Chris Jonah, Sierra Leone’s country coordinator for Langham Preaching, pictured here speaking at a conference last year.
Chris Jonah, Langham Preaching’s country coordinator in Sierra Leone, reported on a successful ‘refresher’ event there in May. This country has only recently recovered from the devastating Ebola epidemic, which stopped some of the Preaching Clubs that had been running in various places. But now, many of the groups have revived, and the work is back on track. Chris’ report reflects God’s kindness to believers in Sierra Leone, who are persevering in teaching the Bible faithfully.
“Thirty two persons participated in the ‘refresher’ training, including two people who led the event. It took place in Kono, which is 359km from the capital Freetown. Diamonds were discovered in Kono in 1930 and are still being mined, but Kono is impoverished and it is only within the last two years that the road to Kono was redone and now has some intermittent power supply.
Thirty people attended the Langham Preaching event in Sierra Leone in May.
We left a day early to visit Freeman Taylor, the leader of the Preachers’ Club, who lost his son by road accident. Our regional coordinator participated in the funeral. We encouraged, shared our experiences and prayed for the family.
Restarting Preaching Clubs
We then left for Makeni and visited Pastor Macaulay. The preachers club in Makeni has stopped meeting for a while. Macaulay had not done the training but is a friend of ours who has started a church plant. We tried and made some contacts with persons who had done the course. The current leader of the pastoral council had completed the Langham course and we have started discussions to restart the club in Makeni.
God is in control of his work. A few weeks before the training we received a call from a pastor who had listened to our radio broadcast in Freetown and wanted to be trained. Coincidentally he was from Kono and visiting Freetown. We then informed him about the training and he joined the others to plan the programme. His church building was the venue for the Langham programme.
Some of the participants had not done the Langham training, as a result we had to tailor the training to show what Langham is, the importance of the preachers club and how to run one. We then worked on several passages using the principles to show how to get the best out of a text.
Prayer Points
Many preaching clubs are running again, after the devastating Ebola emergency ended in 2016.
We praise God for/that:
- Safe travels for our team from Freetown and that the car worked well.
- The enthusiasm of the participants and the excitement to be involved in the club.
- Hospitality of the host.
- Two new leaders were selected to run the club and they are set to meet next Saturday to plan to restart.
- We agreed to run a Level 1 Langham Preaching seminar in Kono next year.
We pray for /that:
- God will give us wisdom to know how to proceed with Kono
- Good fruit from this visit
- The clubs will be fully re-established and sustained
- The group in Makeni will restart and that the one in Lunsar will be strengthened.
- Pastor Freeman’s family, the loss of their 23-year-old son who was a final year
student at the university is a big blow.