Pastor Nicholas

Meet Pastor Nicholas.  Pastor Nicholas is a typical Samburu pastor.  One year ago, his church was small and struggling.  They met under a tree and wondered how much longer this particular work could continue.

Last July, the MT4 project came to Nicholas’ church.  In a 3-month period, 400 Samburu who were not followers of Jesus, became followers of Jesus.  His church grew, and folks from other villages began walking to his village to go to church.  Immediately, Nicholas and the Kenyan leaders of the MT4 project knew what they needed to do: plant churches in villages that had new believers, but no church.

This church planting strategy brings new challenges to pastors like Nicholas: How to train these new pastors?  Many of them have herds of cattle and goats to shepherd and cannot go away to Bible School.  A great number of these potential pastors cannot read, so how do you train them to be “mighty in the Scriptures”?

Pastor Nicholas is a part of a pilot training program underway in Samburu.  Using the MT4 techonology, the wisdom of our indigenous partners and T4G’s oral strategy, 50 Samburu pastors are undergoing orality-based pastor training.  These pastors will be trained over a course of 2 years without a single book, manual or paper being written.  They will master 120 Bible stories, and have an understanding of how each story is a part of God’s grand story of Redemption through Jesus Christ.  These pastors will also have an orality-savvy model of preaching, and will be under the tutelage of seasoned pastors like Nicholas.