Biblical Preaching TLT in Apac and Testimonies

By Anthony:

At the beginning of April, Sara and I spent a week in Apac, Uganda, leading trainings. I was with my co-facilitator Jude to lead the Timothy Leadership Training manual on Biblical Preaching. Jude is 69 years old but still full of energy! Together we spent 5 days teaching 25 pastors. We had a very exhausting, but very fulfilling and satisfying week. We were so grateful for the opportunity and for how God used us. Here are some photos of Jude below:

Here are some videos of Jude facilitating:

Here are some pictures and videos of me facilitating:

We stayed at a guesthouse in Apac, and it was very funny to me when our waitress was bringing our breakfast and she wasn't sure if we had prayed or not yet, so she offered to pray for the food for us. But she didn't because Jude told her we had already prayed. I can't imagine this happening in the US! When I told Ugandan friends that this was funny to me, they had a hard time understanding. They take it for granted that most people are Christians, even if in name only, and it's very common for the one serving the food to be the one who prays. People also believe that it's important to bless the food through praying before eating. Sometimes (not all the time) it seems to be more of a ritual for safety rather than a meaningful prayer. I'm not sure where that idea originated from.

Every night we had supper with Bishop Willy and his family. We visited Willy back in 2009 or 2010 when we taught at Pentecostal Theological College. He was doing a degree program at the college while we taught there. Here is a picture at his home. In this pastorate they really take good care of their leaders compared to other areas of the country. As bishop, the church has a home for his family to stay in, as well as space for gardening. This is quite unusual in our experience.

This TLT manual is the hardest one, and though the pastors kept struggling to make sense of the English manual and the technical concepts, they were extremely appreciative of the training they received. They are going to think about the possibility of translating the manuals into Lango for when they are ready to train others.

The pastors went away with a solid conviction that they need to read more of the Bible and to be reading it every day if they are going to be able to preach the text and the Gospel faithfully. I surveyed them and found that out of the 25 pastors, only 1 had read the whole Bible in his life, and beyond that only 1 pastor had read the whole New Testament. They had a time of prayer for repentance for how they had neglected God's Word. They own Bibles, but they, like us in the USA too, fail to set aside time to dig into God's Word every day.

I demonstrated the 4-step TLT preaching method to them near the end by preaching one of my short sermons to them. Then Jude led them in picking it apart and evaluating it. It was about lying, and God's grace and forgiveness. Here is a picture of me praying at the end.

After that, we divided them into small groups and assigned each group a sermon to work on by going through all the steps they learned from the TLT manual. Then one person from each group preached their sermon and was evaluated by the whole training group. Doing the work as groups is really good because it helps those who are not quite grasping the material yet to be helped by their fellow pastors, and they can discuss also in their local languages.

Here is a very short clip of William preaching for his small group. Please pray for all these pastors as they go back to their churches applying what they've learned. They are really excited to preach the good news! Opio shared that when he preached his new sermon on Sunday (the one they worked on as a group in the training), three people came to Christ!

The reports they gave from manual 3: From Harm to Harmony: Overcoming Violence in the Family, were so encouraging as usual. I won't share about every person's plan. Most of them taught church members or couples about healthy marriages and showing love to one another. Many people testified that couples that were living together but not yet married in the church are now in the process of planning for church weddings. One pastor said that couples he counseled were now willing to share their possessions together rather than each guarding their own belongings. Several pastors said that couples who were having problems are now "sharing the same bed again." As they visited homes, some people believed in Christ. Richard trained four families in overcoming violence and 3 people got saved. Felix saw two people get saved after visiting them to teach about family life. Walter was able to help one separated couple to reconcile and come back together again. 

Last, please enjoy these really wonderful video testimonies from Apac pastors about TLT! The first is Opio Brian's testimony about a witchdoctor who got saved:

Felix Eca's testimony:

Dennis Otto's testimony: