God’s Story in Ghana

Teaching in foreign situations is exciting in several ways, but there are always challenges.The excitement includes visiting new places and being exposed to new cultures and languages. Of course going to Eastern Europe or the Middle East involves teaching through a translator which always provides some level of challenge. Over the past decade I have had translators that were utterly amazing (I had a couple who could hold three or four minutes of my lecturing in mind before tapping me and saying “it’s my turn now.” 🙂 On the other hand one time in Bulgaria I had a substitute translator for couple of hours who had to keep pulling out her cell phone and calling someone to help her translate phrases that I had given her. On the whole most translators have been pretty good.

The other situation, which I really prefer, is to be my own translator. That is to be in a situation where the students have a workable knowledge of English. That was the case last week in Ghana. But being my own translator does present its own challenges. Last week I had students from seven different countries in West Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Cote d’lvoire, Niger, Burkina Faso, Liberia and Gambia. In all of these countries except one, English is the official language.  But the native language of each of the students was their own tribal language.  In Ghana, it was Kri. This presents a double challenge.  The language we communicated in was a second language for them, and the English they speak is British English rather than American English.  I had a consistent challenge in trying to understand what was being asked in questions or just being able to carry on a conversation. The students also had a similar difficulty, but the fact that I brought my projector and computer and used PowerPoint slides enabled them to more easily understand what I was talking about, even when I “got on a roll” and talked too fast.

The dedication of the students is amazing.  Some of them must take a 4 day bus ride over unpaved rutted roads to get from their home country to Accra, Ghana. In fact a couple of the students were delayed and didn’t start the class until Wednesday morning.  That brought the full contingent up to 35 students.  The largest class I have ever had in my overseas teaching. The students come for eight weeks of back to back one week intensive courses.  During this time they stay in the church that hosts the college and sleep on foam mats on the concrete floor.

We spent the first couple of days surveying the major time divisions of Church History, the next couple of days focused on the early church up through about A.D. 500.  We spent a fair amount of time on the persecutions.  This opened up questions that have direct relevance to their situation.  One of the students from Nigeria brought up questions about how Christians should respond to persecution today. He told about Muslims coming and killing Christians and then Christians taking up arms and killing Muslims. The questions arose whether we should defend ourselves or if it was ever legitimate to kill someone especially someone who is attacking you or your family, or if it is okay to defend yourself.

The topic of Islam raised many questions. I was amazed that at common misunderstanding that Islam is older than Christianity.  The students were stunned when they learned that Christianity had been around for about 600 years before Mohammed was even born.  Likewise, there was no understanding of how Protestantism relates to Catholicism.  Most viewed Catholicism as either a cult or as a separate religion, different from Christianity (which they identified as Protestantism).  As a result we spent quite a bit of time on the Reformation and the relationship of Protestantism to Catholicism and looked at the underlying theology of both which is  grounded in the ancient creeds of the church.  One student said that he had been taught that the passages in the New Testament that speak of the Trinity had been added by the Catholic Church.  Others had questions that reflected the generally abysmal level of historical understanding that characterizes the Protestant church in West Africa (and I would presume throughout the whole continent).

By all accounts the condition of Christianity in Africa is amazing.  At the beginning of the past century the continent was less than 3% Christian.  Today it is more than 46% Christian.  The Lord is doing an amazing work there.  But the challenges are overwhelming.  There is little pastoral education and training.  Even at the pastors’ college where I was, although they have qualified teachers, there is no library, and there are no textbooks.  It was for that reason that I took two suitcases full of textbooks on Church History so as to give each student his own book to study and use for future reference. The comment of one student sums up the reason for my going to Ghana.  After going through the timeline of Church History, she said with excitement in her entire being, “So I am a part of the story God is writing!” Exactly! That is why this ministry is named “Sacred Saga”… We are a part of the story God is writing, the Sacred Saga.