Selten rührt mich etwas zu Tränen. Von David Wells (mein Interview) wusste ich bereits, dass er einen grossen Teil seiner Zeit (auch nach seiner Rente) für ein Bibelstudien-Projekt in Afrika investierte. Auf der TGC Plattform ist nun eine ausführliche Reportage zu diesem Mammutprojekt erschienen.
Genial, was Gott in Afrika, bald in den USA und – Gott gebe es – im neu-heidnischen Europa durch dieses Studienprogramm bewirkt hat und wirken wird. Die Reportage beginnt mit einer wichtigen Geschichte: Afrikanische Waisenkinder erkennen Irrlehre und wechseln innerhalb einer Woche die Kirchgemeinde. Wie wünsche ich mir ein solches Training für die nachrückenden Generationen unserer Länder!
About six months ago, a pastor in Kenya told his congregation that they could be saved by good works. In his pews were about 80 children from a nearby orphanage, ranging from second grade to high school. “The kids came home visibly upset,” said David Pederson, who runs the Christian compound where the orphanage is housed, along with a Christian classical school and a teachers’ college, housing for missionaries, and a farm. “They were really distraught: ‘This isn’t what the Bible teaches. This isn’t right.’” “They were debating and asking questions,” said David’s wife, Julie, who co-administrates the campus with him. “It was really good.” Within a week or two, most of them switched to other churches.
Wie sieht das Programm aus, das hinter ihnen liegt?
The children had just finished 30 weeks in a daily Bible study on the book of Romans, so they knew grace backward and forward. But the timing wasn’t just an unlucky coincidence for the pastor—these children are in the middle of a 535-week Bible study. That’s more than 10 years of memory verses and study questions. “By the time they get to grade 12, they will have studied 90 percent of the Bible verse-by-verse,” David said.
Es handelt sich damit um das zeitlich längste Bibelstudienprojekt der Welt. Die gesamte Schulzeit üben die Kinder eine biblische Weltsicht ein.
The curriculum was written by Reformed theologians and is used—partially or completely—in orphanages, church schools, widows’ groups, and partner churches in Africa. Thousands of students, teachers, employees, church leaders, and church members have studied the Bible with it. A Bible study this intense “doesn’t exist anywhere else—even in the United States,” David said.
Hiner dem Mammutprojekt steckt die jahrzehntelange Initiative eines Ehepaars. Die Gründerin, selbst 89 Jahre alt, erzählt von ihrem eigenen täglichen Bibelstudium während Jahrzehnten.
“You know what happens to you after three and a half years of doing something?” she said. “You develop a habit. I was in the habit of reading the Bible. I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop. And I will tell you for the rest of my life—I’m 89 now—I have read the Bible every day that I can remember.”
David F. Wells, Editor dieser Ausgabe und nach seiner Pensionierung täglich mit dieser riesigen Arbeit beschäftigt, beschreibt diese Dame so:
Jensen is “an entrepreneur extraordinaire,” former Gordon-Conwell Seminary professor David Wells said. “She’s always looking for the project that needs to be done. She could’ve been the president of a Fortune 500 company.”
