Appraising the Effectiveness of Bilingualism in Preaching: The Experience of Living Water Baptist Church, Ibadan, Nigeria.

Abstract

Bilingualism in preaching is adopted by Living Water Baptist Church, Ibadan where Yoruba and English languages are used. 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 as supported by 82.4% and 81.1% of the respondents agreed that 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. Keywords: Bilingualism, Preaching, Code-mixing, Code-switching, Interpreter