Three million baptisms from the prayers of one man, under God, in the space of fourteen years, in a gospel-resistant region. Pow! Boom! Crack!
Having your expectations of ‘normal’ Church growth blown to smithereens can be mildly disorientating, like being whacked in the side or your head with a concrete block. Our ideas need to be in harmony with God and his world.
Our mental picture of the poor and marginalised who are coming to Christ in these areas of exceptional Church growth are in like need of correction. What are these these beleivers like? and how can you and I best use eLearning to meet their training needs?
They are new Christians
Even the leaders, evangelists, those doing the work of elders and deacons are new Christians. New Christians need… everything! from milk to meat as they grow in their faith. Graded traning/teaching is needed. New Christians (do you remember when you first met God?) are hungry, they will eat it all, joyfully, lots of it. A variety of training, which responds to their healthy curiousity to know more about God and his word is needed.
They are Ministering Christians
The Church Planting Movement builds in an expectation of ministry from the start. People’s needs are met by beleivers, through Christians in business, Christain charity and personal assistance in the name of Christ before they come to know Christ as Lord and Saviour and they are taught and held accountable to do the same, from the beginning. Ministry to others is in the DNA of these fellowships. Training and teaching must be orientated to local, personal and group ministry to neighbours.
They are… Legion?!
Pardon the pun. How would you train two hundred keen new converts? With near zero resources? In a language with no Christian books? Where most are illiterate anyway? Knowing that next year there may be 300 more? Whatever training solutions you plan to deploy they must be low-cost, in a variety of media, audio & video as well as text and readily scaleable.
They are More Bigger??
If you were to pay the 80,000 leaders it takes to pastor 3,000,000 people, at local wage levels you would have to spend $8,000,000 monthly.
If your elearning solution costs £15 per leader, that means £1,200,000. Plus the new pastors. Whatever solution you choose it must either be totally free and workalbe on existing technology or be priced to suit the local market.
If your solution is hardware-dependent how will you import 80,000 SD cards, smartphones or iPads? You will need the cooperation of local businessmen and local salesmen. You’ll have to become an evangelical Coca-Cola, with an easily replicable business model robust and simple enough to work in the most resource-deprived countries.
This will mean sharing the load, business plans, marketing, staff training, manuals, how-to’s and much more.
Think You’re Busy?
Well, you are. But so are these brothers in Christ. Especially the pastors and evangelists. There are no full-time salaried professional Christians, all of them must pay their own way and find the time for ‘ministry’ outside their work. Flexible, on-demand, asynchronous, readily to hand training is needed. Being teleported to seminary for three years is as realistic (and as productive) as going toe-to-toe with Mike Tyson and living to tell the tale.
They are In-Country and Won’t be Leaving.
Fancy a walk? I walked the marathon this week, my hips still smart. One of my Ethiopian students has a brother who works in Italy. He had to walk 1,000 miles in hostile countries and then risk his life and fortune crossing the Mediterranean. Leaving is not an easy option. The winning solution will be one that works in-country. This may mean that you spend some time setting things up and testing your solution locally, but your e-solution must be robust enough to require minimal support and outside intervention and work with the hardware people can afford and access in-country.
They are Living in Villages
Or cities, but mostly villages. Urbanisation is the trend through the developing world, but the majority still live in rural areas. How will you reach out with eLearning offereing to the villages? Internet coverage is growing, but is far from ubiquitous. Your product should be able to move from easily accessible urban areas to the countryside, you’ll need to incentivise local folks to make your learning offerings available more widely. The Africans I met do not lack entrepreneurial spirit, try to walk in Dakar city without buying something, it’s not easy! Are our preconceptions that education should be charitable or state provided justifiable Biblically? Are our principles so pure they are worth more than people’s Christian education? Probably not. There must be some free market component to the training mix.
They’re From Non-Christian Backgrounds
Your pastor is a Buddhist! Well, last year he was. That means he’ll have a different set of false beleifs from someone from a Western, humanistic background. An eLearning course on how to give Biblical debt counselling should look different when targeted to a Hindu-background believer than one directed to a humanist-background believer.
