Uganda Trip #15 | Post 2

Tomorrow (Thursday) I am back in the classroom. The thirteen pastors I am training, one Lead Trainer (LT) and myself will spend five days developing tools to help us effectively understand and communicate apocalyptic writing contained in the Bible, focusing on the book of Revelation.

In our last cohort, I couldn’t make every unit we taught, and I conveniently passed on Revelation. Like many, I get intimidated by this book and was happy to give someone else a chance to serve! Church history has been marked by a lot of speculation leading to fear or folly, neither of which serve God’s people well.

By way of reminder, our curriculum is supplied by an organization called Training Leaders International (TLI) -- a Minneapolis based group whose goal is to equip the underserved church with capacity to better understand and communicate the Scripture. 85% of the pastors in Africa have had no formal theological education. What we offer is helpful.

TLI’s approach is to equip church leaders with tools to interpret the different types of literature found in the Bible. This includes:

• Narrative & Law (Genesis & Exodus)
• Gospel (Mark)
• Poetry (Psalms)
• Epistles (Ephesians)
• Prophecy (Isaiah)
• Apocalyptic (Revelation)

Our approach is to equip the students with a tool belt to aid them in each of these genres.

When teaching how to communicate and interpret the gospels using Mark, for example, we do not go through the book verse by verse. We take various parts of the gospel (for example, a parable) and help them interpret and communicate these stories. We help them understand that chapters 1-8 speaks of Jesus’ identity and 9-16 his mission, and the implications of this layout.

This is very long way of saying (to my relief) that I don’t have to give the correct answer about every end time concern that our students may have. For example, the Two Witnesses that Revelation 11 speaks of are not Stu Dix and a member of his former church, who really thought this to be the case! The tool belt we use for Revelation includes how to approach symbolic language and how to interpret Revelation by understanding and applying Old Testament quotes and allusions.

Tomorrow, I will be teaching an introduction to apocalyptic literature (other apocalyptic writing can be found in Daniel, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Joel, Matthew, 2 Peter and others) before moving on the Revelation 1:9-20, where we will look at how to interpret symbols within the context of a passage, a book and all of Scripture.

Prepping is a bit of a grind when your body is revolting from the change of time zones (eight hours), and you wonder if your brain is capable of firing rightly. I only have this one chance to impact these pastors, and I want to serve them well.

This picture was taken in the place I spend most of my studying hours-at the end of a kitchen table. When jet lag wakes me up, I make my way to this table till my eyes get heavy and attempt to sleep, which so far has not proven very fruitful. Time for supper and hopefully some sleep!