What Seminary Could Never Teach Me

 

As excited as I am for India, I am sad to leave East Africa. We have had some life changing moments and some incredible experiences on this continent and I know that God has amazing things in store for me and Africa in the future. One of the best parts of my time in Africa (other than deliverance services, prophesy nights, door-to-door and hut-to-hut visits, and our contacts) has been the opportunity to preach all the time. In all honesty, I have completely lost count of the total number of times I’ve preached this year, especially in Africa for the last three months. I’ve preached to audiences of anything between one person to 300-400 hundred people…in schools, in churches, in markets, in house churches, in bars, in jails, in orphanges, in witchdoctors huts and everywhere in between. My expectations of preaching before the Race and what has actually happened are like night and day.

 

I thought, having my bachelors in Communication Studies, all my sermons would be very organized and prepared before I gave them. I believed that I would follow the formula my college professors gave me to write and execute a perfect message to people around the world and that the experiences of preaching on the Race would prepare me for seminary in Colorado. I remember the first time I gave a sermon on the Race. We were in the Philippines and I had to preach back-to-back services for a congregation of about 200 Filippinos, Australians and Taiwanese people. I spent so much time preparing that sermon the night before, making sure I had a solid introduction, three main points and an inspirational conclusion. I put so many stories and Bible verses into that outline and the next day I remember timing myself before church to see how long the message would be. “35 minutes exactly,” I thought. “Perfect time…just perfect.”

 

While that sermon was good and a lot of people came up to me after, thanking me for the message, it was still very rehearsed and wasn’t very Holy Spirit led. I preached three times later that month at the women’s prison and those sermons were a lot less organized and researched and I learned what it meant to let the Spirit of God flow through you. When I preached to the prostitutes in Thailand, there was a lot more pandamonium than before in the Philippines. I would be interrupted by drunk men, bar owners, and questions from the women about God and how He could love them so much and let them live this life of sadness. It was a time where I completely had to rely on the Lord and what He was speaking to me, because it was not a cut-and-dry message where I was talking at people, but talking with people.

 

In Malaysia we all preached a lot and some of my sermons were longer, with Post-It notes filling my Bible of all the verses I wanted to speak on where other sermons were right on the spot and had to be spontaneously and divinely inspired. Every single day that month we would preach multiple times a day and we were always on the move. It was the perfect practice for an aspiring preacher. Cambodia gave us preaching opportunities but not as many as the previous Asian month and they were always in the church we worked with, with everyone sitting “Khmer style” on the wooden floor of the house on stilts we were in. Kenya was the month I preached to the most people and it was always high school students (which in Africa is ages 12-27 years of age). Uganda was my favorite month of the Race, and my favorite month that God was stretching me in my gift of preaching.

 

I had to learn how to “open air preach” out in markets and fields and scream over the hustle and bustle of people moving through the crowds. Open air preaching was something I was terrified to do at first, and is now one of my favorite types of ministry. I remember after preaching at the top of my lungs about conviction, redemption, deliverance, and forgiveness and how people in the crowd engaging in witch craft were on their way to hell (very southern Baptist preach-y…but effective) and realizing I had been screaming for an hour and could no longer talk without coughing. That was the same month that we would have four hour church services were all of us would preach for a half hour and just go around in a circle giving various messages God had put on our hearts. I remember the first (of a few) demonic manifestations and deliverances our team had seen in Africa and right after the woman was delivered by, as Pastor Joseph put it “THE FIRE OF GOD” he turned to me and asked me to give the message I had prepared on fasting, intercessory prayer, and the book of Esther. That was one of the most comical experiences I’ve ever had and made every one of my team mates laugh at the situation with me, especially after in the privacy of our house.

 

This month in Tanzania, I have preached to more Muslims than Christians, I feel like and it has been amazing seeing the power of the Holy Spirit transform their hearts and lives. We have seen many Muslims come to Christ through our ministry this month, and I give all the glory to God. I don’t know that India holds but I do know that now I’m no longer anxious about preaching, and worrying I’ll screw up or not be prepared enough. I know that giving a message from God is not about how organized a sermon is or how many theological points are in it, but it’s about what God is leading me to say and encourage the people on. I know that I can work for hours and hours on a sermon but have it be what Angie Blattner wants to talk about and not what the people need to hear, and that it’s important to be sensitive to the Holy Spirit, even if it means completely changing your message subject twenty seconds before you stand at the pulpit.

 

There have been many times on the Race that I’ve felt like preaching on a certain subject and I wasn’t sure why until people had come up to me afterwards and said they’d been struggling with that exact same thing and that they had been praying that God would speak to them about that certain subject and I was an answered prayer. Every single experience of preaching in Asia and Africa has been such a phenomenal blessing and I’ve seen God take a scared, controled, over-prepared college graduate and transform her into a confident, Spirit-led, bold preacher for the Kingdom of God. I’ve learned things this year that I could have never learned in a seminary school and I am so thankful that God planned to teach me what it means to be a preacher and a woman in ministry in eleven countries and eleven cultures and not only in a classroom and through theology textbooks.

 

I had originally planned to go straight to seminary after the World Race and get my Masters in Divinity and become a pastor somewhere in Colorado, but this year has completely changed the desires of my heart and I don’t see seminary anywhere in my near future. I have been completely “wrecked” this year and want nothing more than to continue bringing the Kingdom of God to every tribe, tongue and nation. Isn’t it funny on the days we realized our plans are simply OUR plans and that God’s plans for our lives are so much better? I’m sure when I was thinking about Denver Seminary in 2012, God was in heaven saying “If only you knew my child…just wait and see what I do to your heart this year and how I wreck you for the nations and my children.” I don’t know what my exact plans are for after the Race, and I know that’s OK.

 

God will lead me on my path in His timing and in His divine way and I’m confident of that. I know that I could, in fact, eventually go to seminary and become a pastor in the United States, and if that was God’s plan for me I would be thrilled…but I’m sick of “Angie Blattner’s” plans and expectations and am standing firm on following God’s plans for me, however scary those plans may be at first. I will fill you all in on the direction the Lord is leading me, love ones. But for now, just know that the only thing I know for certain is that I have never been more alive and on fire for Christ than I have been this year, and I can’t go back to sleep, living for myself. Because it’s not about me, it’s about the Kingdom, and bringing Kingdom to everyone that comes in my path.