The Need

The five key challenges for theological education in the Global South

Our hope is to develop an effective way for christians in the Global South to learn how the Bible fits together, with Jesus and his gospel of grace at its heart. From the start of this project, we've sought to understand our audience's needs deeply in order to design an effective solution. We interviewed dozens with a range of backgrounds, including theological educators, leaders, missionaries, media producers and broadcasters.

Challenges

This research surfaced five broad challenges in addressing the need of christians in the Global South to learn the Bible well. Below is our framework that describes these five challenges and how they interact, with a case study to illustrate how they apply.

The five challenges are:

• poverty, which limits their access to most things, including formal education;
• the large scale of this need, which makes formal, traditional education impractical to deploy;
• orality, which makes traditional, formal courses difficult;
• rote education, which hasn't trained them at reading the Bible deeply for themselves; and
• a works/prosperity worldview, often flowing from an animistic background which seeks to control the spiritual realm and which takes grace away from the gospel.

Poverty

Sam is 18 year old who has just moved from his village to a big city. He's finished school, and is now looking to find work and make money. He lives in a basic apartment with two other young men. He lives on about USD $5-10 per day. He has a old Android Go smartphone that he bought second hand after some hard saving. It was worth it and he values it highly, because it helps him in many ways. He avoids downloading anything on the go, but takes advantage of WiFi at work and an internet cafe. He's found some work at a nearby hardware store, but the work (and thus the pay) can vary from week to week. He dreams of buying his own scooter one day, but for now he gets around in his bicycle. Finding a well paid job abroad would change his life, but it seems too hard to find. Entertainment such as pop music and video clips on his mobile let him escape for a little while. Sam grew up in a traditionally Christian ethnic group, but he questions his faith sometimes: if God is good, why is life so hard?

Christians in the Global South have low incomes - this is the most obvious challenge. They can't afford current formal course offerings. However, their incomes are also unpredictable. It is hard for them to plan more than a few weeks ahead, as they don't know. Indeed, many live week to week or even day to day. Additionally, most are time poor as well as financially poor. Things that westerns would consider basic, such as transport or getting water, take much longer. Attending a course often involves travelling to another place, taking time away from home chores and paying jobs. Enrolling into a formal course with an upfront fee which commits the student over several months in the future would typically be out of reach. Education is seen as a pathway out of poverty, and a credential is valued highly. However, the 'first step' is too difficult for most.

Scale

Sam attends a large church of close to 500. It's part of a large denomination that has been planting churches throughout his country. Sam's church has one pastor, and he needs to supplement his income with another job. He has completed primary school, but has no formal theological education. He does the best he can, but wishes there were resources that would help him teach the Bible well. A few aid agencies are involved in his area, but they are overwhelmed with the need.

The church in the Global South has grown significantly: there are 400-500 million evangelicals in Africa, Latin America, and Asia ¹. While the church's growth has been wonderful, it has stretched its ability to disciple and train belivers with good biblical training that suits them. The church's rapid growth has raised the need for strong and well-trained leaders as well as good discipling and training resources for lay christians. Subsidising current formal education for some is helpful, but it is not feasible to serve all christians with traditional formats.

Rote Education

Sam completed five years of high school. He remembers repeating the teacher's words, even though he often didn't really understand. At church, he listens to his pastor but often doesn't understand. He wouldn't consider asking his pastor any questions - he doesn't want to offend him. He knows several Bible stories well, but he's not sure what to make of them in his own life. If asked 'does God save us by grace?', he knows the answer is 'yes', but he hasn't really understood deeply what that means in his daily life - he still feels he needs to earn God's blessing. If things got particularly hard, he'd consider returning to his village to see what the shaman says. There is no small group where he might discuss the Bible, mostly because there are no qualified leaders. He has no confidence in reading the Bible for himself. He often listens to preachers on the radio who seem to say different things than his pastor, but has no way of discerning between them.

Rote education refers to a culture of being given the answers by the teacher, and then simply repeating them when asked. The teacher is the authority and source of knowledge, and asking questions can be seen as questioning their authority or bringing shame on their abilities. Critical thinking, asking questions, and learning from first principles to come to a deeper understanding is not taught or encouraged. Although God gifts his church with teachers that we submit to, we are also to weigh up their teaching with discernment, with the Bible as the standard. When christians are not taught to read the Bible for themselves, they are vulnerable to fall into misunderstandings. Further, the Bible's teaching is likely to be taken at a superficial level only, rather than transforming deeply the whole of life.

