Cultivating a Greater Mission Emphasis in Our Student Discipleship – Part 3


PHOTO by Tina Phillips

By Peter Mbugua
Peter serves with Trinity Fellowship based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Here in Africa, the challenge has a different flavour. The average pastor in the rural town is not a holder of even the 8th grade Certificate of Primary Education , let alone a college education.

How will such a pastor embark on persuading students to be reconciled to the God that the teacher just bashed in class with impunity? Or a God who won’t give them a lot of money, jobs, health or entertainment?

I would like to point out three very practical things parents, educators and students can do to change this scenario and revive biblical faith in our homes and churches.

1. Adopt for your home or church Bible Class a book entitled Firm Foundations: Creation to Christ by New Tribes Mission. Take one chapter or two per week. It will take 52 sittings, or one calendar year. By the end of the last lesson, you will have exposed your students to Biblical Christianity in detail, thereby laying a firm foundation for faith in Christ. For, how will anyone begin to be a bearer of the gospel when he himself is not a solid disciple of the One who sends us? Fathers, this is your call.

2. Adopt for your school a Christian Education curriculum such as the Accelerated Christian Education (A.C.E.). And for those of you allergic to Global Americanism, consider seriously engaging the A.C.E. leadership fraternity to discuss the possibility of contextualizing this curriculum to make it suitable to your country’s history, geography, languages, Art, etcetera. My imagination runs wild every time I meditate on what ACE Contextualized could do in the so-called Creative Access Countries. There are few human beings who will refuse a good education tomorrow, even if it plainly talks about following the teachings of Prophet Isa. Let him who has an ear hear what I am saying.

3. Adopt The Kairos Course for your college or church mission program. This tool is turning many souls around to see the heart-beat of God for a broken world. Used in more than 32 countries, Kairos the tool every believer needs to assist in the recovery a Biblical worldview, and I the adoption of a missionary lifestyle, whatever the individual’s role in mission involvement. Kairos says that among believers, no one is to be left behind in God’s missionary enterprise. But let’s not give missions exposure in isolation.

It needs to be given in the context of an ongoing spiritual nurture, where a healthy and secure relationship exists between the learner and the nurture-giver. Character training, and focus on the Great Commission must be key right from the beginning of the discipleship program. Jesus was careful to tell the disciples, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men Matthew 4:19). They knew where the school was heading.

Who knows, maybe if these three things are implemented in just 25% of the homes where this article is being read, those homes will experience the “Thursday Drama” with 9 and 11-year-olds praying for their preacher fathers and mothers even where such prayers have not been solicited.

Maybe teachers will report to school early to listen to children recite Bible verses. Maybe the children in those homes and churches, like the Younger Son last Thursday, will be dreaming to become Pilot-Missionary-Doctor (in that order, please!). Maybe the older sons and daughters, as here, will help their dads edit the Power-point presentations for students’… excuse me… pastors’ seminars.

When these children come to that junction of life in the next 5-10 years, will they drive through the strait and narrow road, or will they take the highway to hurray-land? Time will tell. Something tells me we will be doing just fine on the tough way that leads to eternal life. So help us, Lord!

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