A Christian worker, “Nathan,” sat with a church planting national partner, “Mustafa,” in 2015. They went over the partner’s church planting and leadership maps. His network of believers had been using microSD memory cards in their outreach for approximately one year. The microSD cards are loaded with digital outreach content and are given to those who can insert and use them in their mobile phones. People using this approach are mostly illiterate farm laborers. Mustafa reported that his lay leaders and church members are teaching more than 30 new house groups, which were all started after introducing the microSD cards just months before.
Nathan has essential elements for church planting recorded in audio on each microSD card. Evangelism happens when believers start a gospel conversation by showing portions of the Jesus and Magdalena film. The films can be viewed on a mobile phone screen, or the microSD card can be put into an adaptor and watched on a television. Follow-up is assisted by a set of 35 gospel lessons – each including color illustrations and the audio story. For discipleship, there are eight audio lessons for new believers. Following this, they have a T4T (Training for Trainers) type of church planting training in audio format. This includes a section on healthy churches. They include a Baptist Faith and Message audio, which helps to develop healthy doctrine in leaders. Lastly, the entire Bible is available in audio or written form on the microSD card, as well as in a daily audio Bible format.
Nathan has discovered that simple farmers or day laborers are using their cell phones to evangelize, lead Bible studies, and plant churches. Most of the nationals he works with know how to use the technical aspects of a cell phone even better than himself!
These believers sit with their friends or new contacts and play the audio stories. After anyone comes to faith, they entrust the new believers with a microSD card and give them instructions (using their phones) on how to lead others to faith. They also teach them how to do church. The microSD card allows more consistency in what is taught from generation to generation.
In addition to all the trainings on the card, outreach workers periodically use teams from overseas to teach special studies. They invited some third and fourth-generation believers to a training about the role of leaders and their characteristics, which had been also taught in the T4T section of each microSD card. At this meeting, the believers said that the material in the training was what they had already learned from the previous generation of believers. Therefore, the truths had been passed down unchanged. This has led to the conclusion that the microSD strategy maintains the integrity of the biblical material within multiple generations.