Christian Education

I'm trying to get you all filled in since it has been so long. Too much good stuff to skip

It has come to my attention that Christian Education seems to be the area most ignored by Churches in Congo. I noticed it first with the kids. Kids seem to know so little about the Bible. Not even the children’s stories everyone seems to know something about. I noticed few people in Congo seem to own Bibles and even fewer still seem to read them. The church I am working with theoretically has a whole program for Christian education but unfortunately in reality does nothing. So I began to pray about what I could do and got some ideas.

First I teach at the church on Wednesday (the midweek service) and Thursdays (prayer day). I was asked to use Thursdays to teach on intercession. As God works things out supernaturally, the church I was attending in the US did a Wednesday night service on intercession using Dutch Sheets book Intercessory Prayer. So I spent the last 3 months going through the book with the Thursday group. It took a lot of work putting the main points of the book into French. It went awesome though. People were so excited about what they were learning and putting it into practice. Not only that but they were using the papers I had made up for them in French to teach their friends and neighbors the principles from the book! It was awesome and we started seeing God answer our prayers and more people being excited about praying.

I have been long suggesting and praying that the church would start a Bible study. There is so much preaching but no teaching. So I finally figured out I should just do it myself on Wednesdays. It is so much more difficult to teach in a foreign language. This is why I have been waiting for someone else to do it. But my language skills are improving so I figured I’d give it a try. Still in the mind set that surely people knew plenty about the Bible I decided to start in Galatians. We would go through it chapter by chapter talking not only about what salvation is which Paul beautifully and strongly describes but also talking about simple techniques for how to understand the Bible I had learned in college. I thought it would be great, but it was a disaster. I then got the idea to take a person and give them homework sheets to fill out. So I chose David and we have been going through different stories. I make up homework sheets in Swahili with questions about the story and they fill it out. Everyone has been doing it and thanking me for helping them get in a habit of reading the Bible and helping them understand it. We also talk about what God taught you through the passage and that has been my favorite part. It gives people a chance to participate, and helps them expect and allow the Holy Spirit to teach them something. It also demonstrates to them how they can be used as “preachers" (Rom 10) of the Word of God in every day life. It has been so effective that some people have requested me to be in charge of Christian education for the whole church. For right now I haven’t accepted but I will be making available what I am doing now to any other churches who are looking for a curriculum.

Finally I’ve been wanting to help the kids. I did research and finally found a curriculum online for kids in francophone Africa and ordered it. It won’t be here until January though (hopefully). So in the mean time I’ve been trying. I do a weekly program for the orphans in Shituru where we also provide food for them. It has been going well. I just started offering candy in exchange for the kids memorizing scripture. Hopefully that works out. I also started doing a monthly program in Toyota where we are sponsoring kids through school. I am teaching them some Bible stories too. It is so little but has really made a difference. I am looking forward to the arrival of the curriculum. I’m hoping to help churches and schools all over start Christian education programs.