Discipling our Community for Christ
Friend,
Earlier this year, our little village road experienced a traffic jam.
Buses, cars, and motorcycle taxis carried over 400 Baptist leaders from all over Uganda and 40 leaders from South Sudan to the campus of SOS Ministries for a week-long biblical counseling conference — the third module that OIC (Overseas Instruction in Counseling) has presented in partnership with SOS since 2017.
The participants were bursting with eagerness, expecting to learn great things from God's Word.
SOS staff greeted each attendee at registration and directed them to their dorms, each with wall-to-wall mattresses covering the floors.
The SOS cooking team busily prepared meal from piles of ingredients, purchased from nearby towns – enough to feed more than 450 people, three meals a day, plus two tea-times!
The pastors were on the edges of their seats to learn from our trusted facilitators, Ed and Marlow Bulkey (Author of Why Christians Can’t Trust Psychology and President of International Association of Biblical Counselors), David Harrell (Former TMU Professor in Biblical Counseling, author of Out of the Depths and currently Pastor of Calvary Bible Church in Joelton, Tenessee), and Tom and Patty Maxham (Uganda Director of Overseas Instruction in Counseling).
Each day was packed from sun-up to sun-down with preaching sessions and counseling trainings. Excitement grew as we introduced the launch of Shepherds Training Center for a select group of pastors next year.
Each participant (due to kind donors) went home with copies of Shepherding a Child’s Heart by Ted Tripp and Strengthening Your Marriage by Wayne Mack.
Here are two examples of what people said about the conference:
“(I) thank God that I after this training I discovered that I am a counselor. I also discovered that suffering is not the end of one’s life and achieved new methods of strengthening my marriage.”
“I am a counselor, you are a counselor, we are all counselors for the glory of God and the joy of men. Woo!”
It is amazing to see how far these pastors have come in their understanding and desire to sit under the Word of God. Everyone is there with pen in hand, taking notes and participating in discussion.
It's an honor to watch the Word of God come alive to these people!
It isn’t just theology in theory; it is theology made practical to everyday life. The American church has been exposed to biblical counseling, but this is a critical first exposure for these Ugandan pastors.
Please pray that God will give us wisdom as we use biblical counseling to strengthen God’s church in Uganda.
I am incredibly grateful to all who sacrificed to enable us to make this conference possible.
We look forward to the final module training in November at SOS.
For the King,
Dr. Shannon Hurley
