Bible Training Partnership:

Kaduna & Gusau, Training Conference, January 2006

One of the distinctive things about Nigeria

is the way that plans never seem to quite

turn out as you expect (

?

). One little

example of that this time came during the

trip to Gusau over the middle weekend. I

was expecting to run some smallish classes

for evangelists, pastors and lay people, but

it wasn’t clear how many folk this might

actually involve. When I got to Gusau on the Thursday evening, it turned

out that the classes were made up of 20 evangelists/pastors – and 40-50

congregation members – and, as an extra surprise, the Bishop was hoping

that I'd speak at the cathedral on the Sunday morning(!)

All in all the brief trip to Gusau went very

well. Again, all the people there are very

keen to learn. Many of them are going to

be involved in 'church planting' projects

later on in the year. What this means is that

they will divide up into teams, and then

head out to some of the more rural villages

in the Gusau area. Each team will spend a week or so in the village,

teaching the people the good news about Jesus – and the hope is that from

this work, a new church will be planted in that village.

What I hadn't realised before is that many of these villages have never

really heard the gospel message in any

depth. The people are still 'animists' (ie

followers of traditional African religion –

often involving witchdoctors, and spirits,

and so on.) But many of the villages are

keen to hear about Christianity, and several

have invited teams to come and tell them

about Christianity.

This is a very significant opportunity for

the church, because the majority of

Christians in Gusau are not originally

from this area. They have been brought

to the city through their work. Gusau, as

a city, is predominantly Muslim. (Gusau

is right up in the north of Nigeria; it's the

captial of Zamfara state, which was the

first Nigerian state to adopt Sharia law.)

One of the needs for the church here, is for it to become more indigenous,

reaching out more effectively to the local people.

On the health front things went well on

this trip – both myself and Glen avoided

all the nastier Nigerian bugs. However, I

did manage to come down with a heavy

head cold (of all the things to catch in 31º

in Nigeria!) The cold went for my throat,

ably aided by too much talking, and ample

clouds of chalk dust. My voice had just

about gone the night before I was due to speak at the cathedral – but God

was very gracious, and overnight my voice recovered enough to get

through the Sunday sermon.

There is much to give thanks for: the faithfulness of the believers here;

their hunger to know the Bible better and

their willingness to speak of Jesus; the

practicalities – all went very smoothly.

Please do pray that God's word continues

to do its work in the lives of those who've

been in the classes over the last fortnight,

and also in the lives of all the people the

speak to and teach about Jesus.