Teaching Pastoral Epistles At Samfya

Today I began teaching the Bible School Students 1 & 2 Timothy. This will be a week long course, starting at 8am and finishing at 1pm each day. I was very impressed by the questions that these students asked. They are certainly thinking about the text and also of its implications on other portions of God’s Word. The picture below is in the new classroom block. Power is not yet connected, however the classroom is fully functional.

These Pastoral Epistles cover so much material that is essential in the village churches that these students come from: prayer in the church, women’s role, qualification of elders, the care of widows (with necessary application to orphans), the priority of the Word of God and teaching the truth. I count it a huge privilege to walk through these chapters with our brothers and sisters in Christ. It would appear to me that the training these students are receiving has improved significantly – the staff have worked hard to ensure they are truly equipping these people for fruitful service.

On Sunday I taught at the English speaking Chapel here on the Bible School site. With English becoming more and more common this church has the potential to have significant impact in the community but there is a real need to apply change to long standing traditions! Lucy & Elisabeth Chama were at the service (picture below), the widow and daughter of the previous Principal Rodgers.

Reports back fro m the Mambalima Conference have been incredibly positive – it seems that the clear teaching of truth is something that the people are hungry for (I am told they had a tally of 18,543 people – not sure how  they got that number but there were huge numbers of people). Oh that we can see more and more men & women trained for these needy rural churches. The Bible School staff indicate that a large number of applications for next year’s course have been taken, and also there is strong interest in the School teachers training during school holiday periods.

One need that I was talking to Levy Kasoma about today is for an additional teacher as they plan to begin a second year programme next year. There is much interest in this additional year and it would be wonderful to see it established. There is a potential teacher who has a BTh degree, has pastored in a CMML church for 14 years and is ready to come to Samfya and teach. He is also keenly interested in writing Bemba resource material to get into the hands of local churches – these are the kind of people that we need to partner with!!Maybe your church would like to consider sponsoring this man for this growing work. Let me know if you are interested in talking about this very cost effective supporting a national worker!!).

Well I have much more to do this week – we are working on the figures to see how much more is needed to finish the multipurpose hall and then looking at the potential next stages once things have consolidated. Thanks for your prayers.

Sunday afternoon entertainment at the park just behind the Bible School - probably about 3000 spectators for this local club game