“The Devil Loses a Battle in Nigeria!”
This was the cry from one pastor giving his testimony at the end of the launch of a new preaching movement in Nigeria referencing the impact that this seminar will have on his home country.
“Nigeria has long been a country that has had significant influence on the African continent, and whatever happens here has an impact on the rest of Africa,” said Gideon Para-Mallam, Regional Secretary for the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) and the convener of the Nigerian Conference. Rev. Dr. Pandang Yamsat, President of the Church of Christ in Nigeria (COCIN), president of the organizing committee, and graduated JSM-Langham Scholar, added, “The challenge of raising the standard of Biblical preaching in our country is critical in the view of the enormous growth that we have witnessed within the Church. This is critical so that the numerical growth can be matched by growth in maturity.” These two came together to form The Nigerian Initiative for the Promotion of Expository Preaching, which promoted and sponsored this first event. (Click here to view Dr. Yamsat’s comments)
Hosted by the Nigerian Bible Translation Trust, over 150 pastors came together from nine denominations and one parachurch organization. Gideon commented, “…sometimes it is easier for Christians to fight then unite, and we have been overwhelmed that nine denominations, including Orthodox, Evangelical and Pentecostal have come together with one parachurch Organization (NIFES) as the core participants.”(Click here to see Gideon’s comments)
These participants were exposed to three days of teaching, study and discussion which produced several results including: learning to take a Bible passage and creating a sermon outline from it, establishing regional preachers’ clubs, and developing a plan to bring this program to more pastors in Nigeria through the translation of these materials.
Biblical Preaching
Training these pastors to preach from the Bible started with the teaching of Chris Wright, Langham’s International Director, and Femi Adaleye, IFES regional secretary from Zimbabwe. These two facilitators took the pastors through intensive training that included looking up to God in prayer and praise for understanding of His Word, looking down to study the Bible as it was written by human authors, looking backward and forward to see the text in its place within the whole story line of the Bible, and looking at the present to apply the text and make it relevant today.
Each day pastors were given the opportunity to question these two facilitators on the Bible exposition presented the previous evening; they asked questions about the clarity, faithfulness to the text and relevance of their sermons. They then progressively received more instruction into the development of an expository sermon and had small group time to work on an outline for a specific Bible passage. These small groups then came together to discuss and critique each other’s outlines. (See what pastor David John Kanda from Kaduna in the Kaduna state and Godwin Kadiri from Lokoja in the Kogi state had to say about these training sessions.)
Preachers’ Clubs
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| Rev. Dr. Pandang Yamset |
The third day of the seminar introduced preachers’ clubs and again the pastors were divided into regional group to determine who the leaders of these clubs would be, how often they would meet, when the first meeting would be held, and who from their regions should be invited. These meeting led to the establishment of more than 15 clubs that were from many areas around Nigeria. (Click Here to hear more from Gideon about the impact of these preachers’ clubs)
A Grassroots Movement
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| Gideon Para-Mallam |
As the seminar came to an end, the participants left enthused and wanted to help this new preaching movement spread throughout Nigeria. Translating these materials into the three main languages of Houssa, Yourba and Igbo was one project that these pastors wanted to undertake. By doing this, they felt that this grassroots movement that would impact significantly all of Nigeria. (Click here to hear Gideon speak of the impact that translation will have)
As the one pastor said, “The Devil has lost a battle in Nigeria…and this will change the landscape of preaching in Nigeria.” (Listen to Chris Wright’s comments on the seminar in this three-minute video)