David Capes
It sounds like it’s picking up rapidly.
Marcus Lawhon
Yes, it is definitely a mushrooming effect so you we started with this one location with 35 students. We taught them for three years, and they graduated from our program. Then the majority of them came back for a second round, and half of those became teachers for us for the first six years. At first my board was asking, what are we doing here? We only have 35-45 students. But eventually that allowed us to open up more sites, because now we have pastors that are trained and can go and teach our curriculum at other places.
David Capes
You give them the curriculum, and now they have the knowledge to be able to share it. Give me a sense of what your average African church leader-pastor is like. Are they older? Are they younger? Male, female? Are they trained? Not trained? What does the profile look like?
Marcus Lawhon
We really are targeting people in desolate locations. These are generally semi-nomadic people. They are oftentimes goat herders, or they have some kind of industry within a very small town. Most of them have gotten to what we would consider the 11th grade, and that’s as far as they’ve gotten in terms of education. Most didn’t grow up in church. They didn’t have Sunday School. We take that for granted. There’s no Vacation Bible School. So many of the formative things that you and I would have had here in the states are not there. They didn’t grow up with any of that.
They have heard the gospel somewhere. They’ve come to faith in this rapid church-planting movement that’s happening. It’s beautiful. But the downside is that once you become saved, then you’re the most likely person to be the pastor of the church. And you say, but I just got on board. And so many of them don’t have much or any theological education. They have good intent, they’re zealous, but they don’t really know very much.
David Capes
It struck me as you were saying that it’s like you’ve been on a plane before, why don’t you become the pilot! Because as soon as you take the flight, you have to know how to fly a plane That’s an incredible need. What about the distance they’re having to walk to these training centers. They don’t have cars or the kinds of roads they can drive one.
Marcus Lawhon
We’re up in a place called Maralal, and there’s a guy who brought us honey from the bees he keeps. We paid him for it, but he brought it. And he said, you must come and visit my place. We asked how far is your place. He said, well, once we get there in your car, it’s a bit up the road, probably about 50 meters to walk. So we drive until there is no more road. Then we start walking. We walk 50, 100, 200 meters. We go down in a valley, and we get to a creek we need to cross. It has a little bridge that he’s made out of very, very thin wood. We walk across that, walk up the hill. We probably walk two or three miles. He does that every day to get to class. He doesn’t do the driving part because he has no car. His trip is all by foot. It takes him two hours to get to class every day that he comes. It takes him two hours to get there, and he’s one of our closer guys. We have others that are driving in on a motorcycle, and they’ll sleep on a mattress at the church where we hold classes. Others are walking or biking, but it’s a major part of the day just to get there.
David Capes
Do you have any people that you have in mind that have stood out to you as being exactly the kind of person that we came here to teach and to train. Anybody come to mind?
Marcus Lawhon
The man I was just talking about, Pastor Peter, is one of those guys. He’s built his house on the side of a hill, he and his wife. His wife is just this industrious and beautiful woman, who is keeping goats and farming. They have a pretty nice spot where they’re building a farm among pastoralists. They think they’re really strange for doing this, but he is taking wood and building his own church. He’s calling his neighbors to come and have services. He points up the hill to where he’ll build a bigger church for everyone that will eventually come.
He’s a very sharp man. He could be doing lots of other things, but he’s devoted his life to this. It is a different thing than you and I experienced here in the states in terms of what it is to be a pastor. You are looked to as a leader in a community. The chief is someone who comes and he provides for the needs of the people. People come under his leadership and follow him. He has some monies that he has to spend. When you become a Christian leader, you’re looked at as the same kind of. You are someone that can provide for people. When someone’s sick, they’re expecting you to come and bring something to help them. When they are having financial problems, they look to you for help. They look to you as the leader, but these pastors don’t have money to help. They don’t get paid to be the pastor of
the church.
David Capes
They’re doing it as volunteer. They’re doing pro bono work.
Marcus Lawhon
Yes, pro bono And yet they’re also providing for the needs of their people and caring for them in that way. They have this added responsibility, the spiritual responsibility, and material responsibility as well. It is a challenge.
David Capes
It sounds like it’s an amazing work that you guys are a part of. For people who are listening and would, like to know more about Hamoreh, where should they go?
Marcus Lawhon
Our website is hamoreh.org. We keep up well with our social media, so it’s great to see the ongoing story and even look at a particular location. It’s fun to see how the story is unfolding and some of the things that are happening in each location. We also have Dr Steven Jones on staff with us. He’s in the Houston area and very accessible to come and speak to small groups and churches. And he’s a great resource.
David Capes
He is fired up all the time about Hamoreh! He teaches Greek for us here at the Lanier Theological Library on Tuesday nights. I hope we can keep him doing that, but I’m glad he’s going to Africa.
Marcus Lawhon
That’s the plan. He made that an important part of his coming over, his desire to continue that part of his work. But he’s a critical element in all this, because we are formalizing our curriculum and publishing it so that it’s easier for us to ship out and give to other people. These pastors, they take it to different places. We’ll be translating it into Swahili and other languages including Arabic.
David Capes
Is most of the teaching now is in English?
Marcus Lawhon
It is both in English and Swahili. The curriculum we have right now is in Swahili as well. We’ll have half the class in one room in English, and the other will be on the other side doing Swahili. And as we move into South Sudan and Ethiopia, we’ll probably do some tribal languages as well as national languages.
David Capes
Well, this is a tremendous work. I applaud what you’re doing. I know how necessary it is to raise up these leaders. Because we need to help the national leaders who are there. But if they’re not national leaders who know the culture, the times, the people and the languages, it could go the way of Nubia. We don’t want that to happen.
Marcus Lawhon
That’s right. I would say the Lord has really blessed and the word that keeps coming to mind is being accessible. The information is out there, but it needs to be accessible. We need to take it where people are. We need to give it in a language that people understand, in a method that is understandable for someone who has 11th grade education. And in a way that they can then teach it themselves.
Some of the precious moments that we have each time we teach are called “chalk in the hand”. By the end of class, we’ve done enough review and repetition that they now are getting it. We put the chalk in the hand of one of the student-pastors, and they get up there, and now they are teaching. They’re still a student, but they’re going to teach the class what they’ve learned. And all that class joins in. I think that’s one of the things the Lord has blessed us with, is the ability to communicate well and to work well in the cultural context in which we are teaching.
David Capes
It’s great work. Marcus, thanks for being with us today on The Stone Chapel Podcast.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
