Mandate eNewsletter, 2009 - Issue No. 2

From the Director: One Message, Multiple Media
by Brian Fikkert

They both want to learn how their churches can better minister to people who are poor. Other than that, they couldn’t be more different.

He lives in West Africa, one of the poorest regions on the planet. She lives in the U.S., which necessarily means she is one of the richest people ever to walk the face of the earth.

The church building in which he worships each Sunday has dirt floors. The church building in which she worships is a stately architectural masterpiece and is considered an historic landmark.

They both want to learn, but their learning styles are completely different. He is not in a rush to learn. In fact, he prefers having time to chew on ideas. She is concerned about efficiency and wants to get the knowledge she desires as fast as she can. He likes to learn orally and to discuss the content with the other members of the class. In fact, it is difficult for him to even conceive of learning on his own. She learns primarily by reading. While she sometimes enjoys class discussions, she often prefers to be alone in a quiet place so that she can read without distraction and write down her individual thoughts in a journal.

The Chalmers Center seeks to equip both of these people to minister to the poor, but there is clearly not a one-size-fits-all strategy. The diversity in the body of Christ requires the use of different means of training and equipping.

The man described above is one of the 207 attendees at the Chalmers Center’s Christian Economic Development Institute (CEDI) that was offered in Cote d’Ivoire during the first week of December 2009. Participants came from across West Africa (Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, and Togo) for five days of practical training about how to equip their churches to minister to the economic and spiritual needs of some of the poorest people on the planet.

Using highly-participatory, group-based learning methods, CEDIs have become the primary means that the Chalmers Center uses to meet the learning style of people from the Majority World (Africa, Asia, and Latin America). God has used these CEDIs in dramatic ways to equip thousands of churches to minister to tens of thousands of low-income families.

This CEDI is particularly strategic, for it is the first time the Chalmers Center has offered this training for francophone West Africa, one of the poorest and most spiritually needy places in the world. Future issues of Mandate will provide more details about how God is using the Chalmers Center to equip His church in West Africa.

The woman described above is one of the 266 people, from a wide range of churches and ministries, who took a distance learning course via the internet from the Chalmers Center during 2009. Distance learning isn’t for everyone. But for certain types of learning styles, it can be a highly effective and efficient means of facilitating learning. Our distance learning participants come from all over the world, but the majority of them are North Americans serving at home and abroad.

This issue of Mandate highlights four of our recent distance learning participants. We rejoice at their testimonies about how God is working through them to minister in powerful and restorative ways to people who are poor.

We want to be able to continue to equip people during 2010. And this is where we need you to step up. The gap between what we charge distance learning participants and what it costs us to train them is $150 per participant. Please consider providing one or more $150 scholarships for these participants by clicking on the button below and entering your desired gift into the “Distance Learning Scholarship Fund” box on the donation page. We need a total of $40,000 in scholarship funds for 2010.

Be sure to indicate at the bottom of the donation page that you would like your gift matched, dollar for dollar, by the RL & KH Maclellan Foundation Matching Grant. Doing so will ensure that your gift will release an additional dollar to help cover the Chalmers Center’s general operations.

May God give you a wonderful Christmas Season as you celebrate the birth of the King of Kings, who came preaching good news…to the poor.

For more information about the Chalmers Center, visit us at www.chalmers.org.

12/14/09