The Narnia project has been long in process and is one of the biggest projects eDOT has ever worked on, but I wouldn’t call it the most technological project we have ever done. When it was suggested that I enter it into the Technology for Missions (TFM) Contest at a techie conference (ICCM Europe) I thought, “sure why not?” Inside, though, I wasn’t that confident that it would be received well. After all, it would be going up against projects that were way above my head – technologically speaking.

I was a bit nervous. Not because I didn’t believe in the project, but rather because the technology aspect of the project was a smaller aspect of the larger project. Sure, the curricula will be published as an eBook, and yes, we will have a website for marketing and distribution purposes, but still this was a techie conference … what shot did a TEFL program really have?

I had committed, though, so I checked out the qualities the contest stated were needed in any project that was to be entered. The judging criteria were:

• Impact – what is the actual/potential Kingdom impact?
• Quality – technical quality, usability, etc.
• Cooperation – how well does it utilize and/or encourage cooperation in the Body?
• Re-usability – to what extent can other ministries replicate/make use of this idea?

After reading those criteria, I knew we had a project that fit. After all, our curricula had already been used in Germany, is about to be used in Greece, and we are in talks for it to be used in another two countries already. The potential is limitless as it could be used in any camp-type setting, so we nailed “Impact.”

Quality was a bit harder to talk about without bragging, but let’s just say we have three highly qualified teachers developing the curricula along with very talented people working on the graphics/worksheets/editing/eBook. Our team is solid, so again, no problem there.

Cooperation? No problem! We want this to be used by anyone, so that was simple enough.

Re-usability was another one we nailed. The idea for these curricula is that a camp can go three straight years (using each of the three movies once) without repeating anything, so if a student comes four straight years then by the time they see one of the movies twice, they will be so much more advanced in the English language that they will be doing totally different activities.

All that said, I was still nervous. We were going up against real techie projects and this just isn’t a techie project. After presenting, we had to wait a few days and though there weren’t many other projects in contention, I still wasn’t sure what the outcome would be.

At the end of the day, we won, and I was incredibly humbled, shocked and awed. It was so great to be well received by those in attendance, but the coolest part (other than my team getting a boost of confidence) was before the end of the conference I had talked to two people who may use the curricula in two different countries. Praise God!