A SWING AND A MISS

Trying to do too much.

Well, there’s three sports cliches to get you started.

If you haven’t figured out by the headlines, things did not go as expected in Uganda. I have seen what happened today in Uganda happen a thousand times at baseball games. A hitter comes to the plate, the moment is bigger than he is used to. And he takes a huge home-run hack. Problem is, he’s not a power hitter. Oh, he’s a good hitter. He hits singles and doubles, gets runners in and scores lots of runs for his team. But jacking balls over the fence is not in his skill set.

Our Uganda team tried to “hit it out of the park” with this weekend’s conference. The ball (meeting) didn’t even get out of the infield. It was simply poorly done at every level.

Stay within your gifting.

This was the first major conference that any of our Mount Elgon graduates have hosted. The reports of quickly multiplying small discipleship groups are accurate. And dozens are coming to Christ through one-on-one evangelism in those groups. So, our young ministry leaders thought since things were going so good, it was time to pull out all the stops, bring in the big guns, and make some ministry noise.

Well, that’s exactly what we did. We made some noise. Not a melody, not a symphony, not a certain sound…just noise.

Big hall, big sound system, big choir, top shelf worship leader, four ministry “heavy hitters”—Pastor Richard, Pastor Elijah (dean of the training center), and Pastor Fred (administrator of the training center), and of course…me. The great white hope from America. Everything except the power and the presence of God. There was plenty of blame to go around. Me and the Kenya leaders talked that over all the way back to Kenya. Pastor Elijah summed it up well. “We have done a good job of training these leaders in how to handle the Word of God accurately. They know how to study. They know how to teach. They are expert personal evangelists. But, we are lacking the practical skills of planning ministry events, preparing for big events, and discerning what type of ministry structures and events will compliment and enhance our disciple making small groups.” We have a hole in our training strategy.

Right on the nose, Elijah. We are not a “big event” ministry. We are not a “come and see” ministry. We are a go and tell ministry. Once they hear and accept the Gospel, we develop relationships inside of small group ministries that strengthen and encourage new believers.

Our key leaders are back to the drawing board tonight. We may have struck out in Uganda, but there are a lot of innings left in this game. And, we get to bat again…tomorrow.