Amuria TLT - Stewardship

I am sorry that this post is so long, but my heart is full of joy and I'm only sharing with you a few of the great stories I heard.  I do not deserve to have such a position of training pastors but I am so grateful for the privilege of being able to be in Uganda and have God use me here.  It is so much fun.  This post is about my training last week in Amuria, which was the 2nd manual of Timothy Leadership Training there.  This manual is called "Christian Stewardship" and is about managing our resources, giving in church, and being good stewards of God's creation, our time, work, bodies, and talents.

Before I give you the report about this training, I want to share some testimonies about how God used these Amuria pastors since their first TLT training three months ago which was about Caring for God's people.  Part of their TLT assignment is to bring back a report about how their plan went from the previous training.  Below in the picture kneeling with me is Gideon.  He was going to train seven people in the first TLT manual.  But he ended up training all of the church leaders in the photo below.  He plans to continue to train this group after each TLT training he takes with me.  Sara and I were visiting a church in Amuria district last month to preach and it turned out to be the church where Gideon was training people, so we got to meet them.

In this group, one pastor decided to make more visits as a result of the training with Gideon.  One of his visits was to a lady in the church who just gave birth to a boy.  She was very distraught because the boy was born lame, something was bent out of shape with his knee.  She had been complaining to people saying things like - why did God curse me with giving me a child like this?  Why am I being punished?  But the pastor counseled her based on what he learned.  He said that it is not necessarily that she is being punished, but that these problems are part of living in this broken world.  He told her that the child is still a blessing and a gift from God even if he is lame.  The mother then had a change of attitude and felt much better about her child.  So then they prayed together, and the pastor prayed for the child.  And the child was healed!  He was no longer lame!  His knee was fixed!  I love this story because the lady learned to trust God in the hard situation, but then God still showed his power.  God is good!

In my own Amuria TLT group, a few pastors had challenges in carrying out their plans in that some people refused to be trained because they think we only need to trust the Holy Spirit and studying God's Word is not important.  But most of my leaders were successful in carrying out their plans.  It was great to see how God used them.  And discussing the plans that did not work out provided good learning as well. 

Another pastor, Clement, (who leads other pastors in a whole region) had made a plan of visiting some Christians from his church.  He did so and listened well, spoke little, and they appreciated his visits.  Some non-Christian neighbors saw how he visited, and said, "come visit us too!"  So he did.  And many of these families got saved!  When Clement's pastors whom he oversees saw how being trained has such good benefit, many of them wanted to get more training as well and joined the In-Service Bible School in Amuria.

There were also stories of healing, people returning back to church who had left churches, stories of reconciliation, and people coming to know Christ.  A majority of my TLT participants gave reports of their church's giving having increased mostly as a result of the church attendance also having increased. 

Okay now back to this most recent training.  The only disappointment was that about 10 of our members from the first manual did not return because of either having to work in their gardens or not having enough money to pay for their manual and food.  Otherwise it went smoothly and Martin from Soroti came with me again to help me lead.  I appreciate his help so much. 

Training is so important.  One of my students, not from PAG, is a pastor who became a Christian only one year ago.  He came to know Jesus at a crusade, and the leaders of the crusade assigned him to be the pastor a few days later without any training (or even discipleship).  So now he is struggling to lead a small church as a pastor, and TLT is the first training of any kind he has received.  

Below is a video of some of our worship time.

Part of the manual is about caring for God's creation.  I had made a list of practical things we can do to take care of the creation and it led to interesting discussion.  We talked about how to properly dispose of batteries here (we didn't have a lot of great solutions other than not throwing them into your garden - throwing them down latrines is the best we came up with).  We talked about not littering and properly taking care of rubbish.  One pastor was so passionate about doing this that he wanted us all to go out as a group and clean up Amuria town.  But we are leaving that to the Mayor. 

He is in my TLT group and his three month action plan is to have Amuria town totally clean and have no plastic bags on the ground (quite a daunting task).  He is going to mobilize a lot of community people to help him clean it up, and potentially even pass new laws, and try to put some new systems in place to keep it clean.  It's very exciting!

In talking about rubbish, people gave testimony that they remember missionaries who do not accept

plastic bags at stores, but use their own bags or just carry the food.  This was encouraging to me.  We do this as well, and this means that people do take notice and we can lead by example.  People felt very convicted about cleaning up rubbish, so much so that during the training itself, people began to pick up and burn the rubbish that was all over the grounds at the church.

We also talked about the importance of planting trees.  In the last two decades, Uganda has lost 2/3 of its total trees.  Get your head around that.  This is a severe issue and if not dealt with, Uganda will not have any trees at all by 2050.  It is because of development and the booming population, and due to the fact that most people use charcoal for cooking.  Convicted about this, they all want to plant more trees, and one of the participants made an action plan to plant 100 new trees!

