News

Since early in 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has had significant effect on the church worldwide. Many countries have imposed travel restrictions, lockdowns, and insisted that churches not gather until the virus is under control. Of course, these measures have also had unanticipated negative impact on economies and social structures that have also posed challenges to…

Many times over the past ten years, we have reported how CSM materials are being used in ways that we had not imagined when we created the content. We first wrote our books and recorded our stories primarily for new English readers and to make them highly ‘translatable’. The books are now in 47 languages…

‘Rome was not built in a day.’ We use that cliché when we want to remind someone (or ourselves), that some things just take time. When we first were asked by church leaders in Africa to write a short commentary on the questions from our ‘little book’, Simple Truths for the New Believer, we agreed. We…

The effects of the international response to the Covid-19 virus have been varied. Some countries have approached the pandemic with calculated and mercurial actions. Others have been more reactionary and slapdash. In all of these responses, the world (and the church as part of it) have had to learn things that, while uncomfortable, may have…

In early February, Clear and Simple Media was able to send funds to Burkina Faso to assist in several translation and publication projects. We had reported in an earlier post that, as the books become more widely distributed, new language projects are added as a need becomes known. The translations now in use in West…

According to the World Federation for the Deaf, there are more than 70 million deaf people worldwide. Because statistics for deafness are difficult to evaluate, many estimates for the global deaf population are more than double the World Federation numbers. While population statistics vary, there is near universal agreement among mission agencies that the Deaf…

Burkina Faso is a country in West Africa with a population of over 21 million people. The country is populated with people from more than 27 ethnic groups.  In 2016, Clear and Simple Media began working with the national church in Burkina Faso to translate, print, and distribute our evangelical catechism, Simple Truths for the New Believer,…

Pougouli (Pwe) is the language spoken by the Pwo people in West Central Burkina Faso. The Pwo people are traditionally Muslim and/or animists. The gospel has made inroads in the culture through the influence of the Burkinabe church. The Pwo people live in an area of Burkina Faso that is largely populated by Dagaara people….

“Writers must be smart enough to hatch a brilliant idea — but dull enough to research it, keyboard it, edit and re-edit it, revise it, revise it, re-revise it, review the copy edit, proofread the typeset galleys…”  Joy Williams Clear and Simple Media is involved in many different things, but most of our energies are spent…

With limited travel this past year, we’ve been trying to find a way to get our Simple Truths book into other parts of the world. We still had several hundred Simple Truths in multiple languages and we did not want to keep them in storage.  Recently, we learned of a ministry called Love Packages. Love…

While the pandemic has caused a great deal of chaos and disruption in the world, there are some encouragements in the midst of it. In recent days, we had increased correspondence with our friends Dieudonné Sómé and Nebié Badiou in Burkina Faso. They have been able to find a printer to print the “stronger” Simple…

Our desire to create an online course based on our book, Travel Guide to the Bible, has taken some time to find traction. But in the month of September, we were able to secure the resources to launch phase one of this multi-phased project.  We have been able to complete three components of this online…

Over the past two months, we have been able to complete the questions for our online course from the Travel Guide. Our original project goal was to write 25 questions for each chapter of the book. This would allow a student to test themselves, not only on the content of the book, but on the…

For several months, we have been working to complete the content for our newest book, Simple Answers to Not So Simple Questions. The book is a series of essays written to expand on the content of Simple Truths, our evangelical catechism.  The essays will first appear as blogs on our www.asimpleword.org site. Then the blogs will…

Clear and Simple Media has been working in Burkina Faso since 2015. We started by consulting on a story development project with StoryRunners (CRU). During that six-week project in the town of Banfora, Simple Truths was translated into French. After some field-testing, we later added 6 more languages: Dyula, Mooré, Bwaba, Cerma, Pougouli, and Gourmantchema….

For several months now, we have been writing material for an online course based on our book, Travel Guide to the Bible. Our friends in West Africa have been asking for this for more than a year now. While this will be of great benefit to our friends there, we have had to adjust our…

One of the great joys of doing what we do is working with ministry leaders who are passionate about what they do. Last week, we shared a FaceTime call with our friends at Call of Love Ministries. Call of Love is an outreach ministry that owns a television station that does outreach to the Arab…

One of the ways to assess one’s progress is to mark milestones. Last month we were able to count another one. We are grateful to report that the Arabic translation of the Travel Guide to the Bible is complete. We started this translation in mid-January. While there were some delays due to the COVID-19 virus,…

Early in the partnership between Call of Love Ministries and Clear and Simple Media, the leaders of Call of Love believed that the book, Travel Guide to the Bible could be adapted for Television. Call of Love manages an Arabic language television station that broadcasts throughout the Middle East via satellite.  Their original idea was to…

When we first wrote our “little book,” Simple Truths, we had a limited audience in mind. We began the project for use in Vietnam, in Vietnamese, and a few tribal languages. Soon, we started hearing from missionaries who asked if we could help them translate the little book into their language. Today, we now offer…

Since March of this year, we have been working to respond to a request from our friends in Burkina Faso. We have been involved in this West African country since 2015, completing seven translation projects there so far. In 2019, Clear and Simple Media launched our French website (www.véritésimple.org) in Burkina Faso, and early in…

One of the joys of the ministry at Clear and Simple Media is working on projects that come to us unexpectedly. These projects are not always things that were part of our original plan for the year, but they provide us with an occasion to be involved in initiatives that have the potential to make…

Researchers estimate that, of the more than seven billion people in the world, 70% are oral learners. While one can argue with the numbers, even the most casual observer knows that people, regardless of language or culture, love a good story. Insights derived from oral culture studies have led multiple Christian mission agencies to have…

Sometimes we are asked how we decide on what projects we become involved in. The answer to that is not always straightforward. However, for the most part, the projects that we engage in are not things that we have sought out. Our projects have a way of coming to us. Since March of this year,…

One of the earliest goals we set was to build a growing catalog of materials that are linguistically simple, theologically clear, and biblically faithful. To this point in our history, we have written those materials ourselves. But we are increasingly seeing the potential to find resources that already meet the theological and biblical criteria but have a level…