By Jorge Julio González, Editor of laBibliaweb.com
PERU — More than 200 years ago, the Englishman Robert
Raikes, founder of the Sunday School movement, thought that poor children
deserved better Bible education. Viviana Lemoine, a Sunday School teacher
in Peru, thinks that children today still do.
“I run the Sunday School and I do it with joy and thanks to God,” she
says. “But we have been using a range of material and in many cases preparing
it ourselves because the cost of it here in Peru is very high. “Unlike
other countries, Peru does not have many ministries to help the churches,
so our Sunday School teachers find their choices very limited.” While
the already enormous market for materials and resources for church-based
Bible study is still expanding, Viviana’s view is shared in many countries
of Latin America. Although many institutions and donors are willing to
subsidise the distribution of Bibles, the same cannot be said for Bible
study materials. Unbelievably, Raikes’s ideas met resistance from church
leaders. Today there does not seem to be agreement about where the problems
come from or how they can be overcome. Dr Vernon Peterson, of Patmos Publishing,
says, “ The idea that Sunday School materials are too expensive is not
completely right. The problem arises more from church leaders’ priorities.
The price could come down if the products did not have to be handled by
bookshops and distributors. But in the almost 20 years that I’ve been
working in this area, I have seen few organisations that are prepared
to tackle this. At the end of the day it’s not a problem of prices,” he
says. “Two books that will provide six months’ study cost less than a
birthday card.” Cook Communications Ministries is a Christian publisher
working in 50 countries. Ralph Gates, its Vice President, and Kim Pettit,
the General Editor, think that the distribution of Christian materials
leaves much to be desired right across South America. “Even when a church
is in a city where Christian resources for their education programmes
are available, the selection is not the best,” they say.
Value
The publishers who are most successful in selling Sunday School materials,
says Kim, are the ones who emphasise the value of a Christian education,
by showing teachers and church leaders how a good study curriculum can
help. But such promotional efforts cost publishers money and this affects
what they can charge for their material. Jorge Enrique Díaz , General
Director of the US-based Casa Bautista de Publicaciones (Baptist Publishing
House), offers another view. “The fundamental problem in Latin America
is that we see education as an ‘expense’ instead of a training investment,”
he says. “Undoubtedly institutions and organisations should help. But
we need to think about how to do it without creating a culture of dependence
… and how to do it without promoting particular ideologies. The other
thing to think about is where to give support and how much to give. A
subsidy is like a fertiliser: too much around the roots can kill the plant,
but too little a long way off doesn’t do any good.” Dr Pablo Gutiérrez
Perea, the Distribution and Publications Director of the Peruvian Bible
Society, thinks that the reason Sunday School materials in Latin America
are generally expensive is because they mostly come from US publishers.
“This forces many teachers to develop their own teaching aids,” he says.
“The Peruvian Bible Society offers as resources Grow and Learn, which
UBS produces, and The Bible Says So, a series of little books produced
in partnership with publishers Buena Tierra. But, in spite of their being
cheap, many people in our country still cannot afford them. “I think that
local organisations must concentrate on developing Peru’s own materials,”
he concludes. “Then we shan’t have recourse to imports. There must be
an agreed plan among educators, ministries and the Bible Society. We must
direct our efforts not only at producing resources but also at providing
training – even in marginalised areas. I think funds must be sought –
not so that material can be given out for nothing, but to put a price
on it that makes it affordable to everyone.”
Based on an article in La Biblia en las Americas # 4, 2006. (WR 412/8
- 06.07)
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