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In July 2007 we conducted two pretest Bible Studies in Gugulethu, Cape Town – one with a group of pastors from African Independent Churches (AICs), and another with a group of people from our target audience – the poor, the hungry, the neglected. The purpose of the pretests was to make sure that these people would enjoy studying the Bible using our methodology.
The pretests yielded many valuable lessons – confirming on the one hand the value of our strategy as well as the need for training and capacity-building in the churches. It helped us to hone our strategy and encouraged us to look anew at the under-researched area of Bible Study evangelism amongst the preliterate.
Our original plan had been to first pretest Bible study in a home with end-users. The second would be with AIC leaders, and would pretest the training we had developed. The training was comprehensive and very interactive. It needed to be pitched at an educational level that could engage both the uneducated as well as those who may have had some training. Perhaps more importantly, we needed to know how to train people of divergent theologies, doctrines and cultural practices.
On the highways and the byways
For reasons that are interesting only as a measure of what can go wrong – our contact invited pastors and bishops to the Bible Study which was aimed at the end-user. We decided to make the most of the occasion and promptly began to conduct the Bible Study with our little group.
It was an intimate gathering and the participants felt free to express themselves. The experience proved invaluable in showing us how to pitch our training. Moreover, the host pastor decided to invite his neighbours to join in.Consequently we were able to witness the interesting dynamic between the male spiritual authorities and their female congregants – and to see how the pretest in fact created a safe space for the women to talk freely.
The second pretest proved to be even more interesting! But the outcomes spoke to us prophetically. This was to be the workshop with the 30 AIC leaders and bishops. We arrived to find one young man, who had in fact been at the first pretest.
After an hour a second person arrived, and after two and a half hours our contact told us that everyone had gone to a conference, but that he would go and fetch them. Another hour passed and now we were close to the end of our time. We wondered if we should simply give up the effort. At the last moment, one of our group was reminded of the parable of the wedding banquet (Luke 14), and suggested simply going out onto the street and inviting everyone we saw to join us.
We stepped outside of the hall, and walked a few metres down the road. There we found a local NGO who had just opened its soup kitchen for lunch time.
We offered our invitation to the director and she assured us that once they were finished eating she would send the people to us. Soon after, the lame and the hungry – the poorest of Gugulethu’s poor – began to trail in. Thirty or more gathered in, and were later joined by children. We shared the story of the Prodigal Son. We sang and prayed together, and then we sat down and feasted on the lunch that we had prepared for the church leaders. Never have the outcomes of a pretest spoken to us more strongly about the real focus of what we are doing and who we are doing our work for. |
