Africa
and 7 pm in Iraq were the times ‘when people
would be off work, through “eating”, looking for
entertainment, and most open spiritually’.23
Before he began his project, Jones argued that
the letter response to the programs was the best
method of collecting data about the target audience
and that it had the benefit of being able to be cross-
tested. He viewed it as the most efficient, easiest
method to analyze accurately and with the least
subjectivity. Nevertheless Jones realized the
shortcomings of this method. He recognized the
disadvantages included that the responses were
only from literate Muslims and that some
governments were known to be clamping down on
mail. It was also conceded that many potential
respondees may have been fearful of writing to a
foreign address and that women may have met
with pressure from their families not to write.
Finally, Jones was aware too that audience
2
 St Francis Magazine Nr. 3 Vol. II (December 2006)
response tends to be favorable only. His
hypothesis was that five percent of the respondees
would be discipling others and he decided to test
that hypothesis using the actual letters that would
be received.24
Of the 208 respondees seen in Figure 1, the
vast majority were from North Africa.25 The MW
broadcasts elicited a reasonable response, but
TWR’s SW broadcasts from Bonaire (Netherlands
Antilles) did not elicit many letters. Only one
negative response was received. Of all respondees
96 percent asked for a New Testament. From
reading the translated letters, Jones concluded that
a total of 18 were actually witnessing, though only
two of those answered the 20 questions and
included the list of 25 people they had informed of
the broadcasts.26
Jones concluded that ‘Muslim converts, most of
whom have never seen a missionary, can be
discipled over the radio to the point where they are
evangelizing others. Even if expensive MW
transmissions are used, it can be very economical
and productive’. He compared the cost of
broadcasting the programs over TWR, US$25,000,
with having a small missionary family in Algeria
for a year.27
Some missionaries involved in broadcasting
warned Jones that the ‘Arab penchant for
exaggeration was probably true in telling us they
were witnessing’. Jones realized that Arabs, in
their literature and plays as well as in daily life,
use ‘exaggeration’. However, according to him,
the ‘exaggerated responses of commitment to
Christ and the desire to serve Him’ that was
evident in the audience response to his broadcasts,
indicated that ‘these people had truly made
decisions for the Lord.’28 If Jones had
accommodated the idea that the poetic style of
Arabic letter writing did not necessarily reflect the
reality of the ‘witnessing converts’ he was hoping
for, his hypothesis would not have been proven
correct. Jones responded vehemently to the
critical comments:
This explanation is very weak, since the scripts
clearly separated any offer of a gift from our desire
to know if they were witnessing. Besides that, it
St Francis Magazine is published by Interserve and Arab Vision
www.stfrancismagazine.info - www.interserve.org - www.arabvision.org
negates the important factor that a person takes a
personal risk by writing to a Christian station, let
alone saying in his letter that he is witnessing about
Jesus Christ.29
Jones underestimated the desire shown in almost
all audience response received from Arabs to
please the station they wrote to. He overestimated
the effect of fear on the respondees. In the early
1980s, thousands of North Africans corresponded
with Christian stations and that correspondence
was usually commensurate with the products that
were offered for free.30
Final Observations
It is surprising that Life Agape used its
international materials for a program that wanted
to be contextualized. The concept that basically
American discipleship materials can be adapted
into a script for the Arab World, is contextually
problematic even with an Arab Christian editor. It
assumes that basic trains of (theological) thought
are globally useful and only need some adaptation.
The plan to make programs that challenge the
audience to speak about the Gospel with others
was laudable. It focused on a concrete audience,
i.e., MBBs. The hypothesis was commendable in
that it was measurable. However, Life Agape
changed the goal posts in the process. Initially, the
hypothesis to be tested was that five percent of
respondees would have answered the 20 questions
and included a list of 25 names of Muslims they
had testified to. However, the number of
witnessing MBBs was eventually gauged, not by
using the initial criteria, but by obtaining an
impression from the general content of their
letters.
The fact that a free gift was promised to those
who wrote, undermined the program series as a
test case; people were used to writing to stations,
Christian or not, for getting little presents.
In spite of these criticism and failure to prove
the hypothesis, the test-series of Jones was
important as it propelled Life Agape into ongoing
involvement in Arabic Christian radio productions.
These Discipleship programs were broadcast
repetitively for some years, until TWR challenged
Life Agape to also make other sorts of programs.
3
 St Francis Magazine Nr. 3 Vol. II (December 2006)

Figure 1. Response to HLME Programs during Ramadān 1980

1
Abu Banaat is a pseudonym.
2
In 1988, Jones used his research for this program series, the letter response and his evaluation of that,
as the basis for a Master Thesis for the International School of Theology in Hawaii. Harold R. Jones,
The Development of a Series of Culturally Sensitive Radio Discipleship Programs for Broadcast in the
Middle East by Life Agape of the Middle East (Honolulu, 1988), p. 13: unpublished MA Thesis.
3
Ibid., p. 14.
4
Ibid., p. 57.
5
Ibid., p. 2.
6
Ibid., p. 50.
7
Ibid., p. 43.
8
Ibid., pp. 46, 50.
9
Ibid., p. 56.
10
Ibid., pp. 31-32.
11
Ibid., p. 31.
12
Ibid., pp. 31-32. The upsurge of Islamic fundamentalism was actually also an urban phenomenon.
Most Arab thinkers shifted their allegiance from pan-Arabism and nationalism to a more Islamic
oriented philosophy.
13
Jones, The Development of a Series of Culturally Sensitive Radio Discipleship Programs for
Broadcast in the Middle East by Life Agape of the Middle East, pp. 41-42.
14
Ibid., p. 41.
15
Ibid., pp. 17-22. See Raphael Patai, The Arab Mind (New York, 1976).
16
Jones, The Development of a Series of Culturally Sensitive Radio Discipleship Programs for
Broadcast in the Middle East by Life Agape of the Middle East, p. 36.
17
Ibid., p. 30.
18
Ibid., p. 37.
19
Ibid., pp. 25-26.
20
Ibid., p. 39.
21
Ibid., p. 40.
22
Ibid., p. 41.
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid., pp. 43-44.
25
Ibid., pp. 47-48.
26
Ibid., pp. 47-48, 51.
27
Ibid., p. 51.
28
Ibid., pp. 29-30.
29
Ibid., p. 56.
30
Ibid..

St Francis Magazine is published by Interserve and Arab Vision 4

www.stfrancismagazine.info - www.interserve.org - www.arabvision.org