As a part of our mission trip to Malawi, our team was involved in a training conference for Church of God pastors from across Malawi. By “involved” I mean that Crossings Community Church underwrote the vast majority event, including covering the lodging and travel expenses for the 23 pastors who attended. During the two-week conference the pastors studied basic theology, church polity, and received some basic HIV/AIDS education. This last component was twofold: to educate the pastors themselves on the basic facts of HIV/AIDS and to equip them to better minister to their congregations where AIDS is sometimes very prevalent. I was blessed to have the opportunity to teach these incredible men and women for the final three days of the conference. The participation of Crossings Community Church as a funder of this event is a mere monetary investment of our treasures that will reap eternal rewards.
Most of these pastors – most of whom are Regional Overseers for the Church of God in Malawi – do not have more than a sixth grade education…if they have any education at all. The 21 men and two women who attend are mainly peasants and farmers who love the Lord with all of their heart, soul, mind and strength. These servants pastor out of their devotion to God and the calling that he has placed on their hearts, not because it is their career choice.
Our time together started each day with worship. When I say “worship” I mean a full-bodied, high-impact aerobic, participatory event where the sole focus of all activity was the adoration and praise of the Lord God Almighty. We sang, we clapped, we danced, we drummed, (I also learned that desks and chairs make suitable drums), and we earnestly worshiped in spirit and in truth. It was a worship that exists only when we worship out of the overflow of the joy and gratitude that spills from our hearts for what Jesus has done for us. This time of singing was followed by a brief devotion led by a different pastor each day, a prayer, one more song and then it was time for teaching.
When I decided to help teach these pastors as part of my contribution to this mission trip, I was a little intimidated. I wasn’t intimidated based on a depth of knowledge – I knew that Terry Feix, Cliff Sanders, and Steve Seaton were all in Oklahoma – but because I realized the stakes that were involved. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I knew that if I messed up and taught unsound doctrine that it could have a detrimental impact on the churches across Malawi. That was not something that I wanted to be responsible for. So after much prayer, after seeking a great deal of godly wisdom and insight from pastors and teachers whom I deeply respect, and after even more prayer, I prepared lessons on The Bible, The Doctrine of God, The Doctrine of Christ and The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit/Triune God.
These pastors were so eager to learn. We mixed times of lecture with small group discussion, periods of Q & A, and large group discussion. The Lord truly blessed our time together. I will never forget these twenty-three men and women (plus two-month old Gloria, who came with her mom) or these three days for the rest of my life. This was a deeply rewarding and satisfying experience and I am humbled that God would allow me a small role in continuing to build his kingdom in Malawi. Our prayer (this includes CHoG missionary Tammie Tregallas and the Gregorys) and hope is that these church leaders will now go and teach those pastors that are within their various regions of Malawi. Just as they have been taught and trained for the last two weeks, they need to train the pastors that they are overseeing and mentoring.
Some of the concepts we studied and discussed were not difficult to grasp while others presented a challenge for me to break down and adequately communicate. We can all understand the concept of Jesus coming and being the sacrifice for our sin, it is a little more difficult to describe one person being 100% divine and 100% human. It is one thing to say that God is the Creator of all things, but how do you break down the word “transcendence” in Chichewa? We talked about God being eternal, all powerful, and having many eyes (omnipresence) but are we as 21st century, educated Americans even capable of grasping the full impact and reality of a transcendent God. I believe it but that doesn’t mean that I fully understand it. One of the pastors finally summed it up best when he said: “We must let God be God.” Simple, yet profound and eternally true. Later, we sang the song “Let God be God,” a wonderful Chichewa song about the power of God.
Some of the questions that the pastors asked were deep and thoughtful. “Is it permissible to let a woman preach?” “Does the baptism of the Holy Spirit mean that everyone can speak in tongues?” “If Eve at the forbidden fruit first then why did God get angry with Adam, and not Eve?” Other questions were a result of their educational backgrounds. “Why didn’t Adam and Eve have a wedding ceremony?” “Of the 500 brothers that Jesus appeared to, (1 Corinthians 15), the ones who have not yet fallen asleep, are they still alive today?” “Why was the woman who was caught in adultery going to be stoned but not the man she was caught with?” All of the questions were thought provoking, you just never knew from which end of the spectrum they would come from.
Each of the pastors who attended the conference received a brand new Bible. For most of the participants, this meant a study Bible (much like the NIV study Bible you may own) in the Chichewa language, complete with scriptural cross-references, outlines of each book of the Bible and even maps at the back. These pastors had never owned Bibles like this before...therefore, they were somewhat uncertain on how to use them properly. But the Lord gave us opportunities to learn to use them together.
On the second day of our time together, one of the pastors asked a question about a passage of scripture: Matthew 24:15 - 25. As Jesus it teaching about the signs of the end of the age, he references prophecy from the book of Daniel. The pastor asked me what Jesus was talking about. We all had the opportunity to look up the passage in Matthew, use the cross-references to Daniel 9 - 12, to read those entire chapters (to gain a more complete understanding of what Daniel was talking about) and then to apply it to what Jesus was teaching. As these pastors become more comfortable using their new Bibles it will open up new depths of understanding to the truth that is contained within God's word.
One of the pastors I had the chance to meet was Pastor Pipe. He is the man wearing the white shirt in the picture above. Pastor Pipe is a warm, wonderful and godly man who is in his sixties. For most of his life, Pastor Pipe was completely illiterate. He could not read a single word or even write his own name. However, one night Pipe had a dream. Pipe dreamed that God was calling him to preach. Pipe's respoonse to God was: "I will do whatever you ask but how can I preach when I cannot even read?" God's answer to Pipe? "I will teach you to read." God then instructed Pipe to find a Bible and to take it with him to the river by the village. Obediantly, Pipe did as he was instructed. He arrived at the river, opened up the Bible and suddenly, for the first time in his life, he could read the words that were printed on the page. A true life story of God not calling the equipped but equipping the called.
How many times have we felt the tug of the Holy Spirit on our hearts only to find ourselves spouting excuse after excuse for why God must be mistaken. Surely God must have me mistaken with someone who has (pick one): more talents, more time, more money, better speaking skills, more patience, etc. He can't use me. And so rather than responding to God's call we choose to raltionalize it away and explain that feeling in our gut as something we ate that did not agree with us. And yet here we see in Pastor Pipe a man who - in our society - had none of the skills necessary to be a pastor...he couldn't even read the Bible. But his desire to be obediant and responsive to God was greater than his doubts or inadequacies. That is truly faith in action.
The three days that I was able to spend with these men and women are three days that I will treasure for the rest of my life. For me, they rank right up there with the day I married my wonderful wife Deanna and the birth of my children. Personally, having the chance to participate in the ordination service of two of these pastors - Reverend Pipe and Reverend Emmanuel - was a highlight of this trip.
Soli Deo Gloria,
Michael
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