I am always happy when I get to preach. Most of my adult life has been involved in preaching. 1968 in Roswell, NM, then a two year break to teach in a University, then 21 years preaching in Redwood City, CA. For several years in Kenya, I would go to various congregations and be asked to preach. Since we have been doing street ministry, I have encouraged the young people we work with to preach and teach, and I have done less and less. Last week I was in Eastleigh at the new congregation we have opened at the Eastleigh Center, and I was asked to preach. It was the third meeting of the congregation, there were 70 people, and 5 young men from the streets were baptized. That was a good day!
These days Francis Mbuvi invites me to preach at Kamulu on the Sunday before Darlene and I leave for the USA, so that means I get to preach two times a year. TODAY was that day. My sermon was on the subject "Fearfully and Wonderfully Made," and my illustration today was BONES and the human skeleton. I had an 18 inch model of a human body and a handful of the 206 bones in the body. I also had 99 candles and 99 matchboxes.
Since what bones do for the human body is give us FREEDOM - we can move about, raise our hands, nod our heads -- freedom of movement, freedom to do what we were made for. And the equivalent of bones in the "body of Christ" are the teachings that never change, that form the hardness of the body of Christ. I spoke of teachings such as that of sexual purity and "love one another" and "receive the Holy Spirit" -- great things that make the church what it is.
I also talked about the MISSION STATEMENT of the Kamulu Church. Some of the leadership has been meeting to talk about our future and the purposes of the congregation, and so today we started asking the whole church to agree on our mission statement. Essentially it is "we are free to be friends," a message we want to spread all over the community (free from greed, free from hate, free from fear). And the second part is "we love children." The third part is "we want everyone to know Jesus." Today's emphasis was "free to be friends."
I said that in Kenya everyone needs a candle and a matchbox, because the electricity may be out tonight. Everyone nodded. And we had put a label on each matchbox that says,
Free to be Friends
The Kamulu Church
Christians Meet Here
Call 0733 834507
We have 3 groups that often meet after church on Sunday. So I asked each group -- the youth group, the young adult group, and the women's group -- to take 33 candles and matchboxes each, to visit 33 homes in Kamulu, and to explain to each that we want everyone here to be "free to be friends" and to tell them why.
Should be exciting to see what happens!
