While Ken and Jo were with us we partnered with the village church we attend to hold a one-day workshop on personal evangelism. The pastor notified all six other churches in his “zone” about the Saturday morning event. We expected about 70 believers to attend and were blown away when 416 showed up!
As people were arriving, William bought some time by telling his favorite African folk tale of how the frog lost his ears. The group was quite entertained by his hopping and drumming. Then the Jensens began their evangelism presentation.
Ken and Jo had worked with us and our language helper Talata to contextualize and simplify the Navigator’s “Bridge to Life” Gospel presentation. The goal was to equip the mostly illiterate believers with an easy to understand and reproducible method of sharing the Gospel. Ken focused on a single verse, Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That verse is one of the most concise explanations of the what Christ did and why.
In an oral culture, the best way to transmit knowledge is through repetition, story illustrations, repetition, visualization, repetition, cultural integration (through things like song & dance), repetition and active participation. Note how much repetition was in there? So here is how we tackled that:
- Ken first went through the Gospel message in English with Talata translating. He expound uedpon Romans 6:23 and shared stories illustrating each main point
- As he did this, he and Jo walked the group through a very simple drawing (the Bridge) that didn’t need written words to be explained
- Periodically, he took a break from talking for Talata to share a song in Mampruli that reinforced all the points in the verse
- Then William went through the Gospel presentation in Mampruli using the drawing
- Paper and pencils were passed out (we weren’t prepared for 400!) and they were split up into groups of 20 to practice drawing and reviewing the illustration
- Groups sent up representatives who each used the verse and Bridge drawing to share the Gospel to the whole the group
In the end, everyone had heard the Gospel shared via the “Bridge” at least 10 times and had shared or drawn it themselves at least once. That should make it stick!
The challenges we faced were in the workshop were once that we had anticipated. First was the slow start. We knew that our start time of 9AM wouldn’t be followed. It was 10:30AM before we started and even then, people trickled in until 12 noon. The second issue was that of illiteracy. Most of those attending couldn’t read English or Mampruli, therefore any writing on the Bridge illustration wouldn’t be effective and would be a stumbling block to them being able to reproduce it effectively.
Finally, the issue of Bible translation became an obstacle. The Jensens wanted them to memorize Romans 6:23 during the workshop but the dilemma was: which version should they memorize? English they don’t understand? The wordy Mampruli version that isn’t in their own dialect? Or the Dagbani one the is much shorter but has to be translated & paraphrased in Mampruli? In the end, we settled on a paraphrase of the English that we and our translator felt would be easy enough to remember and kept all the truths held in the verse.
After the workshop, we had a time of worship and various churches’ musical groups sang and danced. Then the churches presented the Jensens with some traditional clothes – a dress for Jo and a smock for Ken.
We thank God for orchestrating the events of the day. It was so neat to see such a big turnout and we pray that the believers are now even better equipped to proclaim Christ’s name in their communities.
Dama Ala’akyi yoori yoori n-tiri ka tuntumniba, ka lala yoori nyɛ la kum. Amaa Naawunni mun tiri la u piini yↄriyↄri, ka lala piini nyɛ la nyↄvuri kan ka tↄriga, Kirisita Yisa ti Dugma saani. – ROOM DIMA 6:23
