Zambia Episcopal Conference launched a television-broadcasting project called Lumen TV-Z whose mandate is to “let its audience and Zambian population in general have accesses to a non-compromised, alternative, and inspirational media paradigm, from which they can draw information, knowledge and inspiration to engage in their own personal and community advancement, integral development and social wellbeing.” The Lumen TV Programming Preparatory Committee identified a catechetical program called “Rediscovering my Catholic Faith” a one-hour program designed for TV, bringing experts from the fields of Scripture, Dogma and moral theology to a round table discussion to deliberate on various theological issues that most Catholics raise as they try to live their catholic faith. The training of the television producer of the program “Rediscovering my Catholic Faith,” and the subsequent production of TV interactive programs were done with the support of the Pontifical Missionary Union at the Catholic Media Services studios in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. Lumen TV-Z wanted to provide a genre of programs that catered for all ages and both sexes, including children and youths who form at least 56 percentage of the Zambian population.
A two-week studio-based training of six staff was carried out. The staff was introduced to the use of new equipment, equipment safety and basic connections of the equipment.
The second phase was also a studio-based training on theory and practical usage of the equipment. This phase in training comprised of studio crew and possible presenters of the program. Presenters did some ‘demo’ presentations of interviews.
The last phase in this section of training was a both studio and field bases training on theory and practical lessons. This training involved editing, scheduling programs for television broadcasting and social media broadcasting.
Mainly two presenters were used for the production of ‘Rediscovering my Catholic Faith series of programs. A total of 35 programs have been produced and aired on Lumen TV from 7 September 2019 to 26 August 2020. DVDs regarding four catechetical topics, namely Mass, Introduction to the Bible, The Holy Week and Sacrament and Marriage were produced. The catechizers have made use of these DVDs as resource materials to teach lessons to the initiates in the Catholic Church.
“We strive to be a television that promotes human dignity by communicating the Catholic faith. Going forward, we at Catholic Media Services TV aim to continue the work of formation and evangelization using the media, particularly Lumen TV. We hope to generate an evangelization project to raise more catechetical programs especially in those doctrine areas that we need to produce such as Canon law, Mariology, Sacraments, Social Teaching of the Church, and so on.”
