Leadership Gatherings

I am constantly, blown away by how God continues to use us to reach, encourage and equip the church.  Tuesday we had another pastors training and prayer morning; we call them “Leadership gatherings.”  Our topic this time was “Timothy – lessons learned from a disciple.”  I could not be more excited and encouraged by how well these monthly training sessions are going.

Our seminars do not follow the typical format of these types of events here, but despite that, I really sense the pastors have come to understand and appreciate in a new way the things we are trying to accomplish as we gather.

For example, culturally in schools where our Xhosa pastors all grew up, the environment if very different than in North America.  You come, you sit, and you shut-up and listen.  Most seminars here follow a similar formula where an “expert” teacher comes to impart to the gathered church leaders.

We have very intentionally from the beginning said we will not do it that way and instead we encourage the pastors we believe that God has spoken and taught each one of you, and as we gather, we seek to bring that wisdom out for the benefit of all the others.  The pastors no longer hesitate during the discussions, instead they are eager to share and ask questions about our topics.

From my last teaching, my 3 large group questions were:

1.            What is a disciple, and who is a disciple trying to become like?
2.            Is every born again Christian a disciple?
3.            When you picture a mature disciple of Jesus, what characteristics do you picture?

We had such amazing conversation on these questions as we wrestle with these issues and we seek the Lord together in prayer for one another.  In my small group a few of the pastors were from a large denomination.  They asked, “How do we begin to do discipleship in our churches when our denominations are against it?”  We prayed that God would soften the hearts of the denominational leaders in this regards.

Most of the pastors are from independent churches, and they were challenging one another on how to not just preach, but to start doing 1 on 1 ministry and bible studies with their members so that the people of the churches can ask questions about the Bible and together they can search the scriptures for answers.  One of our major emphasis this week was on sound doctrine, as sadly there are constantly problems here with churches and pastors that have gone astray.  We talked about opening up churches to encourage the people to go directly to the Word instead of just trusting the pastor to tell them what it means.  It is very difficult to capture in black in white text the joy and passion in these pastors eyes as we go through these topics.