Using music to share the Bible in Mali

Bible Society in Mali, a West African country with a very young population and low levels of literacy, wants to make God’s word available to everyone.

Mali’s population of 21 million people is overwhelmingly Muslim, but Jacques Dembélé, who leads the Bible Society team there, sees opportunities everywhere. He says, ‘This is a rich harvest field for people to turn to Christianity.’

One of the ways your support brings the Bible to people in exciting and accessible ways is through music. And in Mali this is more radical than you might think. The country’s musical traditions have historically been kept separate from Christianity, and this hasn’t helped to persuade people that the Bible is for them.

So as Mali’s Bible Society team brings together folk musicians and gets them singing Scripture in local dialects, they’re powerfully challenging the notion that Jesus is foreign and irrelevant. The musicians are recording and touring, surprising both Christians and non-Christians. At a recent event in the country’s capital, Bamako, national Baptist leader Dr Mohamed Ag Infa Yattara said, ‘It was quite new for me to see the use of Malian instruments in churches, which was practically impossible before.’

Dr Yattara had wanted to experience this Bible Society project since hearing it praised by Mali’s alliance of evangelical churches, and he wasn’t disappointed. ‘I am moved to see the praise of the Lord radiating through our instruments, specific to our cultures. We’re living out what Psalm 150 says, that is, to praise God with all instruments.’

A local pastor, André Thera, shares Dr Yattara’s enthusiasm. He likened the performance in Bamako to those of the National Instrumental Ensemble, which toured the world for decades following Malian independence, sharing the country’s distinct musical traditions. ‘Anyone who discovers this team and hears their music, will certainly know that it comes from Mali,’ Pastor Thera said.

Hearing the performance convinced Pastor Thera he had a powerful new way to share the gospel in his culture. He said, ‘I’ve discovered how we can communicate and interact with the word of God through different elements of our cultures. It’s touched me a lot. This programme must continue and reach all peoples and ethnicities in Mali so that everyone hears the holy words of God and participates in them.’

The evangelistic potential of the project, which your support makes possible, was obvious from the start. Madou isn’t a Christian and was just providing sound equipment for the event, but the music made an impression on him. ‘We use these local instruments a lot in our country, but I never knew it was possible to use them in a religious setting,’ he said. ‘Although I’m a Muslim and only here to help out, I confess that hearing these songs and rhythms makes me listen to and admire what they’re saying.’

Will you pray for this breakthrough work in Mali? Your prayers are powerful and they’ll be a great help to church leaders like Dr Yattara and Pastor Thera as they find new opportunities to share the Bible through music.

You can also get behind outreach like this regularly as a member of Bible a Month.