NelsonNews

November 2013

CHURCH BUILDING BLOCKS

“I used to work on a farm where a white man was our boss. He never smiled and he always shouted at us and was mean to us. I came to believe that all white people were like that. But all the teams and friends you have brought to us have been happy, smiling, loving people. Are all the people in America that way?”

He paid me one of the highest compliments I have ever had as a Christian, about something I barely remembered. I had just led a Bible study on Psalm 1: 1-2:

Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
or stand in the way of sinners
or sit in the seat of mockers.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

I was able to refer back to this study to answer his question. He shared his testimony of how these verses helped him to see something he was just recognizing had happened to him, regarding the matter of standing in the way of sinners.

“Last December some men stole my coffee harvest [the local cash crop] and destroyed all the food in my garden. I was so angry I was going to go consult a certain witchdoctor, one who kills. But Mama Margaret prayed with me and told me it was not good to seek revenge on people. Then she gave me her coffee crop to harvest and told me I could use her garden [about 1 acre] for the next year.

“Those same men did the same thing to me again in June, but they were also doing it to others in our village. Another man then went to that witchdoctor and 4 people have died as a result. Then the village turned on that man and have chased him away, as he was now the enemy.

“I see now how standing in the path of sinners is the wrong way to go and how much trouble I would’ve been in had I gone that way. Mama Margaret guided me the right way and I see now she was putting me on God’s path, not the sinners’ path.”

Sometimes I feel a little guilty when I hear how few people become missionaries to the unreached people groups, and I’m not one of them. But what I’ve learned living in Uganda, which is supposedly 80% Christian and has many churches, is what a pastor of mine told us years ago: when sheep are not fed green grass, they will eat dry weeds. The village pastors are uneducated men, often not understanding how to feed their sheep, or how to even be shepherds. Western heresies have also overwhelmed Uganda so that the money-god is often worshiped more than our true Father God. And as is too often true in Western churches as well, position and power are sought more than godliness. Syncretism with traditional religion is rampant. The sheep are eating dry weeds…

Paul said in Eph. 4: 11-13:

It was He who gave some to be apostles… prophets… evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

So while some are reaching the unreached, bringing in new sheep, others are teaching and training them, feeding them green grass, so that the church will mature. As the unreached are reached with the Gospel, and the church is taught and matures, we will soon usher in the blessed return of Jesus Christ!

God brought the Moores to us from Alabama as teachers to give us direction to the vision we already had for our church. We wanted to start home Bible study groups in villages that would develop into churches. But we did not have pastors to lead such groups. Ken & Marilyn taught us an 8 step program to start such groups without pastors, which would be accountable to the main church. The church does not require a building and a lot of expense. The church is people loving Jesus.

I have been teaching the church how to learn the Bible using the inductive Bible study method. Over the next 8 weeks we will review the teachings of the Moores in more depth, and everything will come together to fuel starting these new village outreaches.

Please pray for us as we learn and grow, building our growing church with people.

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