Utumishi Blog

Last month Sammy, James and I had the privilege of travelling to Lweza, Uganda to take part in the East African Bible Expositors Fellowship (EABEF). It’s been going for a few years and James went last year but it was a new thing for Sammy and me. I learnt so much I thought I’d do some (belated) daily posts…

Sunday was a day of arrivals of participants – from Uganda, Rwanda, South Sudan and the three of us from Kenya. Chris Yikii (director of Biblica Uganda) – our wonderful host and conference organiser introduced the conference reminding us:

• East Africa is not only a region economically but also spiritually – united in the influence and heritage of the EA Revival. Our prayer is for another regional revival.
• As we sit in our sitting rooms, doing that strange work of leaning over a Bible text, sweating to prepare a faithful exposition, the Elijah syndrome is ever present (‘Only I am left’) but in coming together in this fellowship we remind ourselves “there are other sitting rooms” where like-minded brothers are also working hard on Bible texts.
• We are all in need of sharpening. You never take off the L-signs in preaching ministry. And we need the encouragement of others to keep us from the danger of shifting and drifting – of “going where the sugar is coming from”.
• Part of the point of this fellowship is not only to practise exposition ourselves but also to practise training others. There are skills to pass on but character and right passions are also important.
• The average Ugandan is 18.5 years old so there is great potential in targeting the rising generation who are generally most receptive to the idea of expository preaching.
• Many churches in our context are founded on antagonism and division because they have resulted from a split. The gospel is preached as ‘my’ gospel, defined negatively in opposition to ‘his’ gospel over there. We need churches founded on Jesus’ gospel – that look upwards and outwards not just across the road to an opposing church.

Picking up from there, James taught us on Building with the right foundations: the gospel. A few points that really hit me:

• The gospel is historical – the promised, dying, rising Jesus Christ of Nazareth (Rom. 1:2-4)
• The gospel is not just for conversion but for the whole life of faith – we think we need we need other things to maintain us in faith (7 habits, 3 steps, 10 keys) but what we need is to be reminded of the gospel (Rom. 1:15; 15:14-15). Every day of our Christian life is repentance and faith, repentance and faith. And every Sunday we need to hear death and resurrection, death and resurrection.
• The gospel is not what our itching ears want to hear (2 Tim. 4:3) – we naturally want made up stories, speculation and rules (2 Tim. 1:3-11; 4:1-3) – so the gospel will constantly be under threat.

Then Piers Bickersteth led us through Preaching and teaching the whole truth – “an awesome privilege, a daunting prospect and a humbling task.” Highlights from the session:

• We decided that there can be teaching without preaching (though all biblical teaching will be straining at the leash to preach) but there must not be preaching without teaching – we need content, we want to be arguing from the Scriptures for the necessity and supremacy of Christ (Acts 17:2-3).
• “We must let the content and purpose of the Word shape the content and purpose of our preaching”. That is expository preaching. And it’s the purpose bit that really struck me. We are not only to preach the gospel from 2 Tim. 2:8-9 for example but also see why has Paul summarised the gospel at this point in his letter to Timothy? What is the gospel doing here in this letter? What issue is it addressing?
• We are jars of clay (2 Cor. 4:7) – we are completely unworthy of this task; and the more we preach the more we become aware of our sinfulness and weakness; but the gospel is the treasure.

In the evening we started our first in a series of participant expositions in Matthew. Sam Opolot (Living Word) bravely kicked us off with Matt. 14:1-14. It was a great encouragement to carry on faithfully and fearlessly regardless of circumstances like John the Baptist. We had a good discussion afterwards where it became clear:

• It is very difficult to preach from the Gospels.
• The big issue in Matthew 14 is the identity of Jesus – who is he? And we see Herod preferring to believe the ridiculous rather than the obvious.
• John is followed by Jesus as Elijah by Elisha – we’re seeing the Cross foreshadowed in the treatment of the forerunner.