TLT Kaberamaido - Stewardship

Recently I was in Kaberamaido for the 2nd manual of Timothy Leadership Training, "Christian Stewardship."  Again, I was assisted by three Ugandan master trainers from Soroti.  It was a good turn up.  We had about 65 people in the first training and still had 52 this time.  One interesting thing I found out is that two of the pastors were a part of TLT way back in the day when it was still called "Project Africa."  They said the training is a lot more interactive than it used to be and they are loving it now.  TLT is continually updating and improving and God has used it in powerful ways in so many countries.  Here is a video of a worship time.

Part of this TLT was making reports about previous action plans from the training three months ago on pastoral care.  The pastors did have some challenges.  Some failed to fully complete their plans because of lack of time due to garden work, lack of money, and ministry scheduling conflicts.  But I heard many great testimonies as well.

Most of the pastors reported increases in church attendance as well as increases in the church offerings.  One church had 114 new people.  Another church had 100 new people because of making more pastoral visits, and giving had increased from 400,000 shillings to 1,000,000 shillings.  It's hard for me to believe, but God can do great things through these pastors when they make a ministry plan and are faithful to carry it out.

There were also reports of people being healed, families returning to church after being visited who had previously quit the church, people giving their lives to Christ on visits (10 people for this pastor, 5 for that one, etc.), and marriages being reconciled.  There were a few cases where the pastors were able to bring resolution and peace to neighboring families in the midst of land wrangles.  Many of the pastors were able to go out and teach the TLT lessons on Pastoral care to their churches. 

One lady visited prisoners at the jail.  Her ministry was successful and a few people got saved.  One of these was a young prisoner whose family had deserted him and so he could not get bail.  She prayed for him and then that very week she met him in a taxi as he was headed home.  His family had come and bailed him out.

My pastor friend Emmanuel had a plan to give marriage counseling to 12 couples.  He helped them through challenges about not getting enough rest, taking care of the children, and marital arguments.  In the process there were questions about family planning, and as it was out of his expertise, he found a nurse who could counsel the families with the knowledge that they needed.  After the counseling, the marriages were experiencing better harmony, and Emmanuel had them all come together for a big celebration and fellowship.

The bishop had a plan involving many of his evangelists to reach out to a neighborhood in Kaberamaido town.  In the end 120 people got saved and joined the main town church.  God is good.

One common challenge the pastors had was that their Christians expected the pastors to give them financial help or gifts on their visits.  The pastors are in most cases poorer than their Christians, so this is not viable for them to do long-term.  So we counseled them to get help from the church to care for these people instead of being forced to do it all themselves.

To go through this Stewardship manual, we divided into two groups.  I explained to you much of what this manual is about in this blog post from Amuria.  Generally it's about giving in church, financial accountability, and stewardship other areas of life.  This time Sara was able to come for one whole day of TLT, to assist in talking to the groups about all the different ways we can care for God's creation.  It was very helpful having her there, and of course the pastors loved having her and wanted her to stay all week.  I'm grateful that God has made the two of us a good ministry team.

We emphasized the problem of rubbish (litter) on the ground.  I had a chance to be a living example without thinking about it.  I was given a bottle of water and on the top is a little plastic wrapper that most people just throw on the ground.  As I opened it, I put the plastic wrapper in my pocket to take care of later.  When we came to the discussion of littering, one of the pastors mentioned how he saw me put that in my pocket and that he would not forget it.  They agreed to start cleaning up rubbish and not littering.  In fact that very day, many of them started picking up rubbish all over the church compound.

Again I did the demonstration using dirt.  Below is a picture of the bishop getting his hands dirty.  At first I asked them how they felt seeing their bishop get his hands dirty like this.  They said, "we are ashamed.  We don't want to see him do that.  But since it is a demonstration we will forgive you."  But then I went on to talk about how it is not shameful to work in the dirt or to be a farmer, that God himself worked in the dirt to create us, and he was the one who planted the garden of Eden for Adam and Eve to work in.  We talked about the problems of class division in Uganda and how most people think of farming as the lowest thing.  Initially, I wasn't sure whether I wanted to do this demonstration again, but I am so glad I did.  They talked about it for a long time saying they wanted to do the demonstration in their communities as well.  It was powerful.

Below is a photo of some of the pastors praying over their new action plans.  There were many encouraging action plans about increasing financial accountability. 

•  The manager of the PAG's development organization in this district has a plan with the Pastorate secretary and accountant to train all PAG assembly pastors, secretaries, and treasurers in the whole district on accountability, recordkeeping, budgeting, and reporting at churches.
  
• Other pastors plan to train their leaders on this stewardship manual.  
• Many, if not most, of the action plans hope to see an increase in the amount of giving at their churches, through changes in financial accountability, and teaching the right reasons for giving.  
• A couple pastors are going to teach their members to steward their time better and stop coming to church services late!

• Many of the pastors are going to train their churches or families on the seven T's of stewardship - time, talents, treasures, tasks, terrain (environment), temple, and transmission (children). 
• One church leader is going to train the ushers on how to keep the church clean of rubbish and have them plant trees and flowers. 
• A youth pastor plans to make 6,000 bricks for the church along with the youth. 
• One pastor has a plan to have 200 trees planted on the church property. 
• A development worker has a plan involving 8 people who sell charcoal in the community; she wants to teach them and help them plant at least 10 trees each. 

Below is a picture of the students holding their action plans.

Here is a cute old lady who has the desire to learn and did not want to be left out.  Here she is holding up her action plan.  She is illiterate and her action plan is just a bunch of scribbles but I still accepted it with the others :)    All in all it was a great week, and I'm thankful to get to do what I do.