Pastors' Training Program: Woliso, Ethiopia

Sorry for the delay in reporting on the launch of the Pastors' Training Program in Ethiopia. Immediately following the launch in Woliso, I flew back to Nairobi to finish the Romans Project translation work. For three full days I was frantically working to finish up with editing and sending recordings. The Lord allowed us to complete the 18 sessions of Romans in Luganda and Luo (Ugandan languages) as well as 20 sessions of the Gospel of Luke in Oromo (Ethiopia). Tigrinya (Ethiopia) still has 5 sessions of Romans to hand in. I am hoping to receive those in the next week or so.

Back to the Pastor's Training Program, I must admit that I was a little hesitant as to whether the launch in Ethiopia could be as good as it was in Kitale, Kenya. I was pleasantly surprised that it did go extremely well. Praise the Lord!

We had 29 pastors gather in Waliso, Ethiopia for 3 1/2 days of intense study. These men, along with the two leaders - Kebede and Beza, are incredibly dedicated to the work of the Gospel and eager to learn.

 The first night we started with a time of introduction. We asked them: 1) their names, 2) the length and mode of travel they took to the training site, 3) the number of congregations and members they have, and 4) if they had ever had formal Bible training. This was incredibly eye-opening. These 29 pastors had traveled anywhere from 1 hour on foot to 9 hours by walking and riding some sort of vehicle. The further ones first walked 2-3 hours on foot to reach a paved road where they could then take transportation to the training site. These are definitely "rural" pastors. Collectively these men are pastoring over 50 congregations with a total of over 6,200 members. Three of the pastors came later that evening and we neglected to record their full information. Of these pastors, the vast majority had no previous formal Bible training.

We covered the same subject in Woliso as we did in Kitale, Kenya: How to Study the Bible. One major difference about our training time in Woliso was that we needed translation for all the sessions. Teshale, a local pastor who had studied at a seminary in Nairobi and thus knew English, translated for Johnathan and me. Johnathan began each day teaching from Philippians and then I followed with instructions on how to study the Bible.

The pastors broke up into smaller groups and used Philippians as the text for practicing the skills. It proved to be a very successful model of training for them and by the end of our time they had made great strides in learning the steps of observation, interpretation, and application.

We began studies at 8:30 each morning and finished at 5:00 in the evening. (Ethiopian time, that would be 2:30 to 11:00 during the daylight hours.) We had a tea / coffee break mid-morning with strong Ethiopian coffee in small cups and black tea along with roasted grain for snacks. This was a great time to mingle with the student-pastors and do my best at learning their names and trying to learn their language - Oromo. Lunches and dinners were spent together as leaders / teachers. They were great times to enjoy fellowship and evaluate the day's progress.

Kebede and Beza, along with two more colleagues, will follow up these pastors each month until we meet again in February. They received the same assignments as those in Kitale and were encouraged to work both individually and in study groups between meeting times.

Kebede (left) and Eremias (right)

Beza

We traveled back to Addis Ababa on Saturday and had lunch with Eremias's boss, Girma, before flying back to Nairobi. Girma, who is over the church planting efforts for "Great Commission" (the name for Campus Crusade for Christ, or "Cru", in Ethiopia), was very pleased with the launch of the Pastors' Training Program. He explained to us that half of the pastors were chosen from one church planting center in the city of Ambo and half were from their work in Woliso. At present they have 34 church planting centers throughout Ethiopia and are on track to have 60 by September of 2016. Presently they are working with about 1,500 pastors and expect to double that by next year. It's not too difficult to grasp the immensity of the task before us, nor that we are barely scratching the surface of this great need.

PLEASE PRAY that God would allow us to focus on thoroughly training these 29 pastors this year. The temptation would be to rush the process because of the great need. But Ken, Eremias, Johnathan, and I believe that we should faithfully focus on equipping these men this year while at the same time fervently praying for God to raise up a team of men that next year we could train to be trainers of future groups. Please pray with us that God would cause a movement of multiplication to take place in order to train all these pastors.

One verse that guides my prayers for these pastors we are training through the Pastors' Training Program is 2 Timothy 2:15. "Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth."