One of the places where I hope the Lord can use my new professional coaching ministry is Africa. With the fastest growing churches in the world, the leadership challenges and need for increasing leadership capacity in Africa are urgent needs. God willing, I hope to spend one month every year in Africa into the foreseeable future.
This weekend I leave for 25 days in Ethiopia and Zambia for my 2019 trip
I’ll be spending my first week (February 18-23) in Addis Ababa and am excited to return to Ethiopia for the first time since Marilyn and I left in June 2014. I’ve written before about the massive political changes taking place in Ethiopia, and am eager to hear about them firsthand.
I’ll stay in a guest flat at the Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology (EGST) where I taught theology for four years. Our four-year tenure there paralleled the construction of EGST’s new seven story building that was dedicated just as we were leaving. This building probably has four or five times the space of the building used during our tenure. I’m excited to see it in action. https://egst.edu.et/
At EGST I’ll be reuniting with many friends still on the faculty and staff. The leadership has graciously invited me to deliver the February Academic Seminar, which brings all students and faculty together once a month around a topic of academic interest. My topic will be “The Transforming Power of Coaching for Christian Leaders.” I’ll also be doing a coaching workshop.
I’ve been invited to give an afternoon training session for 40 leaders who facilitate small group Bible studies for the headquarters staff of World Vision-Ethiopia. The next day I’ll return to preach in the weekly headquarters chapel service. World Vision is the largest Christian relief, development and child focused organizations in the country. Its 1,300 staff and many thousands of volunteers in nearly 100 districts throughout the country touch the lives of 5.7 million people.
I’ll also reconnect with friends at the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus (EECMY) seminary near where we lived for four years and offer greetings in their weekly chapel service. The EECMY is our partner denomination, so we had especially close contacts with many of its leaders.
I’m excited to spend two days with Ieaders of the Institute for Christianity and the Common Good (ICCG), a new non-profit doing exciting visioning work engaging the next generation of leaders in Ethiopia. In addition to coaching with ICCG’s leadership, I’ll have two opportunities to meet and share with these young leaders in workshops around coaching.
In addition, I’ll do some coaching training for 40 lay leaders in a local congregation with a translator, since most will not know English well. Whenever I work with audiences who speak only Amharic, I’m especially excited because it means I’m getting deeper into the culture. This will be an excellent “pilot project” about how I might offer more coaching training in individual congregations in the future.
Finally, I have a good-sized list of Ethiopian friends I hope to catch up with over the last four years. Some are very dear to me and I look forward to seeing them again.
From February 24 to March 13, I’m returning to Justo Mwale University (JMU) in Lusaka, Zambia to teach an intensive course in preaching as I did in 2018. My second-year students preparing for pastoral ministry come from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Botswana and South Africa. For many, attending seminary is a real stretch financially. Several families grow vegetables near their seminary housing for food or to sell for income.
While most of my teaching over the years has been in theology or history, I find that I particularly enjoy teaching preaching. Preaching is a discipline where many disciplines or tasks in a pastor’s life all converge—theology, biblical studies, communication and theory, pastoral care, worship.
How our worldviews shape living out our faith has become one of my primary interests. It’s especially fascinating to think and talk about preaching as an example of differing worldviews.. It’s a constant dialogue distinguishing between the unchanging elements of what makes a good sermon anywhere in the world with the local expectations of African culture.
I’ll also be preaching in a chapel service and hopefully having an opportunity to do some coaching with faculty or staff I met last year. Our dear friends, Dusty and Sherri Ellington, will again be our kind hosts. Dusty teaches New Testament at JMU and Sherri leads the PC(USA)’s Zambian Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program where 20-somethings spend a year serving and learning, similar to the Peace Corps.
Marilyn will not be joining me on this trip but is eagerly looking forward to joining me on future trips as she did last year’s trip to Zambia.
If the Lord brings me to mind, I would greatly appreciate your prayer support for these 3 requests:
1) The Lord will orchestrate “divine appointments” with the people and leaders whom He wants me to somehow serve in the future and they will respond positively.
2) I can clearly communicate with and be a genuine encouragement to every group I meet for conversation, training, teaching or preaching.
3) I can stay strong physically, mentally and spiritually throughout a fairly demanding schedule for 3+ weeks.
Thanks for listening. Please pray that the Lord will use me to make a difference for his Kingdom!
