Open Your Bibles . . .

I’m glad to be back in Burkina.  It’s both scary and exciting to be on the last push of the work God has given us here among the Dagara.  Those of you who talked to me over furlough know that God has decided to focus our efforts this last year on the field on literacy.  The more I thought and prayed about how to use the audio new testaments we had been given, the more I realized that we were just putting a band-aid on a problem that needed a more comprehensive solution.

Now you’ve probably heard of different kinds of literacy (computer literacy, biblical literacy).  There are also different purposes for just plain literacy (learning how to read books).  For example, there are two different programs among the Dagara; one is a government run literacy program, and the other is run by a Bible translation and literacy organization called ANTBA.  I’m still learning about these programs.  I’m not sure what the focus of the government program is yet, but the ANTBA program seems to be focused on literacy as a means to economic development.  In actuality what this means is that the students that enroll in this literacy program, if they are successful, get some training in pig raising and soap making, and then get a small stipend to start a small business in one of those fields. This is a very worthy goal, and I’m excited that ANTBA has started this program this year in 7 of the 30 villages where there are young Dagara churches.  However it misses some things that I feel God has called our family uniquely to address.

When we go to a church service and preach, I often don’t even bother giving the scripture reference anymore and just say something like, “Paul wrote in one of his letters . . .”  This is because nobody knows or cares about the difference between Romans or Titus or Philippians, etc.  You may think that’s no big deal.  There’s a bigger problem though.  Almost everyone in our churches just has to take my word for it that what I’m teaching comes from God’s word.  There is however a deeper problem than this.  As they get excited about the changes in their lives and their souls, they want to share their faith, but they either give a watered down message or no biblical message at all and just a personal testimony about how good it feels to be in a church like this.  But there is a deeper problem.  With no daily relationship with God’s word, prayer life and meditation are not really what they could be.

Don’t get me wrong.  I believe God can overcome these things by the power of His Spirit guiding people’s hearts and minds.  He can put patient teachers in the lives of non-literates that can help with memorization.  He can put resources like the audio New Testament in their lives.  But I believe one of the best ways that He has always related to his people is with written text.  Many Christians go days, weeks, months, years, without cracking open their Bibles.  Yes, that’s a shame.  However, most of us have a choice.  Most Dagara Christians do not.  So I’m excited about where God is leading us.

We are on the threshold of planning and starting church-based literacy classes in as many churches as we can.  In these classes the one or two people that are already in the church that know how to read will be using primers that ANTBA has already produced for teaching literacy based on Biblical vocabulary.  My role will be in providing primers and New Testament texts as they become available (We have Mark and Acts, and Luke and Revelation are supposedly at the printers with a few more on the way), and supervising and training new literacy educators (we have begun talking with ANTBA about how to use them as a resource in training literacy educators).  We will also be visiting each of the literacy programs as often as we can to teach the discovery Bible study method, which is a simple obedience based way of studying short passages of scripture.  This way these new students will be able to start applying their skills to their Christian walk as soon as they get the skills.

What can you do?  You can pray for wisdom and strength for us as we try to do something that I believe only God can accomplish this year.  You can reply to this blog post and talk to me about how you can contribute to some of the startup costs of this program (printing primers and Bible materials).  You can thank God that you know how to read this blog post and then pick up your Bible and read it.  You can thank God that He loves you so much that He would write you such a big book full of messages to you.