Pastor's Conference Wrap-up

Well, we pretty much wrapped up the Pastor's Conference tonight. We just have one more Q&A session

tomorrow morning, then it's over. Overall, we went through 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus and then did a three session overview of sexuality, marriage, sexual sin, and divorce. All of this in 18 sessions. It has been such a cool experience to teach these pastors - all of whom are serving God in so many powerful and often dangerous settings.


One of the younger guys here named R gave us a thank you letter tonight - it was very touching. His father is a pastor and he has been doing evangelism since the 10th grade. Today he told his story of how he feels called to be an evangelist not a pastor and he wants to travel around India sharing the gospel. At this point he's completed Bible College and he wants to go to Korea for seminary. Incidentally, he told me that in his Bible College, 160 men shared 2 bathrooms and slept 12 men to a room. Each person got 5 minutes per day in the bathroom. That makes seminary sound like a piece of cake.

One of the things about India is that they love chai (tea). We have many chai breaks every day. It's a really nice time to take a break and chat with people and the chai is really good. In my teaching, I made the point that Scripture should be the center of our ministries as pastors and I compared Scripture to chai. Indians have chai in the morning, mid-morning, lunch, afternoon, evening, late, etc. The Indians really liked my comparison of Scripture being throughout our ministry. So now, every time we went to chai break they all hold up their Bibles and call out "chai, chai, chai." And then we get to go drink tea. It's a good time of the day.

One of the greatest things about being here has been worshipping with the Indians in between sessions of teaching. Their worship style is all a capella and very ryhthmic. They have a set of three congas that they play and when they get going, it is just incredible. They have really strong voices and they love to worship, combine that with a really strong beat and a tambourine and it is very powerful. I've put a short video clip below, but it doesn't do the experience justice. All three of us have commented to each other and the group that worshipping with them has profound.