From 3 to 2,000

What a Sunday! We were invited to preach/teach at Dr. Silavwe's house church, Eternal Glory, about 5 miles outside Lusaka. Two years ago, Dr. Silavwe, his wife and daughter launched this church in their living room. Their first Sunday it was just the three of them. Today, Eternal Glory Church numbers 2,000 members (and a Bible school) scattered across several provinces through new church planting and the addition of unaffiliated congregations. Amazing!

Abby preached on Isaiah 43:1-4, emphasizing how precious we are to the Lord who honors us!. I then preached on Galatians 3:24-29 about the amazing benefits we have in Christ. Percy led beautiful worship music, as did their praise team.

The small congregation was delightful, engaged, filled with praise and warmly welcomed our ministry. What an honor! Afterwards, we enjoyed a great meal with the Silavwe family.

This coming Sunday, Abby & I will be preaching again when the area Eternal Glory house churches come together into a congregation of about two hundred. With Percy leading worship, it should be a very special time!

Dr. Silavwe teaches at Justo Mwale University (Seminary) and the University of Zambia. He holds two Ph.D.'s and is working on a third. He is the Bishop of the Eternal Glory denomination and is one of the planning team members for the Zambian College of Chaplaincy. Mrs. Silavwe is an accomplished middle school teacher. They have three kids, 10, 11 & 15. The Silavwe's are standing to Abby's left in the back row and Percy is on the far left in the back row in the photo below of the church.

Anything Means Everything!

Well, we've arrived! We are staying at the lovely Mika Lodge in Lusaka. Feel free to drop by if you're in town! Our trip was very smooth and last night we both rested beautifully and are feeling very refreshed. Thanks for your prayers!

This afternoon, we met with Dr. Silavwe who is our host for the next ten days. He graciously welcomed us to Lusaka and invited us to lunch at his home tomorrow so we can meet his family. We are humbled and excited.

He also told us that he had looked through our training manual to see what he thought would benefit the twenty pastors who are coming next week. His comment was not what we expected. He said, "I'd like you to do all of it in a compressed format."

On the one hand, his words were very encouraging. We've worked for the last five years to develop a great training manual, one that meets the needs of Zambian pastors and leaders and is a real encouragement to them. The fact that Dr. Silavwe affirmed the entire manual is awesome!

On the other hand, as I mentioned in my previous blog, our manual covers about one hundred hours of training. We'll have about twenty-five hours of training with the pastors next week. That's going to mean a lot of compressing!

So, would you pray for us as we plan with Percy over the next couple of days? Pray that the Holy Spirit will lead us as we choose what to emphasize and what to summarize quickly, and pray also that we will follow the Spirit's lead as the week unfolds and we get to know the pastors. Our goal is to serve them and encourage them as we are strengthened and encouraged by them, as well!

"What will we be teaching?"

August 10, 2015

"What will we be teaching?" It seemed like a simple enough question. Percy Muleba and I (Doug) were chatting by phone a couple of weeks ago about our upcoming week of training at Justo Mwale Theological University in Lusaka. We've been invited by Justo's Dr. Silavwe to train a group of pastors there, and Abby and I were anxious to prepare. "Just come prepared to teach anything," Percy replied. Well then, I thought, that really narrows things down! I had to laugh...

Now, to be fair, by "anything" Percy didn't really mean anything at all. He meant anything in our training manual. But, still...Our training manual contains over 100 hours of instruction on Understanding the Bible, Introduction to Pastoral Care & Chaplaincy, God's Plan for His Beloved, Jesus Empowered Savings Groups, Missionary God, Vision in Leadership, Servanthood vs. Servitude, Biblical Submission and Church Planting.

Percy's perspective was simple. We don't know these pastors yet. How can we know what we should teach them? How can we know, indeed? Relational and responsive, that's what we love about Zambia. We're not the experts offering our pet lectures in Zambia, we're co-laborers seeking to encourage our brothers and sisters where they need it most. I wonder where that will be?

One thing we know for sure. The hunger for learning we will encounter the week of August 23rd will be intense. American Christians are information saturated. We have knowledge our Zambian friends desperately need and want. And, we're glad to share what we have learned through the years.

On the other hand, what do we need? We need the "mystic" Christianity we encounter in Zambia, the deep prayer and passionate worship that is so common there. We need the ability to be quiet and listen, to sit under the tree with our friends, to hear the heart cry of our brothers and sisters, and to laugh together.

Zambian Christians might need our knowledge, but I think we need their zeal even more. I've heard it said that zeal without knowledge leads to error, but knowledge without zeal leads to death. Which is worse? Please pray that both zeal and knowledge come together for us on this trip and that we are led by the Holy Spirit every step of the way.