No Christian background means no knowledge of Christian forms or Christian doctrines, or history of the Christian Church. They might never even have heard of John Calvin. If you do your job properly they never will. This is the best way to honour his memory, bless your brothers and Christ and glorify the God whom he served so faithfully and tirelessly. They have no Christian-cultural framework, give them all the tools to build their own, nothing more pleeeeeease! We rightly titter when nineteenth-century Roman Catholics talked of the miracle of Mary’s house which was transported intact, by angels, from Palestine to Italy. But are we not more guilty still of being ridiculous religionists when we fly whole denominations out to the bush and dump them on the heads of believers when all they need is Christ and his word?
Sorry for the rant.
They are Culturally Different
Cultural form, like religious form will be different. eLearning should be as decluttered from our cultural débris as possible and should, in turn be contextualised by cultural insiders. This will mean giving people legal and technical access to your ‘source code.’ The barriers to unpackagaing and re-packaging content should be as low as possible. Part of this will solution will be to modularise your content to as much as possible.
They are Family Members
Individualism is an intensely western construct, the only child of centuries of humanism acting upon our culture. It is a sin we will not be wholly free from this side of eternity. Our training models are individualistic, emphasising individual achievement and anti-familial, can anyone say “Bachelors degree.” Whatever solution we choose we must think of implementation in family and other community groups.
They have no Church Buildings
Apparently nothing kills Church growth like… building ‘Churches.’ Training must presuppose different ministry environments and not rely on any Church infrastructure.
They Are Discovery-Taught
In many cases unbelievers have come together in groups for Bible study using the simple materials supplied by lay evangelists (friends and family members.) They have led themselves to Christ by reading, answering questions and then writing the answers down. They have not been used to the ‘broadcast’ method where one ‘ordained’ person lectures to a silent auditorium and have no opportunity to respond for clarification, elaboration, or argumentation. Even Jesus answered questions after his sermons!!! Any eLearning programme must be geared to this learning paradigm, a group setting, with debate, discussion and answers given.
They Have Little Formal Education
The paradigm of certificates/exams/awards, feedback via smiley-faces or gold stars may not be either comprehensible or appropriate. Some kind of certification may be appropriate, (non-state) accreditation may be appropriate, but I fail to see how. Local paradigms of what education is and how it is conducted should, where possible, be understood and respected.
Formal education tends also to be abstracted from the world in every way possible; all your eLearning endeavours should be as earthy and concrete in orientation as possible.
They Are Growth-Orientated
Leaders hang their head in shame when they’ve only planted five Churches. Expansion by their sanctified initiative, as part of a fellowship, in their DNA, if you lower the barriers of complexity and cost enough and raise your level of quality, Biblical faithfulness, relevance and contextualisation enough then your materials will be used by local folks to disciple to conversion and then teach new believers. Think ‘throwing stick’ not ‘attack helicopter.’
They are Obedience-Focused
Sunday-school was one big quiz, I was pretty good at quizzes. I went to Bible college where my ability to gather information, process it and then package it into a form called an ‘essay’ was measured. I wasn’t too bad at that. Your materials should have minimal emphasis on knowledge-dumps and maximum emphasis on obedience. This may mean scenario-based training. But it certainly must not require lessons in how to write an essay, if you’ve ever taught Bible college in Africa you’d know that the essay is not a universally recognised form for expressing oneself. Find the most acceptable local way of expressing complex ideas and respect that. Focus on encouraging/grading? rewarding? obedience in your materials. Focus on the context.
Conclusion
All these facts point to cellphones, the greatest technological common-denominator in the developing world. They point to a free-market distribution-model, entrepreneurs, local and expatriate will need to be brought into the picture. They require the university too. Cutlural and anthropological research concerning people groups will need to be referenced and the model of teaching adapted for the context. The techies, the educational technologists will be needed too. Cooperation with the people on the ground will also be needful. Translation to local languages will be need, SIL resources are needed to make things happen. All this cooperation will need… Facebook? LinkedIn? and an open approach to research. Let’s pray that God will supply all our needs and get to work!
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