I sat yesterday watching fourteen young faces looking up at me and their Bible teacher, Zodwa Hadebe, listening, giggling and willingly choosing to spend an hour of their afternoon in a Bible class. They leaned up against the back of a big, peach colored house, sitting on woven straw mats in whatever clothes they threw on after their school uniforms came off. Two brought Bibles, a few more brought notebooks, but most just brought themselves.
There’s something amazing to me about ACM. There isn’t months of curriculum planning and craft preparations. There are no Bible teaching seminars or detailed outlines of lessons. I think since the three of us interns come from the church we do, all of it seemed a bit, well, simple. Can’t we get some crafts? Can’t we play more games? Is there really no snack? Shouldn’t there be specific scripts and outlines, lessons and details? There is no opposition to those things, just a shortage of resources or manpower. There is no need to bring specific outlines, because these teachers can easily teach the Bible in front of a crowd. Crafts are hard because when you do the math, we’d need enough to do over 1,500 crafts a week. So they sing, they listen, they answer questions and they look up verses if they have a Bible they can bring. The classes are growing because the vision is never lost. With a small mostly part time staff they maintain one simple goal which Mama Mafu summarized to me once as “hope.” All we can do is bring them hope while they are still young by teaching them the Bible and introducing them to Jesus.
Once when Colleen was driving out to a class with Mama Mafu, they passed an area where a large group of kids were playing. Mama Mafu exclaimed she wished she had a teacher to drop off there. Colleen got confused and asked if it was normally a location for a class, but Mama Mafu explained that this how ACM started. They had a group of kids after school with nothing to do and no one to watch them, so someone picked up a Bible and started teaching. It’s that simple. I think at times, especially as Americans, the three of us tend to get caught up in the complicated things – in the production, and in the planning… when maybe, it’s as simple as dropping off a “teacher” (loosely defined as a Christian who loves Jesus and is willing to share that with others) in a field full of kids to tell them about Jesus, and a class is born.
So my mind was racing yesterday as I sat with a class of mostly young boys ages 13 or 14, giggling, listening (and yes, at times, farting). My main thought was about back in the United States, where youth ministry forums are meeting and books are being written and rallies, meetings, and retreats are formed to reach this slippery age of Christians. Meanwhile, here, in Esikhawini, a small local ministry is simply dropping off Christians with a Bible, doing all they can with what they have. All I could think was, why didn’t I ever stop to tell a random group of kids about Jesus? Was it fear? Was it the risk of outraged parents or kids who didn’t want to listen? Was it because it was too strange an idea, to tell kids about Jesus detached from an organization or church? Sure, I could invite them to a youth group, ask them to church or talk with their parents. But what if I had just sat down with a group of bored kids after school and shared with them the message of Jesus? It just seems too simple. It was too easy to just live out my life as I chose to, sharing Jesus safely within the confines of organized religion or planned schedules, instead of being strange enough to just teach Jesus first and worry about the consequences later. Isn’t this how the apostles began? Would this work today in the States? I honestly don’t know. I might not have liked it as a thirteen year old Christian. But, for whatever reason, it’s working here. And the vision behind it and the result after is the same for Christians everywhere – Let’s introduce kids to Jesus, then let him do the rest.
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”
Isaiah 43:18-19
