Amuria TLT - Teaching the Christian Faith

By Anthony:

In August, I taught the 5th TLT manual, Teaching the Christian Faith, to the Amuria group.  This manual equips pastors to teach others through the apprentice method or through classroom teachings.  The main focus in on learning how to create a Bible lesson (as opposed to a sermon), to use in adult or children's Sunday Schools, or Bible studies. 

I typed up a couple pages about Sunday School and handed it out for extra discussion.  It was very moving talking about how best to raise up children in the church.  I learned that most of their churches did not have any kind of Sunday School program for children.  What usually happens is that the church building gets full and the children are sent outside and they just play on their own.  Through their discussion together the pastors decided they that they wanted to start or revitalize their Sunday School programs, and have their churches sacrifice some money to get blackboards for the Sunday School teachers to use.

One highlight of this TLT week was that we had a visit from important people.  The visit included Sara, our friend Kathleen from the US, staff of World Renew, and the executive director of the CRCNA, Steve Timmermans (see his reflections on his entire trip here).  It was very meaningful for me to have them visit and see what I've been doing.  I received such great words of praise from my TLT pastors and from the visitors.  But I need to continually point out that I am doing very little, and it is these pastors who are the ones God is using in amazing ways on the ground in their communities.

This time the reports were exciting as always, but I can summarize them generally.  Most of the pastors either went and trained others in the preaching manual, or they put into practice what they learned and their preaching has greatly improved.  They were so excited to share testimonies of their church members coming up to them voluntarily to tell them how much their preaching has changed and improved.



I had an impromptu idea as we neared the end of the manual.  I had them divide into groups and each group had to prepare a Bible lesson for a children's Sunday School class.  Then they had to present to all of us with one person being the teacher and the others being children.  They got really into it and it was hilarious.  But it was also helpful as they got to put into practice what they learned, and it led to some very deep and complex discussions after each group presented like, "what do you do when a child comes to class and hasn't eaten?  What do you do when a child says their drunk father has been beating him at home?"



The presentations/skits were quite funny but as they were in Ateso, not English, it would be hard for you to appreciate them fully, but I put a couple short clips in anyway.  Some of the "children" were quite disobedient and some kept saying, "but I'm supposed to get an avocado today, I want to eat my avocado."

The action plans were very similar for all the pastors.  75% of the action plans involved finding and training new Sunday School teachers.  The rest involved teaching children directly or teaching this TLT manual to other people.  Please pray for these pastors and their churches as they try to care for and raise up all their children in the Christian faith.  (Remember that 50% of Ugandans are under the age of 15).