Appraising the Effectiveness of Bilingualism in Preaching

In a heterogeneous congregation, is there usually a language barrier? This study appraised the data collected through questionnaires, whether bilingualism in preaching has effectively solved this problem. As practiced by Living Water, the forms of bilingualism in preaching are code-mixing, code-switching and the use of an interpreter. The highest factor responsible for bilingual preaching is to accommodate different tribes as attested by 98.7% of respondents. Challenges of bilingual preaching among others are lack of exact words in other languages to convey what a preacher intends and most interpretations do not give details but a summary of the preacher’s expression. On the effectiveness of bilingual preaching, 85.3% of respondents preferred the use of an interpreter to code-mixing or switching by 51.3%. Preachers should adopt bilingualism in preaching in a heterogeneous society, speak simple vocabularies and use an interpreter who is proficient.