–Monica Carr
Africa West Field Strategy Coordninator, Reverend Daniel Gomis, joined other speakers and more than 600 participants from the region and beyond at the Africa Regional conference in Nairobi, Kenya held at Africa Nazarene University from August 16th-21st.
Sunday morning, Nazarene Theological Seminary president, Dr. Carla Sunberg challenged listeners to change the world for Christ. As we love Christ, we will love others and want to serve them as Christ did, leading to Christ-like transformation of self and society.
Serving Christ through engaging fully in ministry was also a theme followed by General Superintendant Dr. Eugenio Duarte, keynote speaker, at the East Africa field ordination service. Giving a moving personal testimony of how he passed up a coveted engineering scholarship to pastor a local church in Cape Verde and contrasting the actions of Judas and Peter when faced with confusion in ministry, he reminded his listeners that ministers of the gospel do well to keep an attitude of gratitude, maintain fellowship and take advantage of opportunities to nourish the soul.
In the Sunday evening service, Regional director Dr. Filimao Chambo shared from Isaiah 52:10 “ . . .Prepare the Way of the Lord . . .” His testimony of his grandmother’s frequent prayer at the breakfast table reminded his audience of how we should be thankful for a godly heritage as well as challenging us not to grow complacent. As Romans 10:13-15 reminds us “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent?
This key idea of sending and going that we might make Christ-like disciples in the nations was infused in teaching throughout the week, from Dr. Sunberg’s session on the need for discipleship, to workshops lead by dischipleship ministries coordinator Rev. Daphne Mathebula and others, to inspiring personal testimonies of African missionaries like Reverend Friday Ganda, called to “Prepare the Way of the Lord” in new areas of Africa, to panel discussions focused on missions led by East Field Coordinator Rev. Don Gardener and in brainstorming sessions headed by global missions director Dr. Verne Ward.
During early morning and late night prayer, during the worship music of ANU and Rwanda’s New Generation worship teams, in the dance of the Maasai, and during the powerful, spirit-filled holiness messages shared by Reverend Daniel Gomis, over and again the cry was raised for Africans to go out and reach other African’s for Jesus. As Rev. Gomis shared our time is now. Like Daniel, we are to come in the name of the Lord. Though the devil tries to make believers think they are still slaves, we have been liberated. We are no longer like a caged lion, but a lion roaming free, ready to go and share the good news with others, ready to sing a redemption song so that others, too, might know of Christ’s perfect and transforming love.
(Read more in Out of Africa, http://archive.constantcontact.com)
