Pages

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Intensive Preaching Trainings

By Anthony:

In April, I led very intense preaching trainings two weeks in a row. The first one was in Soroti and the second one was in Kaberamaido. I was training people who are already advanced trainers in Timothy Leadership Training. But we needed to do a review of the preaching manual as it is the hardest manual, and these pastors wanted more help to understand it better before teaching it others. We also went beyond the manual and went deep into how to preach about Christ from the Old Testament, how to make good introductions and conclusions, how to choose a text, how to use illustrations effectively, and much more. I must say it was a good refresher for me as well and I learned new things from the discussions and studies together.

The first training in Soroti was longer and included a few pastors from Soroti but also pastors from other districts who had gone through TLT. We purposefully kept our group very small so that everyone could participate and preach. I know the training was a success because they talked about how they wanted all the pastors in Soroti to get this training.  More than that, almost everyone in the group wants to take the same training again next year in order to keep sharpening their skills. People were focused and worked hard and were thoroughly tired in their brains by the end of each day!


Emmanuel was my co-facilitator and he did an excellent job. I've never seen anyone so passionate about keeping our focus on Christ in our preaching, and he helped us to see Christ on every page of the Bible that we looked at. Here is Emmanuel in the photo below:


Some of the highlights for me were when we studied various passages together. The bulk of the training is not about the act of preaching itself, but on how to rightly read and understand a biblical passage. I loved seeing the light bulb moments when people realized that verses like Jeremiah 29:11 and Philippians 4:13 were not actually passages promising immediate prosperity with no suffering when looked at in context. I loved seeing paradigms change when people realized that the Old Testament is all about Christ and they learned to see him in Old Testament poetry, stories, and law. By the end of the week, everyone was thoroughly committed to stop focusing only on the characters in the Bible, (be courageous like King David was courageous), but instead to preach in every sermon the good news about what God has done.

You might think that sermons would get repetitive and boring when they all talk about Christ. But that is not the case. You cannot exhaust the riches of Scripture in its testimony about Jesus! One passage may be about Jesus as King, another about Jesus as our Prophet, Jesus as our Priest, Jesus as our sacrifice, Jesus as our righteousness, Jesus as our Shepherd, Jesus as our healer, Jesus who overcomes demons, Jesus as the one who took our punishment, Jesus as the one who conquers death, Jesus who is our mediator, Jesus who is our provider, Jesus who is with us, and Jesus who is coming again!

When it came time for preaching and evaluations, everyone was really nervous, including me! I had to preach and be evaluated first, and then Emmanuel, and then everyone else. I appreciated that they didn't go easy on me because I was the facilitator. Here are some pictures and videos of a few of our preachers from the Soroti training:













Test yourself. Can you see how these passages are about who Christ is, or how they point to Christ, or show the need for Christ, or prepare the way for Christ? These were their sermon assignments: Genesis 22, Acts 3, Numbers 21, Deuteronomy 17, Exodus 1, 2 Kings 5, Psalm 1, 1 Peter 4, Jonah 1, Jonah 2, Jonah 3, and Jonah 4.

I didn't get to rest after the Soroti training which finished on Good Friday. I had scheduled things poorly. On that Saturday we led our small groups, on Sunday I preached for Easter, and then Monday we went to Kampala quickly for work permit issues. Then I went to Kaberamaido for the next preaching training.

In Kaberamaido, I took more of a backseat and let the people I had just trained lead most of the lessons. My co-facilitators were Joshua, Moses, and Jude. They did a great job. I was so happy to see that they had really internalized and taken in what we had taught them in Soroti. The only unfortunate thing about the Kaberamaido training was that we did not have time for people to write individual sermons and be evaluated, but they were still grateful for what they learned. Here are some photos.






Thursday, May 16, 2019

Sara's Kenya and Tanzania Trip

By Sara:

During March I had the exciting opportunity to travel to both Kenya and Tanzania.  In Kenya, I was at Care of Creation Kenya's facility in Kijabe.  Brett (who wrote the Bible study curriculum with me) and I had been invited by them and spent a week teaching a group of some of their staff, missionaries, development workers, church leaders, and farmers.  We took them through our entire Bible study curriculum along with a few agriculture lessons.  It gave the group the chance to see how they can utilize the Bible studies in the different types of work they all do. 


Most people appreciated the inductive Bible study method in itself and had an interest in using it with other passages, not only the agriculture/creation related Scripture from the curriculum.  They especially mentioned the importance of including obedience to God as a part of Bible study.


The following week, I traveled to Tanzania and joined up with the World Renew Tanzania team as the facilitator of their spiritual retreat.  We were in a beautiful location on Lake Victoria.




I loved being able to catch up with friends on the Tanzania team.  The organizers of the retreat did a great job of planning, not packing too much into the short time, but also creating space for fun, quiet reflection, and fellowship.  Since I had recently read the book "The Celebration of Discipline" by Richard Foster, I decided to focus on spiritual disciplines in our group sessions.  I myself enjoyed spiritual refreshment by practicing some of these disciplines together with the Tanzania team.

It was especially fun to introduce an early Christian writing (the earliest known church order document) called "The Didache" to the group.  Despite being from around 100AD, it is extremely relevant to today and easy to read.  For example, it talks about how, if a prophet comes and starts asking people to give them money (unless it's to give to the poor), they're a false prophet.  Everyone had a lot of appreciation for that section!  We also had a good discussion on the section which describes how baptism should be done in cold, running water if possible - how does this apply for people living in cities? or in the desert where there is a scarcity of water?

We also spent time praying, meditating on Scripture and on God's creation, and discussing fasting.




On the way home, I caught a ride with friends driving from Tanzania to Kenya for a retreat.  Once they got to their destination, they dropped me off at a taxi park and I got public transportation the rest of the way home.


Agriculture in Apac

By Sara:

A friend of ours, Willy, who was a student in Mbale when we were there 10 years ago, invited me to teach about agriculture and the fireless cooker in his home church of Apac.  It was a fun day with many women and young people from the church.  On a hot day during the dry season, I was thankful for the tent the church had for events like this.


Learning about soil can be fun!






I don't have any pictures of the fireless cooker, but they were really excited about the possibility of saving firewood/charcoal and time when cooking beans.  In this area, people usually eat beans once or twice a day, which is very time-consuming to cook.  They said this would be SO useful for them all the time.  One lady said she had been having serious respiratory issues and was thankful for a way to cook beans without having to be in a smoky kitchen for hours at a time.  Another man said he was going to start cooking beans in a fireless cooker and strap it to the back of his motorcycle so he could deliver cooked beans to children in school at their lunch time.

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Pastors Helping with TLT in Uganda

By Anthony:

Enjoy this video interview of some of the pastors who are helping me to lead Timothy Leadership Training groups in Uganda: