Outcome Harvesting is a way to find concrete data on actual changes that have taken place within a community. From a Scripture engagement perspective this might be an investigation of changes that have taken place in peoples' lives (transformation) as the result of a project being in place and/or products being produced and programmes being implemented. So, let's imagine an actual project. There have been two 'wings' to this project. The first is the Bible translation 'wing', producing products like Scripture portions (in both print and audio format, and they have a Bible app too). The second is the Oral Bible Storying 'wing' that has also produced products (audio recordings of stories) but is mainly a programme. The question is, what impact has this project had, overall? The usual procedure is to train local workers to interview people, using participatory methods, to find out how much they have engaged with Scripture as the result of this project. The...
I was just in a presentation,* and the presenter shared a slide about the Scripture engagement (SE) impact chain, which I thought I'd pass onto you fine folks! Here it is: The point is, to have community transformation, you need to have individual transformation. To have individual transformation you need eyes and ears either reading or listening to Scripture. To have eyes and ears reading and listening you need people being reached with those materials in print or audio format (or video, which combines both). To have those materials you need to develop them in the first place. That's the SE impact chain, in a nutshell! Now, the clever amongst you will have spotted that you can't just produce materials, therefore. Neither can you just produce materials and distribute them, as that's only two steps along the SE impact chain. To have community transformation you need to make sure the whole chain is working as it should. As the picture of legs on the side shows, that means...