A few months ago, I had the joy and privilege of starting a new TLT group in Soroti, the town we live in. It's fun that the church hosting the training, Deliverance Church Soroti, is literally a five minute walk from our home.
This training was very unique compared to my other TLT trainings. This time it was hosted by the Deliverance denomination rather than PAG, and between the trainers and the participants, we had 7 different denominations represented. But we also had some special guests for half of the training, bringing the total number of denominations to 9! This is probably the most ecumenical training or teaching I've ever done. There was a powerful feeling of unity and love for all the group members. There were no doctrinal fights, only good discussions, and everyone really appreciated studying the Bible together.
My co-facilitator was Engolu Joseph, pictured below. Joseph is a seasoned pastor with wisdom and insight, and also a gifted facilitator. But more than that, he is a good friend. He was our student at Pentecostal Theological College in 2009-2010, and he is also the senior pastor of the local PAG church that we worship with.
We had Henk with us from the Netherlands who was connecting with our group for the sake of the research he is doing about TLT for his doctorate program. Two Ugandan pastors from the Presbyterian church also joined him. We had to make some small adjustments to our program for the research but it all worked out really well and Sara and I had a good time getting to know Henk while he stayed at our home during the week.
It was exciting to have Karen and Moses, missionaries in Soroti, join us for the training. They were a huge help in the logistics, budgeting, and food issues. I'm very grateful for their service! It was also a delight to have two other students that we taught at Pentecostal Theological College back in 2009 as TLT participants, Okiror and Okwi. There were also members from our small group and members from our church participating in the training.
Anne leading devotions one morning:
The first manual is Caring for God's People. We discussed how to make pastoral visits, how to do active listening, how to mourn with those who mourn, how to really get to know church members, how to have humility as a pastor, and how to seek lost sheep who have run away from the church.
Here is a video that shows you a little of the flow of TLT, how discussions go:
One of the discussions was particularly vigorous. In one of the lessons, there was a question about why Christians sometimes fear death. Many of the participants themselves admitted that they fear death. We were able to discern together that there were mainly two reasons for this fear among Christians in Uganda. 1. Many people have not been taught well about Heaven and the New Creation and the resurrection. Because of this, life on earth seems much better than the vague unknown of what is to come. 2. More importantly, we realized that many Christians don't have any assurance of salvation because although they believe in Jesus, functionally they are still believing in salvation by works, and they worry about whether they will be truly saved or not because they know they still struggle with sin.
This led into a quite in-depth Bible study in which I taught a lot about justification by faith and how we receive the righteousness of Christ, and how our punishment is already completely paid for by Christ. It got a little bit tricky at one point because I don't believe a person can lose their salvation, that is to go from being born again to not being born again, while 95% of the participants are from denominations that do believe that. But since I am very familiar theologically with other views about losing salvation (I used to believe that and argue for it myself), I was able to teach how justification by faith still leaves room for believing someone can lose their salvation. Carefully I explained that (even according to the official beliefs of their denominations) someone would lose their salvation by rejecting Christ and walking away from him, but not by accidentally committing one sin. But on the ground here in Uganda, the average pastor believes and teaches that if you sin once you lose your salvation. More theological teaching and biblical study is greatly needed in Uganda.
People were really touched by this discussion, and I had to painfully stop the conversation so that we could finish the manual in time. But at least we spent 1-2 hours on it. I hope and expect that many of them went home with a much better understanding of the Gospel and much less fear of death. A number of people wanted to invite me to their denominations to teach groups of pastors about salvation, justification, and sanctification. I'm excited to do so! Unfortunately those plans are halted for the time being while we are in lock-down because of COVID-19.
Small group discussions:
Each person telling the group about their new action plan:
Praying for the action plans:
This time instead of typing out some of their action plans, you can read them for yourself! I've removed their names for privacy. There are some very unique plans this time!
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