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This episode has been edited for clarity and space.
Marcus Lawhon
Hi. I’m Marcus Lawhon from Hamoreh Ministries, and we serve in East Africa.
David Capes
Marcus, good to see you. Welcome to “The Stone Chapel Podcast.” This is going to be a fun conversation. I’ve known about this organization for many years, but this is the first time for us to sit down and talk about it. But for those who don’t know Marcus Lowhan. Who is he?
Marcus Lawhon
First it’s important to say Lawhon because you said “lohan”. In Russian lohan means very stupid person. Hamoreh Ministries is a ministry that serves the pastors of East Africa. We take training to desolate locations and develop schools for students who can’t get to the biggest cities. They need to be in their communities. Because by leaving to getting training in a bigger city, they disrupt their lives, and they wouldn’t have a church to go back to. They wouldn’t have ministry, or they couldn’t work. We said, we think the best thing is local leadership. Let’s take this training to pastors so that they can do well in the pulpit and as practitioners. Let’s take that education to them and their equipping. We go out to the more desolate locations of East Africa, especially in Kenya.
David Capes
And now you’re looking at South Sudan as well.
Marcus Lawhon
Yes. As we expand, it’s the great picture of multiplication. We started with the small groups. We spend a lot of time with them and train those pastors who then are training other pastors. Now we have a cadre of 11 teachers who have gone through our program, who are teaching for us, and we have another set of 15 that are going through our Advanced Diploma Program. They’ll be part of our teaching team, which allows us to go in many more places. We started out with one location, and we were there for six years. Now the graduates from there have become teachers and have taken us to their hometowns. We are expanding across Kenya. Currently we have 12 locations, and we will move into South Sudan, and next year, we’ll probably be in Uganda as well. It just continues to grow from the epicenter.
David Capes
So, what does the name mean of the organization mean? Hamoreh?
Marcus Lawhon
Hamoreh was started by a Hebrew professor, and it means “the teacher” in Hebrew. It’s very fitting since our goal is to equip pastors who equip other pastors.
David Capes
So, so it’d be “The teachers” plural, more and more. How did you get started with it?
Marcus Lawhon
I was a part of a church merger, and the other pastor that we were merging with said, what would you like to do with your life? And I said, I really felt like the Lord would have me in the southern hemisphere, Africa, or South America, and serve there. And I also care greatly about pastors. I love doing things cross culturally. And he said, you should really consider this opportunity of leading at Hamoreh. I always wanted to be in Africa and Africa came to us!
David Capes
Let’s talk a little bit about Africa, because I think that there’s a lot we don’t know. One thing that I didn’t know until I flew across it was how big it is. It’s about three times the size the United States in terms of land mass. Not including Hawaii or Alaska, but the lower 48, that’s a big place.
Marcus Lawhon
Yes, it is large geographically, and the population is large.
David Capes
The population is over a billion, the last I heard. The other thing that I don’t think we know is that Christianity got to Africa early, from the very beginning. Tell us a little about that.
Marcus Lawhon
Think especially about the Egyptian Church, the Coptic Church, and the migration from that even further down the Nile. It grew up around the Mediterranean Sea and around the Nile. Christianity definitely had its connection there and its growth taking place. It was known as Nubia. Nubia is now modern-day Sudan, or at least a part of it. And the Kushite people are there too. You’ve heard that word Kushite, in the Old Testament.
The Nubians were a Christian nation from the 5th to the 13th century, so a long, long period of time. They were connected to the Coptic Church, to Egypt and the Coptic Church. They were thriving, Christian nation. They were Christian as a people, but also in their government. Christianity was the recognized religion of the people. It began to dissipate for several reasons. The neighbors around them had conquered them. The treaty with them made, required them to give tribute. And part of that tribute was they had to provide slaves.
So, what would this Christian nation do? They had to gather up slaves. They would send 200 slaves as tribute. Well, that’s a horrible thing in of itself, but also, if you’re a Christian nation, it really limits your evangelism. So, the growth of Christianity did not go beyond the walls of Nubia. Then since the Nubian government was Christian, when it fell, Christianity fell. Additionally, they did not have any spiritual growth that was happening from within. There was no leadership being developed, no mechanism for that to happen. They were relying on the Coptic Church for that. When relationships broke with the Coptic Church, everything fell apart. Christianity was lost, and Islam took over that area.
David Capes
And Islam was moving at a very rapid pace at that point. What I hear you saying is that your work is now stepping into the gap saying, there’s a lot of Christians here and there’s a lot of potential leaders here. We just need to get those people trained.
Marcus Lawhon
That’s right. I think that we don’t want to make the same error as before. History is telling and we need to learn from that. The Western Church has a place in Africa, an ongoing place as partners in ministry. But we should focus on developing the leaders that are there and equipping them for this greater work with an expectation that they are the ones who carry the burden. And the reality is that African Christianity, southern hemisphere Christianity, is exploding. It’s growing very quickly. In fact, we have a ministry in our little town of Brenham, and we have almost a third of our summer missionaries are from different parts of Africa. They’re coming here and doing evangelism.
Many of the people that we’re dealing with in these desert locations, have little education, little resources so we can be of great help. In the African context, there’s a flip on how you relate to each other. In the African experience, education is very costly, and you don’t share that with people. In the American context, education should be free, and we should give it very liberally. On the flip side, in African context, your possessions are meant for everyone. And so if you’re a close friend of mine and you need something, it’s yours. It’s not quite the same here.
David Capes
I’ve had that experience before, where I said, hey, I love that tie you’re wearing, and they take it off and give it to me!
Marcus Lawhon
Right! But we don’t do that here. Here, that would be very rude. But because of the Western influence of saying we want to give you education, it is a very liberating thing and a huge help to that community. And now they are learning that they are giving away training and equipping and raising up leaders among themselves.
David Capes
How long has Hamoreh been around?
Marcus Lawhon
It actually started in 2006.
David Capes
Okay, so how many people do you think you’ve trained at this point?
Marcus Lawhon
Presently we have 650 students enrolled. We’ve graduated around 430 to this point.