Orality

Sam has basic literacy: he can read signs and basic instructions, and he texts often. However, he hasn't read a book in years - he wouldn't enjoy it. None of his relatives or friends would read a book for entertainment. He listens to the radio, and enjoys music and short video clips on his phone. He often shares these files with friends via Bluetooth. Friends have told him he should enrol in a course to get ahead, but he feels threatened at the thought of all the reading involved.

Most christians in the Global South don't have a strong 'reading culture': learning by reading and even reading for leasure are uncommon. Rather, they have a strong preference for learning orally through stories and drama. Concrete thinking and discussion is preferred over abstract concepts. Orality is not the same as illiteracy: many oral learners will have some basic literacy level. Further, orality is a cultural dynamic rather than merely a skill, and so cannot be addressed with just literacy training.

Works/Prosperity Worldview

Sam often wonders why her life is so hard, when he hears that God is good and full of blessing. Sam grew up with some animist practices in her family and developed a deep sense of the need to pacify spirits for life to go well. He also hears preachers promising success in this world, if he only has enough faith. He can't help thinking that God has something against him, and wonders what he must do to gain his favour.

A common worldview is that God blesses those who are 'good enough', leading to the understanding that the rich are good enough for God​'s blessings but the poor ​must be under God's curse. Its focus is on getting God's stuff rather than God Himself: a personal, intimate, and loving relationship with our creator. This is reinforced by a background of animism which seeks to control the spiritual realm through payments, ceremonies, special words and charms. Jesus becomes merely a tool for gaining what our worldly heart desires, rather than gaining a new heart that desires God over his stuff. It promotes a trust in our own efforts, rather than a trust in Jesus as God's chosen rescuer of humanity. It takes grace away from the gospel. This is the deepest challenge. As with Western christians, Christianity can too often be a veneer over a deeper set of beliefs (e.g. paganism or animism) which actually drive a person. The gospel can be kept in a box for Sundays without affecting the rest of life - especially in the absence of good discipleship.

How they interact

We sense that the interactions between these five challenges are important. We have laid these out in the diagram below intentionally, with increasing difficulty and complexity from the top down. We see three dimensions to the needs: economics, educational format, and core beliefs.

Poverty and Scale form the economic dimension to the need. Individually these are the 'easiest' challenges to solve because mere money would go a long way to address them. However, when combined, the two make it hard to address this dimension sustainably. Poverty means that christians can't afford traditional offerings, and the scale of the need means Western organisations cannot afford to subsidise them for all.

Rote Education and Orality form the educational/learning dimension, as they affect the way christians learn. Combined, they make it hard for lay christians to read the Bible for themselves and learn its great truths from first principles. Sadly, this can leave them vulnerable to unhelpful and false teaching. Further, it makes it harder for them to reflect on how these truths impact on their whole lives: marriage, money, parenting, work, etc. This can lead to Christianity being adopted at a superficial level.

Works/Prosperity Worldview forms the 'beliefs' dimension - the most fundamental challenge. In combination with the 'rote education' challenge, it means that even someone doing a theology course might learn more facts about the Bible without challenging this worldview.

Opportunities

Although these seem huge challenges, we also see several exciting opportunities:

• Church growth: The growth in the church over the last few decades has been simply astonishing. There is a recognised need for discipleship and Bible teaching resources.
• Economic growth: Although much progress is still required, millions have been lifted from abject poverty in the last few decades. For example, inflation-controlled GDP per capita in sub-Saharan Africa has tripled since 2000 ². This creates a growing aspirational class, for whom education is a valued service. C. K. Prahalad has argued convincingly that low income populations can offer sustainable markets, when the product or service is designed specifically for them ³.
• Young demographics: The Global South population is young. For example, over 41% of Africans are under 15 years old ⁴.
• Mobile broadband: Access to mobile phones has exploded in the developing world, with penetrations well above 90%. About one in three people in the Global South are already online, and improving fast. Two third of all people online live in the Global South. Online access comes via cheap Android smartphones with larger screens, web access, and multimedia support, which are also growing very fast. Although data charges are very expensive for the local population, this is likely to drop in the near future. As a specific example, in India, "every second three more Indians experience the internet for the first time. By 2030 more than 1 billion of them will be online." ⁵ In Myanmar, where we launched our first production, smartphones are much more common than feature phones, as smartphones were the more common offering when its economy opened.

