Teaching the Pastors

Upon our arrival at the seminary in Matongo, the continuing education conference for the Pastors of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Kenya (ELCK) began. Though because of the expense not all their pastors could be invited, 15 pastors from each of the four diocese were invited to attend, so we had a nice group. The ages and education levels of the pastors varied greatly, but all were eager to learn and asked lots of questions. This conference focused especially on worship and catechesis: Dr. Timothy Quill (from our Ft. Wayne seminary) taught about the liturgy, I spoke about exegesis and preaching, and a fellow pastor, Rev. Charles Froh, presented on teaching the catechism.






Dr. Quill speaking about the liturgy.












Yours truly, listening to a question from a pastor.












Pastor Froh excited about the catechism!








One of the challenges the pastors there are facing is the growing threat from pentecostalism, and so they were very eager to hear about the history and richness of the liturgy, and how the answer to this challenge is not to adopt what the Pentecostals do, but to know why we do what we do and to do it well! And knowing this, to see how good liturgy, preaching, and catechesis all work together and reinforce each other and form a closely knit unit to strengthen and deepen the faith of their people. That was one of the neat things about this conference - how this unity was also reflected in our teaching. For although we did not plan our teaching together, all three of us were able to reinforce and build on each other's presentations each day, and so really present a single, unified teaching - and not make it like three separate "classes" each day.

My emphasis was exegesis and preaching. Since the level of education of the pastors varied greatly - especially in their knowledge of Greek - I did not spend a lot of time in the Greek, but instead tried to talk about preaching the New Testament with the Old Testament in view, and then especially preaching this way Christologically and sacramentally.

Then, along with my teaching, I did one other thing as well - I preached for them. I remember when I was attending the seminary, one of my professors told us: "Don't just talk about worship - do it!" I applied the same to preaching: "Don't just talk about it - do it!" I tried to demonstrate what I was teaching about for them. I did this also because when I go to conferences, I go not only to learn, but to be fed - and I appreciate being able to listen to sermons. Pastors are always preaching and don't get to listen very often. So I preached for them so they could listen.

All in all it was a good week. I learned a lot about teaching, and hopefully they were able to learn a thing or two from me!

Tomorrow: People I met at the conference.