These are the men who have given two years of their life to crafting stories in six mother-tongue languages of the northeastern state of Bihar, India. These stories were distributed prior to our partnership with New India Evangelistic Association, and we hope to expand the depth anbreadth of the Biblical content and add community development to their church planting strategy. Please pray for all of us as we plan and offer those plans to God.
Story Tellers
August 25, 2010 by Ed WeaverPartners in Bihar
August 25, 2010 by Ed Weaver
Over the next few days, David Swarr of Davar Partners and I have the privilege of being speakers at the Plenary and workshop sessions at the Bihar State Network for Linguistics and Church Planting initiatives. This is sponsored by our partner, New India Evangelistic association, which is led by Dr. Alex Philip. What a blessing to be here and to see what God is doing through this humble servant and his team!
Proof-reading is important
August 22, 2010 by Ed Weaver
Sorry, but I couldn’t resist posting this picture of a menu line item at a restaurant in Delhi. Plus, they’re available around the clock!
Geography
August 17, 2010 by Ed WeaverWell – Ed Weaver and JR Whitby have been to Nigeria and back; Mark Overstreet and board member Bruce Lowe have been to Kenya and back. The Nigeria trip was to wrap up some details relative to Phase I and to begin kicking off Phase II of continued evangelism and outreach in the northern states.
Additional partners to expand the ministry were met to discuss initial plans and old partners were included in the conversations to provide local insight and consistency in our approach.
The Kenya trip was for the purpose of local planning of our 3.5 year pastor/leader training without books. Most leader training is literate in nature – but many leaders will have non-literate constituencies – so how do we ensure they communicate in a style considerate of their flocks? Mark and Bruce have come back with a passionate vision of the future and we’re grateful for their engagement with our team on the ground and continuing to forge those relationships in Kenya that are so critical for the success of the ministry.
Moving Fast
June 9, 2010 by Ed WeaverJune has been a month of busy-ness already. Tim and Susie Brown have joined us from Scriptures in Use, and Mark Overstreet, PhD has joined us to head up pastor/leader training and provide leadership in strategy and development. Already with us in an increasing capacity has been JR Whitby, former CEO of Gospel Communications, currently overseeing three programs and soon to be four , God willing.
The third-party evaluation snap-shot of the first 4 months of Phase I has been completed by Calvin Edwards & Company . Please let us know if you’d like to see a copy. God has been faithfully at work among the Kambari people and we’ve seen many come to faith in God through Jesus Christ. Phase II work is getting ready to begin and we look forward to seeing the oral cultures of Nigeria transformed through whole-person ministry.
Contextualization – what a mess!
January 13, 2010 by Kyle McClellanWe use Google Alerts. If you are unfamiliar with this wonderful tool, you enter in key words or phrases and Google sends you blog and web hits related to your area of interest. Every day, I’m greeted with new food for thought thanks to the good folks at Google.
One of my keywords is “contextualization”. It’s a great word for what we do – quite useful in fact – or at least I thought so. Turns out, contextualization is used to describe everything from art to punk rock music to literature. When it is used in reference to Christian mission/missiology, the conversation becomes quite heated. Turns out, one must understand the context in which the term contextualization is being employed. What folks in North America mean when they employ the term is quite different from how the word is used when speaking of cross-cultural work among Muslims. Furthermore, missiological Titans like Lesslie Newbigin and Paul Hiebert employed the term in a third way – which only muddies the water and intensifies the debate. Would the real contextualization please stand up?
When used by emerging types here in the US, contextualization is basically a “get out of jail free” card. The historic and authoritative propositions of the Christian faith are set aside so that individuals can “contextualize” their own individual response to the dialogue being set forth by church leaders.
For those working among Muslims, the term is employed quite differently. Since Islam has cultural implications, missiologists have debated how far one must remove themselves from that culture to be an authentic disciple of Jesus. Do I have to change my name (usually to the name of a Bible character)? Do I have to renounce my family? Can I go to mosque on special occasions? Do I have to refer to myself as a “Christian”? The process of wrestling through these questions is grist for the mill of contextualization among those working with Muslims.
Confused yet? Don’t worry, we’ll continue our journey through the murky waters of contextualization . . . tomorrow.
Pastor Training in Kenya
December 9, 2009 by Ed WeaverThe evaluator for a separate Pastor training program stated that things got “beautifully messy” as the pastors took their training and passed it directly to the people of their villages – non-believers and believers alike and that lives have been changed.
To more completely quote Randy Coates, a missionary to the oral-culture Turkana in Kenya, who was the evaluator of the Pastor Training program:
….” the ministry effectiveness of the T4 device exceeded the particular objectives of this leadership training module. The recorded stories and songs traveled well beyond the initial target audience of church leaders: first among the general church membership, then into the wider community and then to other churches and villages. Among rural Samburu communities, use of the T4 device for leadership training inescapably and simultaneously became a general discipleship and evangelistic tool.
I believe the device works dramatically as a multi-level ministry tool among the mostly un-reached and mostly illiterate Samburu.”
We praise God for what He is doing among the Samburu. We’d be happy to answer any questions you may have about what is happening. To read this evaluation in full, please click on T-4_Pastor_Training_Evaluation
The KLP Office
October 14, 2009 by Ed Weaver
This is the office we’re working out of while in Salka, Niger State, Nigeria. Our Baseline survey team is out on their second day of work in Auna and Agwara – we hope to have an additional 200 surveys completed by tonight.
My team is in the office finishing 20 or so hours (in each of the three Kambari languages) of health, agriculture and Biblical stories, songs and dramas and loading them on 750 MP3 players so that lives can be touched and transformed by hearing the Truth in their heart language!
International Orality Network and The World Map
September 12, 2009 by Ed Weaver
This is a picture of a world map created by YWAM right before we began praying as a network for all the nations. We took off our shoes and walked on the map – praying for specific countries and specific needs as we lifted up the nations before God for His salvation of the people. What a blessing to be together and being able to put such a tangible expression to our prayers.
International Orality Network and The World Map
International Orality Network and The World Map
Originally uploaded by t4global
Samburu Pastor Training
June 22, 2009 by Kyle McClellan
Pastor Nicholas
Meet Pastor Nicholas. Pastor Nicholas is a typical Samburu pastor. One year ago, his church was small and struggling. They met under a tree and wondered how much longer this particular work could continue.
Last July, the MT4 project came to Nicholas’ church. In a 3-month period, 400 Samburu who were not followers of Jesus, became followers of Jesus. His church grew, and folks from other villages began walking to his village to go to church. Immediately, Nicholas and the Kenyan leaders of the MT4 project knew what they needed to do: plant churches in villages that had new believers, but no church.
This church planting strategy brings new challenges to pastors like Nicholas: How to train these new pastors? Many of them have herds of cattle and goats to shepherd and cannot go away to Bible School. A great number of these potential pastors cannot read, so how do you train them to be “mighty in the Scriptures”?
Pastor Nicholas is a part of a pilot training program underway in Samburu. Using the MT4 techonology, the wisdom of our indigenous partners and T4G’s oral strategy, 50 Samburu pastors are undergoing orality-based pastor training. These pastors will be trained over a course of 2 years without a single book, manual or paper being written. They will master 120 Bible stories, and have an understanding of how each story is a part of God’s grand story of Redemption through Jesus Christ. These pastors will also have an orality-savvy model of preaching, and will be under the tutelage of seasoned pastors like Nicholas.
