Fluency testing of LWC translations in a multilingual church

I’m happy to report that I’ve received permission to do a study of Bible use and comprehension at the church we have been attending here in South Africa. MCC is fairly typical of an urban church in that announcements, liturgy, readings and preaching are in the language of wider communication (LWC) while music is multilingual drawing from the musical tradition of the members attending.

Some of the types of research questions I’ll be asking are:

1. The Bible tradition of individual members: What various Bibles have they used over the course of their lives.
2. Comprehension in the LWC: Using fluency testing as a relative indicator of comprehension, members will be asked to read Bible passages in various English translations.
3. Personal sacred language: What languages do they sing and pray in when they are not in church.

One thing I won’t be doing is asking comprehension questions of the sermon of the day. There are too many variables to control, such as how awake was the participant? How difficult/unfamiliar was the passage? How prepared/skilled was the preacher.

I’m hoping to do a similar survey later this year in Mozambique.