Theological Education by Extension (TEE)
THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION BY EXTENSION (TEE) programmes got going in the early 70s and FTM was quick off the mark. The idea was genuinely 'Third World', some of the earliest programmes coming from Latin America, whence it quickly spread round the world.
The driving force was the inability of Third World colleges to develop on traditional western residential lines, initially because the western model was too costly for poor countries, but that was not the only reason. In many cases students were unable to give up work for even one year to undertake training, there were too few institutions, often too far away from the candidates’ homes, and where candidates had wives and families they were unable to leave them. The solution therefore was akin to what used to be called a Correspondence Course, now better known as Distance Learning. To work satisfactorily special study documents had to be prepared, students needed a small collection of books at home and colleges had to develop libraries at headquarters. The demand for mini-libraries exploded, often to support and undergird the newly-written study guides and booklets specifically relating to the local situation and written for the purpose, and FTM established many close partneships as a result.
SEAN (Study by Extension to All Nations) in Chile was one of the first and FTM came in with considerable support but the idea, in varied formats according to time and circumstance, quickly spread to over 100 countries and 80 languages. TEEC (Theological Education by Extension College, Capetown) at one point, for example, had over 700 students preparing and translating their own material to make it available to other countries. TEEM (Malawi), TEEZ (Zambia), TAFTEE (India), SITE and IBLA (Europe) and several others turned up from time to time on FTM Grants lists.
CEDECO - Revolutionary Stuff
One visiting Christian literature worker was warned off visiting CEDECO completely by the local bishop on the grounds thal CEDECO was producing comics for children relating the story of Moses and the slaves in Egypt and when they took them home their parents saw them not as stories of Egypt 4,000 years ago but as stories about themselves today. They were, he asserted, clearly misinterpreting the Bible, reading it against the background of their own culture, all part of a communist plot to start a revolution.
CELEP (Centro Evangelico Latino-Americano de Estudios Pastorales), another early FTM partner, began in Costa Rica and soon had offshoots in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador and Mexico, breaking new theological ground, particularly in non-formal education, with a team of five producing non-theological pastoral booklets for local clergy working at the grass-roots.
In some cases new methods led inevitably, almost unexpectedly, to new content and theological emphases. For CELEP, for example, 'conscientisation' became the new buzzword, calling for literature on social projects, radio programmes for women, and the needs of indigenous peoples, so that even those who felt they had always been committed to working with people at the bottom were suddenly surprised to discover another level well below the one at which they were working.
What for CELEP caused ripples of uncertainty and insecurity, however, arrived more in the form of a Force 9 gale for CEDECO, (the South American equivalent of the Sunday School Union or the National Council for Christian Education), another FTM partner.
Collaboration with established theological colleges was close and supportive. In Uganda, for example, TEE programmes were supported by libraries in seven regional theological colleges and 14 smaller sub-centr
Latin American Biblical Seminary PRODIADIS, Costa Ricaes with an FTM grant to ensure that the vital books and booklets were there for the students. Some, particularly in very remote and isolated territory, showed considerable ingenuity, with TEE in Fiji an outstanding example.
In a part of the world where distances are vast and small communities isolated the problems of travel and transport were even more pronounced and the Pacific Theological College (PTC) in Fiji put a lot of effort into its Extension Programme. In an area of acute poverty, tension between indigenous people and immigrant communities, and much political instability, the churches faced a big task preparing people for ministry, not helped by the huge distances which separate them and make communications difficult. PTC, founded in 1966, addressed these issues in an Extension Programme in an attempt to understand indigenous theology in the region with courses for 17 nations in both French and English. Many students were extremely isolated and of the 300 students only 25 at that time had email facilities and the postal service was slow and costly. Course materials even when sent by air could take six to eight weeks to arrive. Assignments took twice as long for the double journey and Seven course modules can cost anything up to £10,000 and PTC was the only institution in the South Pacific doing this work.