SPCKA NewsWinter 2013
In Kenya everyone is a pastor
Preaching Philippians in Nepal
At last! A new Dinka hymnbook
Do you want the good news or the bad news?
A pastor receives a ten-volume African Leadership training manual from Word of Life School of Theology Principal, Peter Ibui.
Two-year courseThis year we introduced a new two-year part-time Bible training program for pastors using the ten-volume African Leadership manual. By early February we had thirty enrol-ments but only ten sets of textbooks. Without additional books the program could not start.
Thanks to financial assistance from SPCKA we were able to buy another twenty sets and begin teaching.
The new class of thirty pastors from a variety of local church denominations kicked off very well. Formal classes will be held during one week each month over two years.
Thank you for your support and encour-agement. Please pray with me that these pastors will grow in understanding andgodliness and be equipped to instruct andguide those in their care. Peter Ibui is the Principal of the Word of Life School of Theology in Kianjai, Kenya.
K E N Y A
Knowledge liberates in KenyaPeter Ibui on equipping the saints.
A proliferation of untrained and self-appointed pastors and a failure to interpret Scripture in the right way have led to a mushrooming of cults in Kenya. These pastors’ enthusiasm for serving the Kenyan church is great but so is their ignorance.
We are witnessing the truth of Paul’s words in Romans chapter ten: ‘For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. For being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own righteousness, they have not submitted to the righteousness of God.’ This great ignorance of Bible knowledge can be attributed to lack of access to basic Bible training and good books.
Local knowledgeThe Word of Life ministry was founded four years ago to train new believers to read and teach the Bible, and to use the written word to reach out to the lost, including our Muslim neighbours. In this impoverished and remote northern part of the Meru district, the Word of Life School of Theology is the only accessible and affordable Bible training available for equipping and empowering church leaders.
The needs of a young school are many. We have already outgrown our rented accommodation. Our classroom, small library and office need expansion and the new dormitory needs additional beds. The school has acquired its own land but our plans to build will have to wait until funds are available.
For the last three years we have been teaching church leaders and pastors a certificate course using manuals from Word of Life Australia.
Over two years students undertaking the African Leadership Bible training for pastors will complete ten units: 1 Bible study methods and rules of interpretation, 2 Old Testament survey, 3 New Testament survey, 4 Preaching biblical messages and pastoral ministry, 5 Bible doctrine survey, 6 Personal spiritual life, 7 Church ministry and administration, 8 Teaching principles and methods, 9 Church history, 10 Missions, evangelism and discipleship
$60will enable a pastor to train for two years by providing a ten-volume African Leader-ship manual.
particular Biblical theme. This study and preaching guide will encourage them to offer the thorough Bible teaching that a sermon series can achieve.
Accessible and clearThe initial titles in the Pray Prepare Preach series were written by the late Phil Crowter to help Bible teachers around the world explain God’s Word clearly and accurately. They have been widely translated. Preaching Philippians uses short, simple sentences and common words. Our adapta-tion respects this approach.
By making a digital edition available online we hope to extend the benefits of this book to pastors and leaders who are serving the Nepali diaspora around the world.
Thank you for your partnership in this project. Will you pray that this book will be put to good use in Biblestudy groups, house fellowships andcell groups and make its way into themost remote village churches?
Thanks to your encouragement, we are now working on Preaching Mark. Ram Kumar Budhathoki is the Principal of the Nepal Ebenezer Bible College in Kathmandu.
N E P A L
Philippians without bordersRam Kumar reports from Kathmandu.
The good news of our Lord Jesus Christ arrived in Nepal after the country was opened to the outside world in 1950. Since the first church was planted in 1957 the number of believers has grown rapidly. There are now about one million Christians in Nepal.
However, the church is still young and one of the many obstacles we face is the great need for Christian literature in the Nepali language.
