BRACEBRIDGE, ONTARIO - "The majority of African pastors would love more education but they're farmers with a family, a few cows, maybe a small business, responsibilities... how can they leave their farms to get more education?" said Bill Fitch, Director of the Listen to Learn Institute (L2L).
Listen to Learn is a system of audio-recorded Christian teaching translated into local dialects and made available to the most learning-deprived pastors in east Africa - pastors too poor to pay for Bible school education.
"Sometimes African pastors will send me prayer requests. These people are praying for food to feed their families and for manure so they can get better results on their farms," Fitch said.
Students listen on their own time to Bible School level curriculum recorded on MP3 players. The ever-expanding audio library includes teaching by R.C. Sproul, Alan Vincent and John Piper among others. At the end of a three month semester, the pastors attend an ITCanada-sponsored conference to discuss and assess what they've learned. The MP3 players are then erased and new teaching is recorded. Students pay about 1 day's wages per semester. This serves to ensure students' commitment to the program. Donors cover the cost ($100 CDN) for each MP3 unit.
"At the end of a semester, students get a certificate. It's very motivating."
L2L teaching will be translated into Swahili, Turkana, Maasai, Amharic, Oromo, Kinyarwandan, and Ateso by January 2009 and more languages will be added as the program grows.
The church in Africa is alive and active but their desperate lack of resources makes it difficult to grow spiritually. Nevertheless, African pastors do what they can with the resources available to them.
For example, Pastor Frances Ranogwa and a team of 4 organized a four-day outreach program in a small village in Uganda last summer. Christian videos translated into the local dialect were shown using a noisy generator-run projector. In spite of the hot, noisy, cramped environment, about 500 people converted to Christianity.
"They have a gift of evangelism. It's such fertile ground. Then the team left. How can we just leave? It's irresponsible. We don't want to create spiritual orphans. We have to do something to help these people."
In 2007, the first L2L office and translation studio opened in Eldoret, Kenya with its own board chaired by Frances Ranogwa and a staff of two. A second office opened in Kitengela, Nairobi with one part-time staff and 2 translators. This summer a third office opened in Kigali, Rwanda. A fourth translation studio will open in Kampala, Uganda in October.
The average African pastor is in that role either because he feels called or by default because he's the strongest Christian in his area. In addition to poverty, these Christian leaders face another big limitation: many of them only speak a local dialect and most Bible schools in Africa are taught either in English or Swahili. While there may be a Wycliffe-translated Bible in the local dialect, there is no translated Christian teaching.
"That's the kind of situation where I see Listen to Learn making a big difference," Fitch said. "My goal is to make significant contact with 1% of the churches in Africa which is about 40,000 churches."
Listen to Learn is a system of audio-recorded Christian teaching translated into local dialects and made available to the most learning-deprived pastors in east Africa - pastors too poor to pay for Bible school education.
L2L teaching will be translated into Swahili, Turkana, Maasai, Amharic, Oromo, Kinyarwandan, and Ateso by January 2009 and more languages will be added as the program grows.
In 2007, the first L2L office and translation studio opened in Eldoret, Kenya with its own board chaired by Frances Ranogwa and a staff of two. A second office opened in Kitengela, Nairobi with one part-time staff and 2 translators. This summer a third office opened in Kigali, Rwanda. A fourth translation studio will open in Kampala, Uganda in October.