Discipleship and Bible Teaching Ministries

In Lodja, we are part of the Eglise Evangelique du Congo (Evangelical Church of the Congo), which developed in the early 1990s as an outgrowth of FODESA’s commitment to community moral development. The EEC, with many congregations throughout the Sankuru region, is under national Congolese leadership. As lay missionaries focusing on full-time medical ministry, our role is to offer counsel and encouragement to leaders and members, and basic Bible teaching on a local level. Timothy has also initiated some translation projects of Christian literature into Otetela, the language of our region.

In addition, Timothy leads two weekly boys’ Bible studies. In the Tuesday group, boys aged about 11-18 follow a survey of the Bible’s teaching on salvation and lifestyle. The first part of the meeting time is given to recitation of Bible memory texts, chosen from the previous week’s lesson, and including topical questions on the text. Afterwards a new topic is introduced, with relevant Scripture searches and discussions. Studies address such topics as creation in God’s image, salvation by grace, the meaning of baptism, the Biblical perspective on work, money and debt, and what it means to be morally pure. One interesting side-benefit of the class is help in learning to read, as the older boys help the younger ones read the texts aloud to the group. Those who complete the full school-year course and the required memory work are presented with Otetela Bibles of their own, a highly regarded reward here where books of any kind are scarce. On Thursdays, a smaller group of students who have completed the first course but are still interested in weekly examination of the scriptures, meet together for topical discussions. Past studies have focused on the Biblical concept of marriage, on godly character qualities, on Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace? and McNally’s Sonship: The Path to Fatherhood, and on the commands of Christ as revealed in the gospels. Over the years this small group has produced some young Christian men who have had the benefit of like-minded friends, a place to read and talk about the Bible in an essentially non-literate culture, the opportunity to examine their cultural assumptions, and the support of a small but genuine Christian community. Several have become leaders both within their local churches and in newly-developing neighborhood home groups.

Another activity we have recently initiated with a small group of church leaders is a weekly evening gathering in our home, where we share (with the help of our digital piano) the French-language worship music that has encouraged us in Kinshasa and in Europe. Not being fluent in Otetela, we ourselves cannot produce new worship music reflecting the Atetela’s own musical culture, but it is our hope that a bit of musical cross-pollination may awaken new giftings for worship from within the church itself. We have all enjoyed these evenings together, growing in friendship as we worship the Lord together.