Preacher man
When we first arrived in Lira, we sat down with the staff of the church here and talked about the numerous ministry opportunities in which we could partner with the church. The two that I really felt called to were also the two that I was dreading the most: Preaching and door-to-door evangelism. I don’t think I had ever preached a sermon prior to coming here and I was tired of leaving my comfort zone. At this point in the race, I feel like I’m living outside my comfort zone, and it isn’t getting any easier.
Still, sitting there in the meeting, the call to these ministries was pretty real, so I decided to just get over myself and go for it. One of the things that my team and I have been talking about a lot in recent weeks is pushing ourselves in our ministries, so I decided to put my money where my mouth is and go for it. This blog is about trying to push myself in preaching in Africa. To read about pushing myself in evangelism, proceed to my next blog, Evangelism Man.
When I said that I was interested in preaching, one of the pastors promptly gave me a 30-minute weekday prayer hour preaching slot and three morning prayer opportunities on the radio. Within the first week, I would have to come up with four different sermons and deliver them, once to an audience of a few dozen listeners, and three times to an audience (supposedly) of 1.5 million listeners all across northern Uganda and southern Sudan. I was terrified. I was sure that everyone listening to anything I had to say had heard it all before and would learn nothing because they all knew more than me. Still, I decided to do my best.
My first sermon was about the power of Jesus to change lives and the fact that God can and does use us in spite of our weaknesses, incompetencies, mistakes, etc. It was somewhere during this sermon that I realized that I was preaching to myself. I was worried that God could not use my preaching to encourage or challenge people listening to me. I was in the process of preaching just the opposite! It was very cool to see that the Lord used that sermon, even if it was just for me.
Encouraged by my revelation, I embarked on the preparations for my three days of radio preaching. They would be from 6:30-6:45 am and amidst all my other challenges, my mother will assure you that I am NOT a morning person. Still, God was faithful and it ended up being an incredible experience. The three days went really well and afterward I came to a deep and meaningful conclusion. I realized that you don’t have to go to seminary, or a pastor’s convention, or have led a church to preach God’s truth. Certainly, these things help, but to preach truth, all you need is to look into your life and see the times and places that God has revealed His truth to you, then apply that to what the scriptures say. I realized last week that I am a preacher man. That sounds so weird for me to admit after years of running from it because my dad is a pastor and I’ve always thought, “I could never preach like he does”. But it’s true, I am a preacher man. We all are – well, except for those of you without Y-chromosomes, in which case you are preacher women. We all have God’s truth inside us. All we have to do is share it. I’ve preached (including sharing “a word” at cell groups) about a half a dozen times since we got to Uganda and I’ve loved it every time because I know that things that have happened to me in my past are being redeemed by God because I can use them to share God’s truth with others.
It is not the case that a few people in the church have a monopoly on God’s truth. We all have it, and even though we do not all have the gift of preaching or teaching, I think that maybe more of us do than we realize because we never try. I tried this month and God stretched me and grew me because of it. Please continue to the next blog, “Evangelism Man” to hear about more stretching and growing the Lord has done in me this month.
Thanks for your prayers and support
Adam
