I Love to Preach

By Anthony:

One of the most satisfying activities God has given me to do is preaching. I have the opportunity to preach as much as I want, but we have decided that to keep a good balance in our lives, I will only preach two Sundays a month. On other Sundays we can attend our church here in Soroti - Pamba PAG.

I feel that God is really using me in this area not only to help the Christians who are listening, but to model good preaching to the pastors who we visit.  Usually after I preach, I leave my notes with the pastor of the church.  I don't mind sharing my notes quite often.  Even if someone might choose to preach my same sermon somewhere else, I am glad that people are learning how to dig into God's Word, how to structure a sermon well, and learning how to speak the truth in love.

Visiting other churches is also such an enjoyable time of worship and fellowship, meeting new Christians, encouraging them and their pastors, and having tea or a meal afterwards in many cases.  Some of our best conversations with people happen on these church visits.



One of the most exciting preaching opportunities recently was that I got to preach on the radio!  I had to wake up at 4:00am in order to do so, since the free spot given to PAG churches is at 5:00am, but it was an interesting experience.  People listen from all over the Teso region of Uganda, and it is an amazing amount of people who are already up at that time listening during their devotions time in the morning.  I keep thinking that Ugandans don't need sleep, or so it seems.

I preached on the parable of the persistent widow, and about being persistent in our prayers.  It seemed a fitting encouragement to widows and women on the international Women's Day.  The preaching was translated into Ateso from English as it is every week.  After the preaching, people call in to give feedback and ask for prayer.  I'm grateful for my friend Richard for giving me the opportunity.  Below are some clips Sara recorded from the radio broadcast.  You'll notice I speak oddly, I try to speak more clearly and slowly so that people can understand my accent.

I had another new milestone in preaching this year.  On one of my church visits I realized the sermon I had prepared did not fit the church context well, so I felt God leading me to change my message.  I made up a new sermon on the spot, but I think it was a good message for that particular church.  I realized that at least with some passages in the Bible, I am able to do this without preparation because I know the Bible passage really well, and the local context and needs well.  Of course I definitely don't encourage this practice for pastors generally, but it was nice to know that some messages are already in my heart and I'm ready to speak them.  The more significant point here is that I preached without a shred of notes.  It was good to do this, probably only the second time I have done so.  I'm such a perfectionist with a great amount of OCD that it's hard for me to preach without the careful notes I have prepared.  But I need to learn to trust both the Holy Spirit and myself more, believing that what I need to say is in my head and heart and I don't have to rely so much on notes all the time.

When preaching, I usually have someone from the congregation read the Bible passages in the vernacular language:

A visit to a village church in the Soroti area:

Most recently, we traveled to Kenya, each to facilitate several trainings.  While there we visited our World Renew colleague, Chris Shiundu, who is a pastor in addition to his work with World Renew.  On Palm Sunday, Sara was able to briefly teach and I was able to preach.  Here is a photo of us with his family:

And a video of the choir at the church service: