FCBH cassettes have unexpected impact
in Konkomba village

Ghana — “This is a story about the Konkombas in northern Ghana. I was there recently visiting villages to see what was happening with Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH).

Based on a story told by Morgan Jackson, International Director of Hosanna Ministries

“We had started with 500 listening groups in the Konkomba area, almost every church had received the cassettes, and yet they were asking me for many more sets because of all the churches they had planted. And so they wanted me to come and see, and I did too, because I wanted to understand what they were doing, whether FCBH was working and whether the cassettes were really being used in FCBH churches and literacy groups. And so we visited 20 villages.

“As we went around, it became obvious that the Word of God was causing a revival among the Konkomba people. But I also saw something that I’d never seen before – the tremendous distrust that illiterate people have for the literate, and also the distrust they have for anything that’s in a written language other than their own.
Adultery in English and adultery in Konkomba are the same. There was no doubt what Jesus was talking about

“And so we got to the first village and we were listening to the people talk about the listening and their surprise that Jesus Christ speaks Konkomba (you know, they always go, ‘Ah, Jesus speaks Konkomba, ah, I can talk to God directly’). Well, one of the young men in the village stood up; there were only two young men in the village who could read and they were in this church. The pastor couldn’t read, so he allowed the young men to read the Scriptures.

They were reading them in English and then translating them into Konkomba for the people. Well, they had made a covenant together that they would never read any Scripture about adultery or fornication because they were having relationships with the women. Because the women, seeing them read the Scriptures, were saying, ‘Hey, these are spiritual men, these are leaders.’ And so when the young men came to them and asked them to have sexual relationships with them, they were saying, ‘This would be my pleasure, since if you’re a man of God and you’re requesting this, it must be right and it must be what God wants.’

“When the Konkomba New Testament on cassettes came and they played them in the church, the young men immediately realised that they were exposed, because the very first Sunday that they listened, Jesus was talking about how you’re not supposed to commit adultery. Well, adultery in English and adultery in Konkomba are the same. There was no doubt what Jesus was talking about, and the whole church was looking at these young men saying, ‘What were you doing?’ And they immediately fell to the floor and repented.

“They were standing in front of the church to tell me that they were repenting, that they knew that what they had done was wrong and that listening to the Word of God in Konkomba had caused them to repent. They offered to point out some of the women and I said, ‘No, no, we don’t want to go that far!’

“But you could see this transformation, and so I began to see the power and the need for people to hear the Word of God in their own mother tongue. What they loved about it is that they heard everything, chapter, by chapter, by chapter, nothing was left out, they heard it all. What a powerful thing for people to hear the Word of God in their own language!” (WR 384/15 - 3.04)