In Depth Explanation of the Need for Sunday School Materials in Bolivia
The Oklahoma Annual Conference and the Iglesia Evangelica Metodista en Bolivia (IEMB)(Evangelical Methodist Church of Bolivia) have a special partnership which has been going on for 21 years. In fact, it was the IEMB’s mission to Oklahoma which led to the creation of the entire VIM office! They have sent over 20 pastors to Oklahoma to speak about missions in our Conference during the life of the Partnership. Oklahoma has sent 63 VIM teams to Bolivia with over 800 Okies having gone there. And we have raised a lot of money for medical care, to build churches, parsonages and schools, evangelism equipment, transportation and salary support for pastors.
On January 15, 2008, Bishop Poma of Bolivia was in OKC to sign, along with Bishop Hayes, a Renewed Partnership agreement. Bishop Hayes is going to Bolivia in January, 2009 to sign another copy of the agreement. This Agreement stresses the importance of both Churches being in mission to each other and together..
The Bolivian Methodist Church has NEVER had Sunday School curriculum or materials to teach their children. In 1969, the indigenous Indian Methodists took control of the Church from North American Missionaries. Overnight, the IEMB changed from being a small (2,000 members) middle-class, Hispanic, urban church to a large (20,000 members and the 2nd largest denomination in Bolivia), poor, Indigenous/Indian, rural church. This sudden expansion was made up almost exclusively of first generation Christians. Because of this growth, and because of the “first-generation” nature of this growth, Christian Education and the children were simply not a priority. The priority was on preaching to adults and church construction and Christian formation.
However, in the last couple of years, David Stephenson, who has worked with the IEMB over these 21 years, has noticed a marked change. Many of the new leadership people are Second Generation Methodists! They grew up in Methodist churches and Methodist homes. But they have recognized that while they got some good education at home; the Church didn’t provide much at all.
Worship Services generally last approximately 3 hours. The children come with the parents and participate in the first 30-45minutes. Then someone who has been designated the ‘teacher’ takes the kids outside (there are no Sunday School classrooms virtually anywhere in Bolivian Methodist churches). The ‘teacher’ who is usually an untrained high school kid, or maybe a mom, has no training, no crayons, no paper, no markers or pencils, and no materials. So they may teach them a few ‘bible songs’, read to them from the Bible (if the teacher can read), maybe (if the teacher is good) they will TELL the kids a Bible story, they will have the kids memorize a bible verse. This will often last a good hour or so. Then they toodle back in to the sanctuary and sing their song and say their bible verse to the congregation. Now that is the BEST Sunday School classes. Some churches aren’t even that organized.
The new leadership of the IEMB has asked us to help develop a Sunday School curriculum for their children.
In January of 2008, the Methodist Church of Bolivia held its first ever Sunday School Teacher Training Workshop – which lasted a full week. They had some 30-40 persons there. It was paid for by the Oklahoma Annual Conference (Stillwater First UMC). Leaders included a Christian Educator from North Carolina, a Missionary, several Bolivian Pastors, and several school teachers from Methodist Private schools.
In addition to the training, they also wrote the FIRST EVER INDIGENOUS BOLIVIAN Sunday School Curriculum. The IEMB has found that other curriculum, such as Spanish language material from Cokesbury, doesn’t work because it uses Hispanic-looking persons in the pictures (instead of indigenous persons). You also have to remember that it has been ethnic Hispanics, the descendants of the Conquistadors, who have oppressed the indigenous people of Bolivia for 500 years and attempted to destroy its culture. Obviously, if you are trying to reach indigenous children, you need Aymara, Quechua, Chimani, an Guaranese children in the pictures. Cokesbury materials also reflect a North American culture (draw an eagle instead of a Condor). Another concern is that the specific theological concerns of the IEMB are often different from Cokesbury material. For example, in a country which is 95% Roman Catholic, “What is a Methodist” takes a new definition. It was important that the IEMB develop its own material which reflects its approach to the scriptures and the faith; and that the Aymara. Quechua and other Indian children see children who look like them doing the various activities.
The ideas and notes taken from the Workshop in January were then put into a Curriculum book. There was this unique idea of having the materials broken down into different books for different ages, something unheard of for the Bolivian Methodist Church. There was separate materials for ages: 4-6 year olds; 7-10 year olds, 11-12 year olds, and early teenagers 11-14. There were also teacher books and actually books for the children to take home.
Here is an excerpt from an email that David Stephenson received from Ardell Graner, a North American GBGM missionary to Bolivia,
“Fantastic news about the SS books. The first one is out with wonderful responses. Guillermo only had money to print the first 3 months, so I let him do that. I will send you a copy in May. One of the participants who works at Tiu Rancho began reading the lessons and wasn´t saying a word. I finally asked what she thought and she said, “Shush, Hermana, I feel like I am in God´s presence and I am awe struck.” She said she couldn´t believe these were the lessons they had written. The rest of the staff then asked me to give them a copy. I said it was OK because Alex has a copy and he is the Sunday School teacher. They said, no, they just wanted to read the lessons themselves.”
Twenty sets or so of these books were made using a plain paper copier, all in black and white. Using a copy machine in Bolivia is remarkably cheap. These books were distributed around Bolivia, with at least one set for each District. It was up to the district and the local churches to make additional copies for their teachers and their children.
We discovered that many churches did make copies of the set of books for their local church despite the cost to them. It wouldn’t be a lot to make copies, but when the average income for a Methodist church member is $700 A YEAR, any cost is tough to bear. And we found that no one made copies of the materials for the individual students to either take home or to keep at the church and reuse.
Despite these struggles, the materials were a huge success, and everyone wanted to continue this.
In January of 2009, the second annual Christian Education Workshop and Curriculum Writing Conference was held in La Paz, Bolivia. This time, Dr. Leslie Long, (pastor at Wesley Foundation at UCO and a PhD in Christian Education) and Janet Boone (then Christian Education Director at Grace UMC in OKC) were in attendance to provide guidance and support in the writing of the materials (see articles elsewhere on this website).
This time we had better funding. The Vacation Bible Schools of Skiatook, Memorial Drive Tulsa, St. Stephen’s Norman, Grace OKC, Good Shepherd Yukon, Wesley OKC, Bridgeview UMC, St. Paul’s Lawton, Coweta, First Enid, Chapel Hill OKC, Ardmore First, University Tulsa, Grove, Okmulgee, Valiant, and Jones UMC all had this project as their VBS Mission project.
This allowed us to get teacher materials into the hands of virtually every Sunday School teacher in the Methodist Church of Bolivia. But again, there wasn’t enough funding for the individual student books. But again it was an overwhelming success.
In January of 2010, Dr. Long went again, this time to Cochabamba for the Third Annual Christian Education Workshop and Curriculum Writing Conference, and again it was a huge success. The funding came from the 2009 VBS’s of Chapel Hill UMC, Madill, Paul’s Valley, Prague and St. Matthew’s Midwest City. Again, enough for all of the teachers, but not enough for the individual students.
We are looking for 15-20 local church VBS’s who will make this their VBS Mission Project so that we can fund it for about $12,000. This will allow us to pay for the writing Conference, to pay for our Oklahoma leadership to go to the Conference, and for the printing of all of the teacher’s materials. If we can get to about the $15,000 range we can print enough materials for all of students of the IEMB. Please look around this website for additional information.
Feel free to call me, David Stephenson, at 918-346-5181 or email me at tulsadstephenson@yahoo.com any questions or to let us know that you will accept the challenge.
Thanks you so much.
Rev. David Stephenson
Bolivian Missioner TO Oklahoma
