The Growing Reach of the Kenyan Preaching Movement
By Jenny Brown, Langham Preaching Facilitator
Jenny Brown (far right) with the women from the Langham Preaching team in East Africa.
August 2009 saw the fifth year of preaching seminars in Kenya and a further 32 delegates completed their level 3 training. However, to speak merely of the numbers of delegates who completed training doesn’t fully reflect the encouragement in Kenya. Increasingly the momentum of the conferences is continuing throughout the year as preachers’ groups are meeting around the country, and more and more local level 1 trainings are beginning.
Local facilitators
The growing demand for local, grassroots training cannot be met without more local facilitators. This year seven preaching seminar ‘graduates’ accepted the invitation to be trained to teach level 1 material. Two of them conducted the basic lessons of ‘text-to-sermon’ for the level 1 delegates and received feedback from their trainer colleagues afterwards. These seven have committed themselves not only to conducting local Level 1 training (often taking unpaid leave and travelling at their own expenses), but also to meeting together twice more in the year to sharpen their skills.
Inter-country co-operation and networking
Frank Luvanda (Tanzania) and Barbara Tumwine (Uganda) joined the Kenya seminar facilitators team. It was great to have their help leading small groups and demonstrating good Bible handling skills. There are lessons about sustainability and regionalised training that we can learn from the Tanzanian and Ugandan experiences, and we hope this is reciprocal: that their experience in Kenya will feed into the growth of the preaching movements in both those countries. This growing sense of fellowship in the East Africa region brings a very helpful exchange of ideas, experience and personnel. This wider team could provide the future training, not just for level 1 locally, but also for levels 2 and 3 nationally. We thank God for such committed, humble, gifted workers willing to give their time to train others!
Jenny Brown is a Langham Preaching facilitator, and is on the staff of All Souls, Langham Place in London.
Read more on the Kenyan preaching movement with a report from Tanzania country coordinator Frank Luvanda.
