The Listen to Learn Institute provides impoverished African Pastors and church leaders in remote areas with audio-recorded Biblical teaching translated into indigenous languages made available on MP3 players.
Background: Listen to Learn
All across Africa, pastors and lay leaders serve the church faithfully with zero access to learning resources. They have a Bible or New Testament in their local language, but unless they are fluent in one of the major international languages, they probably have no materials to help them study, understand, apply and teach it. In addition, in some cases there are literacy barriers. Frequently, economic and geographic barriers prevent African pastors from attending any formal schooling.
International Team's Involvement
Listen to Learn Institute International selects teaching from established international teachers and arranges for its translation into the indigenous languages of Rwanda, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. Listen to Learn Institute aims to record a thousand hours of translated Bible teaching, covering all the elements of a typical Bible College curriculum. Recordings in 10 indigenous languages will be complete by mid-2009.
The translated recordings are distributed in different ways. The primary method is by organizing regional cohorts, or classes who share the same language. A cohort proceeds through eight modules of study, with the majority of the study being done individually via portable, solar-charged MP3 players that may be listened to at the student's convenience.
Often rural African churches are led by lay-pastors who would love the opportunity for more Christian education but are too poor to pay for formal Bible school education. These rural pastor's lives are filled with caring for their farms and families. Listen to Learn Institute puts a Bible school in their pockets. Pastors can listen to Christian teaching while tending their fields and cows.
In urban centres, churches organize classes of lay leaders to work their way through the audio teaching together. Listen to Learn Institute's responsibility then, apart from supplying the translated audio, is to train those who lead these classes.
Quarterly seminars provide students with two days of personal interaction with mentors who encourage them, share in their learning experiences, and guide them in application and discipleship.
For more information please see
www.listentolearn.ca
