Sammy started our final day of the conference by taking us into 1 Corinthians 4 where we saw, among other things:
- The challenge and encouragement that all that is required of us is faithfulness in handling and preaching the glorious gospel (v2).
- You don’t belong to your pastor or your bishop but to Christ (v1,4).
- The minister defined by the gospel – our identity as a miserable sinner on the receiving end of massive grace, last among the brothers – not ‘Very Reverend Apostle Dr…’ (v7,9-10).
- Paul does not confuse worldly success with faithful service – in fact the expectation for faithful servants of the gospel is exactly the reverse – Cross-shaped shame and suffering (v11-13).
- The gospel creates relationships of grace-shaped father-son discipleship and mentoring (v15,17),
In Philippians 3 it was wonderful to soak again in the gospel of being found in Christ. I was particularly struck in the discussion time about the danger of assuming the gospel, thinking it is only for conversion rather than the whole Christian life, and how, as different people pointed out assuming the gospel results in:
- A turn to the social gospel, the social sciences and eventually to the Bible being put to one side;
- Believers lacking understanding of the great gospel dynamic of suffering and then glory, cross and then resurrection, so they have false expectations of the Christian life and are unprepared for suffering;
- Churches full of spiritual babies, everyone has assumed they know the gospel so they have never clearly understood it so they have not grown.
Greg prepared us for going back out into the world with 1 Corinthians 9 – the pattern of Paul who for the sake of the gospel:
- Laid down his financial rights (v1-18). He absolutely had these rights (by nature, Law, OT pattern, command of Christ) but amazingly didn’t assert them and even refused them.
- Was a slave evangelist – laying down culture and independence (v19-23).
- Went into hard training, focussed, passionate about one thing, and not just preaching the message to others (as a professional) but taking hold of that same message for himself (v24-27).
Lydia gave us some ideas of how to take this all further. Among the web-based resources recommended were:
Finally, Harrison led a seminar on passing on the baton of servant leadership and faithful Bible teaching, taking as his main texts 2 Timothy 2:1-7 and Matthew 9:38. We thought about content to pass on in terms of Character (faithful, loyal, hardworking, persevering), Conviction (strong in grace, rooted in the Word), Competence (able to teach, an unashamed workman, skill in service).
Please pray that the Lord of the harvest would raise up spiritual fathers to mentor workers for the harvest fields of Kenya and beyond.
fidelnyikuri
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Utumishi Blog 
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