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St Francis Magazine Vol 9, No 4 | August 2013
With its BCC’s and other materials, and missionaries on the ground in North Africa, RSB and
AWM were in a good position to awaken an interest in people by radio, begin the process of
corresponding by mail, and visit interested people in North Africa.
For RSB, its radio ministry was a tool for beginning personal interaction with the Muslims from
North Africa. The lack of a visible Christian church and the need to create a beginning of churches
in North Africa were the reasons for this approach. The disadvantage was that this led to the
production of programs that mainly aimed for mail. This did not create the broad programming that
radio and its audience deserved, but for an organization like RSB that produced a maximum of 90
minutes of programs per week, that was probably a wise decision. Moreover, the responsibility to
create broad programming lay in the first place with the broadcasters, not with the producers
In order to attract its audience, in competition against other radio stations, Vishanoff believed
that if ‘we talk about what they are interested in, they may be willing to listen to something they
hadn’t thought about. If we tell them the truth about things they can check out, perhaps they’ll
believe us about other things. If we work hard to stay close to them, and give them an honest
picture of God at work in North Africa, they may begin to believe that someone loves them.’ 135 In
order to keep in touch with what the audience was interested in, the workers of RSB visited North
Africa regularly. Shafir was always listening to other Arabic broadcasts to know what was
happening in that ‘hotly competitive marketplace’. Vishanoff himself had studied communication in
Tunis for two years. 136
4.2 Actual Productions
The first programs Harris produced in Morocco were 15-minute programs that consisted mainly
of Bible readings, sermons and speeches in colloquial Moroccan Arabic. These were produced with
Yūsif, a southern Moroccan Christian student. 137 After moving to Marseille, the programs became
different. In 1965, while RSB built its own studio in Marseille, TWR helped Harris by providing
him with tapes in MSA. TWR allowed Harris to edit those tapes by adding RSB’s announcements. 138
Since 1966 Ghūrī has prepared and voiced the broadcasts. Rider described Ghūrī’s style:
Toufic Khouri’s [sic] strongest point […] when he speaks on the radio [is that] he pictures himself […]
as a teacher, as even a sheikh, presenting the message of the Gospel in the same way as the Muslim speaker
in the mosque would present the message of Islam. 139
This gives the impression that Ghūrī was able to create a style of programs that took the context
of the Muslim audience into consideration, by adapting to the delivery style Muslims were used to in
the mosques. It is unlikely, though, that RSB ever used a style that could be termed Islamic. Ghūrī’s
style, with his perfect and reverent usage of MSA, was probably just as sermons in Protestant
churches of the Arab World were spoken. RSB would certainly not allow the usage of Islamic
jargon. TWR would not have allowed broadcasts of that sort. RSB wanted to produce its programs
in line with how the small congregations in North Africa thought, and that did not allow for the
usage of Islamic forms. The intended locus of RSB’s programs was the neutral living room, not the
mosque.
Ghūrī’s initial programs were based on one of the BCC’s. Later, he would explain the Gospels or
theological doctrines, or he answered audience questions. In most of his programs he would offer
BCC’s, Key of Knowledge, or some books. In the early 1970s, he sometimes included parts of
programs of questions and answers of ‘Adlī Fam of TWR. 140 Fam was an Egyptian Christian.
From the Middle East, many Christian materials were available for broadcasting, but they were
considered unsuitable. Stalley wrote in 1969:
135 ‘Awakening them By Radio!’, p. 6.
136 Ibid.
137 Stalley, No Frontiers, p. 53. Vishanoff in an email to the author (14 December 2002).
138 Stalley, No Frontiers, pp. 53-54. Letter of William Bell to Christine Ford (14 March 1994).
139 Rider, ‘Demonstration of Media Solution– Case Histories’, p. 2.
140 Ibid, p.1.
St Francis Magazine is published by Arab Vision and Interserve 19