Over the past three years Crosslinks and Langham Preaching trainers have conducted workshops for Nepali pastors and Bible teachers. With the permission of The Good Book Company in the UK they are now helping us to publish Nepali translations of the Pray Prepare Preach series of guides for Bible teachers. I have the privilege of coordinating the translation and editing process.
Pray. Prepare. Preach.An SPCKA grant enabled us to publish our first title, Preaching Philippians, in March this year. I am confident that this book will be a great blessing.
After helping the reader understand the background to the text, Preaching Philippians provides twenty sermon outlines. Five additional studies provide useful tools for preparing effective sermons. It will help pastors to avoid taking the text out of its context, to honour its original meaning and to apply it to the needs of their listeners.
Whether they have formal theological training or not, any pastor, teacher or leader who can read will now be able to understand and teach Paul’s Letter to the Philippians.
Nepali pastors rarely attempt to preach a series of sermons from a single book of the Bible or about a
$2400will enable the preparation and publication in Kathmandu of a Nepali translation of Preaching Mark by Phil Crowter.
With your support, a Nepali translation of Preaching Philippians was launched in March this year during a week-long Crosslinks and Langham Preaching workshop in Kathmandu.
S O U T H S U D A N
A new Dinka hymnbookDinka-speaking Christians have traditionally transmitted their faith through liturgy and song. Congregations typically have a repertoire of hundreds of songs and prayers.
The Revd Abraham Ayur Mayor Dit studied theology and was ordained in Khartoum. Before escaping Sudan’s civil war, Abraham was a member of a committee working to update liturgical resources in Dinka. Since settling in Sydney he has completed the massive task of collecting new songs and digitizing traditional material.
With your financial support a trial copy of Abraham’s new combined hymnbook and prayerbook was circu-lated to twenty Dinka-speaking congregations for testing and checking. The book includes 900 songs.
Dinka-speaking Christians have raised and paid an $8000 advance for the printing of this long-awaited publication. On your behalf SPCKA has pledged to match their commit-ment and enterprise dollar-for-dollar and pay the balance. Will you help make Abraham’s dream a reality?
Pray that this liturgical resource will be a blessing and encourage-ment to Dinka-speaking Christians in South Sudan and the diaspora in Australia and elsewhere in Africa.
$8000will make possible the publication this year of a new Dinka hymnbook. This project will be jointly funded by Dinka-speaking Christians and SPCKA.
$20kwill finance the preparation and publication of ten books in Arabic by the Cairo based Episcopal Publishing House.
E G Y P T
Shaping Christian mindsFounded in Cairo in 1900 the Episcopal Publishing House is to be reestablished this year with a new management team and a fresh vision. ‘We are responding to the great need to educate and equip church leaders across the region and across denomina-tions; including our Coptic Orthodox brothers and sisters.’
‘We also want to encourage Africans—including Egyptians—to be proud of their role in church history. Like the church fathers before us, Cyprian, Augustine and Clement of Alexandria, we want to be obedient to our calling and again contribute to the written witness of the global church.’
The Episcopal Publishing House is planning to launch a new catalogue of ten key books in Arabic. SPCKA has been asked to finance the preparation and publication of these initial ten titles with a grant of $20,000. The books will be edited and printed to the highest standards and promoted with Egypt’s most popular medium, Facebook! Revenue earned from book sales will be reinvested in future publishing projects.
Please pray for the EpiscopalPublishing House management teamas it plans the rebirth of this strategicpublishing enterprise and for the SPCKA Grants Committee as it discerns how wemight best support this initiative.
The Most Revd Dr Mouneer Hanna Anis Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Egypt with North Africa and the Horn of Africa holds the Arabic edition of How Africa shaped the Christian mind.
Abraham and Sara Dit pastor a Sudanese congregation based at St Alban’s Anglican Church, Belmore, Sydney.
Together we can advance God’s kingdom by empowering Christian writers, publishers and distributors.• 1 You can provide theological texts and essential reference works to students and pastors where support and resources are scarce.
