Greater Than What Money Can Buy: God's Word Is for Eternity

A Need for Theological Training

Throughout the least developed countries, churches face a similar problem: their pastors haven’t received theological training. Why is this important? Because without it, pastors are at risk of misunderstanding God’s Word and therefore inaccurately preaching to their congregations.

Edwine Omaya provides a case study for why this often happens. He grew up in a churchgoing family where he received a mix of influences from Seventh Day Adventists, Catholics, and others. Dinner discussions often included topics like church and the Bible, but many tensions and disagreements resulted. Edwine wasn’t sure exactly what to make of all the different beliefs, let alone which combination to choose.

From Edwine’s childhood point of view, one family member’s beliefs stood out from the rest. “My spiritual growth and learning about God was mostly shaped by my grandma, who was a deeply spiritual person. She had a great level of tolerance and brought people together by dealing with those tensions with gentleness. She was a great prayer warrior—she prayed every day. We woke up and she was already praying, and when we left for school we would leave her still praying.” Edwine’s grandmother laid the foundation for him to see and desire the important attributes in the life of a believer: faithfulness, joy, perseverance, and hope.

Despite seeing his grandmother’s faithfulness to the Lord, many of his big theological questions remained unanswered. Later in life, through the opportunity to receive theological training, he became a pastor and a trainer of pastors. In this context his eyes were opened to the importance of a theologically trained pastor who has a solid foundation from which to teach and disciple. Today, Edwine works with Soma, a non-formal theological program that seeks to meet the needs for theological education among pastors throughout Eastern Africa.

Through the generous support of donors to Crossway’s One Million Bibles Initiative: Global South, Edwine and the Soma team have received ESV Bibles to give to the pastors in their program. These Bibles allow pastors to read and study God’s Word for themselves and to share with their congregations.

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The Opportunity to Train

“From a young age I desired to know Christ, but my environment growing up did not give me the opportunity to because the fights and quarrels kept away an opportunity for teaching and training the children,” Edwine recalls. His prayer was that as he entered college, the Lord would provide him with people who could teach him the truths of the Bible. He says,

God answered my prayer. I met some people who taught me the Bible really well. They showed me how to read the Bible. After a couple of studies together with them, that’s when I can say with certainty that I gave my life fully to Christ. There was a change that God brought in me that I cannot explain, but that I know I experienced. I had a level of fear of the Lord that I never had before. I had a great desire to study his Word and to pray.

Edwine was hooked. He couldn’t get enough of the Bible and rejoiced in the opportunity to learn from these other young men who were serious about the Bible too. So after graduation and theological school, for the next twenty years he served and worked alongside them. During these years, Edwine and eventually his wife lived and did pastoral ministry in several places throughout Kenya, Ethiopia, and Malawi.

At the end of these twenty years Edwine and his family came back to Nairobi, Kenya, where they spent some time resting and rejuvenating after a wonderful but challenging season of ministry work. It was during this season that he first became aware of Soma.

Two of my colleagues traveled to Mombasa, Kenya to participate in a training of pastors. When they came back they were blown away by the hunger they found among the pastors they trained. They shared stories of how people want and desire the opportunity to receive theological training, or even just some basic knowledge and resources. The following year I was invited for the first time to go with Soma to another Kenyan town. We did a training program there with the pastors. For that program there were about forty or forty-five pastors, of all ages, both old and young.

Afterward, the Lord provided an opportunity for Edwine to get involved with Soma and officially join the training team.

The Gift Greater Than What Money Can Buy

Today Edwine travels with the Soma team to various locations throughout Eastern Africa to lead training sessions. The further away from cities they get, the greater the need and less common it is to come across one who has received theological training. “Reading in our culture,” Edwine explains, “is not something that you’ll find among most people. Reading in school is not very common. The only time I really see people reading is on their phones.” So the program aims to encourage the pastors to read each book they’re given.

Every month of the four-year program, Soma leaders assign participants one book to read and study questions to answer. Local cohorts are created for pastors to gather after reading each book for a group discussion. This helps to foster a reading culture and to invest in reading resources that teach them important Christian doctrines. Training sessions are sprinkled in throughout the four years to provide a specific focus on equipping the pastors for their work in ministry.

At one of the first training sessions Edwine led, he recalls an encounter with a seventy-five-year-old pastor who received theological training for the first time.

One of my colleagues was explaining the gospel, and when he finished this man raised his hand and said, “Can I ask a question?” My colleague gestured for him to continue, and he confessed that “I realized the gospel that I’ve been teaching to my church isn’t completely the true gospel. It has so many gaps. I don’t even know whether to call it a gospel. So what does this mean? Should I go and tell the people I’ve been lying to them?”

He spoke with a mixture of fear, worry, and wonder, but much more than that his humility blew me away. We weren’t expecting a question like that. So I asked how many other people in the group had the same problem, and a few hands went up. But later on in the training we discovered there were a lot of the pastors who felt the same way. That’s when I began to realize just how important this work of training and equipping is, because this old man had been in ministry for thirty-five years and that was the first time he was learning the truth of the gospel.

Theological training is so important in places like this, because there are many pastors who are doing their best to preach the gospel, but they’ve never had anyone equip them to do that with biblical accuracy.

Through the One Million Bibles Initiative: Global South, Bibles have been given to these pastors in training programs. Edwine shares that “the study Bibles are especially helpful for such people because they’ve been trained to go and train others. So having a study Bible is a great tool and resource. The fact that it has a lot of good material in the Bible itself—theological notes, introductions to each book, cross references—all of this will make it easier for them to go and share with other pastors what they have learned in these training cohorts.”

Through the provision of these Bibles, the gospel is going forth through the accurate preaching of Scripture. As we seek to provide one million Bibles throughout the Global South, would you consider joining us?

As Edwine summarizes, “You can buy someone anything. And everything that you buy has a lifespan. It comes and then it goes, and people forget it. But the Word of God? No. That sticks with you. It lives with you and in you for eternity. The impact of the Word in people’s lives cannot be compared to anything else.”

Praise God for the life change happening in the lives of pastors through the Soma program. Pray for continued transformation among these pastors.

Pray for the impact of the Bibles that will be distributed through the One Million Bibles Initiative: Global South. Pray that more will come to saving faith as a result of reading God’s Word for themselves.