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.
