The Worries and Elations of a Westerner’s First preaching Experience
My two dominant worries that prevented me going on my first preaching trip earlier was bizarrely 1. Food! the dread at the thought of anything non-western, bits of animals, gruel-type stuff or even curry and rice - as I detest and shudder at both. As God arranges things, I ended up in a place where they have not only rice but both curry and rice even for breakfast let alone every meal and snack, daily thereafter . . . Amusingly, the first exhort on my return home was about the monotony of the manna in the wilderness! The only way I could deal with this was just prayer - that God would not let that be an issue.
Rather I prayed that he would put me in the very best learning environment to help me grasp what experience I needed - to then go work somewhere more remote, God willing and to show me which country to visit without effort so I had no fussing about choosing that which I knew not. And the trip arrangements were literally as effortless as that! I virtually woke up one morning, after less than a week's vague enquiring, apparently booked on a plane to the country of God's choice – awesome. Thanks to the interventions of God and my precious sponsors; I wish all life's decisions were that provided for! Then perhaps they could be, if only we did a bit more praying by asking and trusting, ie leaving the question with God, rather than our western tendency of asking and doing ourselves anyway.
Secondly, I felt paranoid about lack of first principles - being caught clueless on the spot, and my shrinking from giving talks or being a focus in public! Well, that fear also still remained and, with only a week's warning before flying out for two months, preparation at home was almost zilch on that score. So I warned my hosts I just needed chucking in at the deep end and within 48 hours I was standing in the local dress, with a mosquito-bitten balloon-shaped ankle, in a third world village, talking through a translator for the first time in my life, to an audience of 40+! I soon distracted myself with ways of bringing stick-men into my mini-whiteboard teaching method, which lightened the intensity of straight lecturing for speaker and audience alike. The following weekend I was responsible for, and running, an 8-lecture first principles Truth camp, sharing the talks, while for my second month I was living on my own with a translator in a third world village, giving the whole 8-lecture weekend alone, plus 3-hour baptism classes daily with one village, and 3-hour daily unprepared open discussion/Q&A groups with another brand new ecclesia.
The latter were, until very recently, a pentecostal church, so this visit largely encouraged the transition from church to ecclesia.
The co-ordinating brother, back at base, was just wonderfully supportive and agreed that many things were experienced brother issues, but was convinced that God was in control and, had a brother been there, he may well have tackled the issues so head-on it could well have shut the group down! Instead, he felt God had provided a sister with the people and counselling skills for the job that neither of us would have planned or expected. How humbling to see God working so close at hand and to experience, in front of your very eyes, the realization and immediate willingness to change in those you are sharing God's words with. A humility rarely seen in the west.
Phew! Wow, it was sooooo awesome , so humbling, so thrilling, so enlightening, such a privilege, so right - just what the Dr ordered! You just have to go into almost open-all-hours prayer-mode where you feel like an open and hollow tube through which God is freely speaking and dealing. I understand more now how, without Holy Spirit gifts, we can still today say, ‘Don't worry about what you will say in a challenging situation, as God will provide the answers’. Not at all to make us lazy and avoid the preparation work, but He is amazing - at the slightest little hint of ‘Father Help!’, bringing to a blank mind recollection of a verse you read somewhere, at sometime, in this connection. I don't believe He supplies us with answers we haven't been aware of, or done some work with at some stage.
The frequency with which I was giving talks or providing fluent explanations of stuff I'd never prepared, or ever tied together before, was alarming to me, yet it was all stuff I knew or had discussed in jumbled other ways at some time in my western upbringing in the Truth.
The upshot of this exploit was that in each of the two villages on the same trip, four were baptised as the result of one month’s intensive work – that’s an average of two baptisms a week. Sure, these mission fields are ripe for harvest but alas the labourers are few, unless someone likes to take the plunge and jump in at the deep end.