Our Approach

Overall, the context of Glboal South christians calls for a radically new approach which addresses the five challenges while harnessing the four opportunities. Traditional educational formats used in the Western world were designed for a very different audience: wealthy, highly literate, well trained in critical thinking and Bible reading, and generally taught the gospel well. Therefore, traditional Western approaches will find it hard to help lay christians in the developing world facing these challenges. Under God's kindness, and with considerable efforts by both Western and Global South christians, these offerings have blessed many. Without a doubt, formal theological education will continue to be the way church leaders are trained.

We have designed Cursed to Bless from scratch for this particular context and audience, with their own needs and context. It can be distributed for free at huge scales. It helps rote-educated oral learners to think deeply and consider the text for themselves. Lastly, it uses the power of drama to challenge deep beliefs. Below, we outline how Cursed to Bless relates to each of the five challenge and four opportunity:

• Poverty: The audio lessons can be accessed freely over the web, shared as a file via Bluetooth, loaded on to media devices such as MegaVoice, or even broadcast over radio. As an audio file, it is smaller to download and store, and it can be played on basic feature phones. It can be downloaded when mobile data isn't charged (e.g. WiFi), and played later.
• Scale: The audio lessons can be distributed at huge scales over the web, with bandwidth costs low and getting lower. Further, audio content requires significantly less space and bandwidth than video. Radio broadcasts could reach large areas at no costs, given broadcasters are often happy to distribute content at no charge. Our trials have shown the importance of helping a small group understand the value of learning biblical theology and how to learn in this format. We've been working on how to train group facilitators, and designing the series so that it is as self-guided as possible.
• Rote Education: As an informal drama, without a formal teacher role, it puts the audience in the middle of engaging dilemmas between contrasting model characters, so the audience must think through it. The lessons encourage discussion in a small group, encouraging reflection rather than simple repetition of an answer. The humour in the drama helps the audience relax and enjoy the learning process in a more playful manner.
• Orality: It offers an entertaining and relevant story about characters that the audience identifies with, dealing with concrete situations that illustrate and contextualise abstract truths. Rather than requiring the audience to grapple with the text on their own or limiting themselves to stories from narrative passages, it presents a story about characters just like them as they wrestle with the text. The simple dramas can be enacted as part of the learning process, and could even be used for assessment. The scripts include repetition of key summary concepts and encourage Bible memorising.
• Worldview: It uses the power of drama to contrast God's way of grace with our own way of works, to challenge and transform world views through the deep emotional bond with the protagonist. It intentional includes a character with a works based worldview, introducing conflicting views that can then be explored explictly and challenged.
• Church growth: We aim to work with churches and their leadership, so that the church can grow together and the leaders can also be helped to develop further. Cursed to Bless can work as an onramp towards more formal education for future church leaders, while also giving leaders a resource to teach biblical theology.
• Economic growth: We want to offer a pathway to more formal theological education for the growing aspirational population rising from poverty. We are exploring a paid day conference model that learners could attend after completing the audio drama, to deepen their learning and recognise it with a credential.
• Young demographic: The story focuses on young characters, dealing with the life situations that young people commonly face. Young people are generally more open to new ways of learning such as this.
• Mobile broadband: It has been designed from the start with mobile phones as the target device. Audio lessons could be downloaded anywhere with internet access, with smaller storage and bandwidth requirements. Mobile data costs could be avoided altogether via downloading it when WiFi is available or via Bluetooth sharing. They can be played on basic feature phones. For people with a smartphone (such as cheap and common Android Go smartphones), our lesson apps offer a more visual and interactive format.

What do you think?

We appreciate that these are broad generalisations, and that there is wide variety within countries, let alone the whole developing world. We are not putting ourselves forward as experts, but simply sharing what we have learnt so far. We have reflected on how Western christians can also put a christian veneer over a materialism or consumerism worldview. We also think that we are all oral learners and find stories a powerful way to learn, especially when it comes to challenging deep beliefs and worldviews. It is only through the gift of extensive quality education that we can develop our literacy skills, which help us think more abstractly.

We are keen to keep learning, so Cursed to Bless can be as helpful as possible. We want to learn more from your experience and reflection. What have we missed or overstated? Please email us (details below) or sign up for updates.

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Notes

Notes