$38 will subsidise the purchase by a pastor in rural Cambodia of a $50, eight-volume book package.
$60 will enable a Kenyan pastor to train by providing a ten-volume African Leader ship manual.• 2 You can nurture emerging publishers
by directing funds, expertise and encour-agement where life-changing Christian writing is needed most.
$2400 will enable the publication in Kathmandu of a Nepali translation of Preaching Mark.
$8000 will make possible the publication this year of Abraham Dit’s new Dinka hymnbook.• 3 You can equip publishing profes-
sionals by investing in the training and professional development of promising Christian writers, editors and designers.
$4500 will sponsor the second in a series of three workshops for Christian writers organised by A Rocha South Africa.
Donating = loving. If you would like to financially support the work of the Society and its partners in difficult places grab your credit card and visit www.spcka.org.au or use the form overleaf.
C U B A
Training the trainersWith the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, Cuba adopted a more tolerant attitude towards religious expression. Within five years the church doubled in size and has continued to grow rapidly. Over flowing churches are planting new congregations both locally and further afield.
The huge demand for pastors and church planters has been magnified by the exodus of experienced pastors to the United States. Training pastors to meet the need for leadership is chal-lenging. Typically seminary students are already pastoring congre-gations. Most can’t afford to relocate or study full-time.
In a country where transport is scarce and costly, extension courses bring Bible training to local church communities. Over a thousand church planters, pastors and members of their congrega-tions are currently studying the MOCLAM (Moore College in Latin America) intensive Bible overview certificate courses. They represent over a dozen denominations and eleven of Cuba’s fifteen provinces.
To meet the demand for books generated by these courses publisher Torrentes de Vida has begun printing books in Cuba. With your support, a Spanish edition of Preaching the whole Bible as Christian Scripture by Graeme Goldsworthy has been published and made available to church planters and pastors enrolled in the strategic, interdenominational Training the Trainers program.
Praise God for the growth of his churchand the hunger for Bible teaching in Cuba.
With your support a Spanish edition of Preaching the whole Bible as Christian Scripture has been published locally in Cuba and made available to a thousand church planters and pastors.
$2400has made possible the publication and distribution in Cuba of a Spanish edition of Preaching the whole Bible as Christian Scripture.
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G ’ D A Y F R O M S P C K A W I N T E R 2 0 1 3
Do you want the good news or the bad news?
For a week after graduating, former students at the Word of Life School of Theology in Kianjai, Kenya, only take off their academic gowns to sleep. The graduation ceremony marks the beginning of days of festivities with their families, congre-gations and village communities. The celebrations climax with a ritual designed to remind the gradu-ating pastors of their primary
responsibility. The rite is borrowed from traditional marriage custom and is conducted by a local evangelist. The graduate and their spouse cut a cake and place a portion into each other’s mouth. All the guests are then fed in the same way.
‘What’s going on?’ I enquired.Someone whispered: ‘Revelation chapter ten verse nine.’I opened my Bible. ‘So I went to the angel and told him to give
me the little scroll; and he said to me, “Take it, and eat; it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth.”’
In the book of Ezekiel, eating the scroll also brings both sweet-ness and bitterness. There is a mixture of joy and pain in receiving and making known the revealed blessings and judgements of God.
I have observed that preaching God’s judgement is as popular among the poor and oppressed as it is unwelcome among the wealthy and comfortable. Where there is no judgement there is no justice. If we are not guilty there is no grace. If there is neither justice nor grace there is no good news.
The time has come. The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in the good news.
Michael Collie National Director
Take it, and eat; it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth.
SPCKASociety for Promoting Christian Knowledge Australia Incorporated ARBN 119 800 645 and the Australian Christian Literature Society. PO Box 198, Forest Hill, Victoria 3131, Australia. Telephone 1300 13 7725 | [email protected] | www.spcka.org.auIgniting Christian writing
