April 2009

So there I was in our Monday morning men's Bible study and Kurt was telling us about these Russian pastors who spoke at his church in Council the day before. They do training of pastors in Russia, etc. 

So being the faithful Learning Technologies guy that I am I mentioned that we have a lot of Russian training resources like the pastor's library on a CD called Bibliologia. He's interested and we arrange for me to get him a copy of it.

Two days later when we are arranging for me to give him Bibliologia, he tells me that he spoke with the pastor in town who works with them and they already have it--it's being used all over the region and is the go-to resource for pastors in that region of Russia. So no thanks, we don't need your copy.

 I was sort of disappointed because I wanted to be the resource guy and show my Bible study mates that Learning Technologies is a nifty place to work because of these kinds of opportunities to resource remote pastors.

 Of course, at the same time I realized what a great thing it is that MAF-LT's Bibliologia was now just a standard part of the Russian pastor's bookshelf and was doing exactly what we had designed it to do!

                                                               Nifty.

How do we reach the majority of Ugandan church leaders who cannot afford to leave their families or work for years of Bible study? Even if they could, most of them would struggle to learn through the highly literate approach used by most Bible schools because their learning preference is Oral, not literate.

Tony Okullu is meeting the need through by establishing a “Church Based Mobile Bible School.” This network of coordinators (such as Edola Francis, pictured at left) strategically places audio recordings of leadership and discipleship teachings on MP3 players with a speaker unit in trade towns. Pastors and church leaders gather to listen and learn. From there, more MP3 players are loaded with the teachings. The leaders can continue listening and share the teachings in even more remote villages where they work.

MAF-LT partners with Tony in providing free resources from our many partners. Together we are working to bring more resources to the most remote leaders and it is delivered in the same way that they prefer to learn -  orally.