We talked about caring for animals properly, and being friends with animals as God's creatures.  We talked about sharing resources and tools together as a church.  We talked about the serious problem of water pollution.  We talked about the danger of using so many chemicals on our land as they get into our food and water.  Sara was able to come and greet the group as she was in Amuria for a meeting, but they got her to stay and teach them a recipe for an organic pesticide using wood-ash.  They want her to come back for a full day's training on other organic recipes for fertilizer and pesticides.

When talking about caring for our bodies, we talked about the importance of washing hands.  Almost wherever I go, people only wash with soap after eating, but not before eating (and we eat with our hands).  So I explained why we should wash with soap beforehand and they agreed.  The rest of the whole week during the training every person washed with soap before eating!

We talked of the goodness of farming.  Many people feel ashamed if they are a farmer as their main income.  There is a bit of a divide between the "working class" and the "farming class."  So we talked about how God is the first farmer who worked the dirt to create us and the Garden of Eden.  As an example to teach this, I had the mayor put his hands into a bowl of dirt.  They were very surprised.  But then they realized that it was not right for them to be ashamed of their mayor having his hands in the dirt.  It's a good thing to work in the dirt, and God is our example.  So they are all going to go home and encourage their farmers in their churches.

We talked about what church giving should look like and some common wrong motivations for giving.  In the process we dismantled the health and wealth gospel.  We talked about how pastors can glorify God through their rest because they had told me, "In Uganda, pastors cannot rest.  They have no time for rest."  We talked about the importance of pastors being supported financially by their churches, which sadly does not happen much here.   And we talked about how to teach that to their churches in a humble way without the focus being on them.  A typical pastor might get about 7,000 shillings in a month, which is about $3.00.  They have little time to pastor since they have to run their business or farms as well.  We also talked about how work is a gift and a good thing even if it is difficult.  Many people view work as only a curse.

We also tackled the problem of corruption in the church.  Their stories almost made me break down in tears.  There is a lot of favoritism in the churches here between the rich and poor.  Some of the wealthy are able to avoid church discipline because of the threats they make.  Some of the people who have given the church land to build on, end up trying to control the church.  I know these things happen in the US just as much, if not more so, but it makes me sad.

To stand up against corruption, in or outside the church, makes you at risk for persecution and suffering.  One member shared a practical story of this from her experience.  A lady in the church was living in sin, but because she was wealthy all of the members feared to confront her.  But my TLT member was willing to take two other women and gently confront her.  The wealthy lady thanked them so much for being honest with her and then asked them to stay for lunch.  She served them food, but God convicted all three of them at once that they should not eat the food.  So they did not eat.  (They were alone eating without the host as is often the custom here).  The wealthy lady's son smelled the food and wanted to eat too, so he got himself a plate and then went to eat with the visitors.  He wanted to be generous to the visitors, so he exchanged his smaller portion for the portion on the visitor's plate.  He ate, and then left to go back to school.  At school he became very sick and told people, "my mother wanted to kill her visitors, so she poisoned the food, and now I am going to die!"  And he died that day.  Unfortunately poisoning people is all too common here.  People don't have guns, but they have poison.  Make of this story what you will, but it does show the risk involved in confronting people in the church who are wealthy.  Besides losing your position as pastor, you could even lose your life.

We also discussed issues of accountability and church giving.  Many churches don't make reports, or don't have good accountability standards, or don't make any sort of budget. I ended up teaching how to make several different kinds of budgets.   At one point in discussing accountability, it came up that we should be willing to tell our family members about our money as well.  One pastor said he never tells his wife about their money at all because "women are not trustworthy."  In discussing more, we found out the painful story that in a previous marriage he had entrusted all the money to his wife for safekeeping and then one day she ran off, left the marriage, and took all of their life savings with her.  So he had learned not to trust.  But our group counseled him and we discussed this at length.  I am very encouraged to see that part of his action plan is to teach his family about stewardship, and then to begin trusting his new wife by sharing issues of money together with her.

Below is a picture of the students praying over their action plans which they will carry out the next three months.

This time most of the action plans involve training others in this TLT manual of Stewardship.  They are passionate about what they learned and cannot wait to share it with others.  This is so encouraging as it means so many more lives transformed.  Many are going to home and teach their churches about how to give to church and what good reasons are for giving.  One pastor is going to try to help his family give more generously to the Church by teaching them about stewardship and initiating a poultry project to make them more money.   The In-Service Bible school leader plans to integrate the TLT manuals into his curriculum for the IBS students.

One pastor has a passion for reaching people in prison.  His main goal is always to bring people to know Christ, but I told him he needed a plan this time that involves stewardship.  He decided that he also wants to reach out to the Christian prisoners to teach them how to be good stewards of their bodies even while in prison.  He's going to teach them about this, about bathing, and washing clothes, and provide them with some soap.

An assembly pastor is going to train the secretaries and treasurers from all his churches in stewardship, giving, and accountability.  By the end of training them, he wants to see every one of his churches making budgets, making financial reports to the congregations, and having good accountability standards.

Finally to close, here is a video of them praying over their action plans through a song.  Please keep these men and women in your prayers.  God is doing great things through them already and I pray he continues to do so.