Looking at Christ

  “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest.” What do you think of when you hear the words ‘harvest’ and ‘harvesting’? What would Jesus’ first hearers have thought of when they heard him talk about labourers being sent out into the harvest? How would they have reacted to the news that the harvest is ‘plentiful’? What if those of us who are twenty-first century Westerners are missing a lot of the intended force of Jesus’ language because we are deaf to the connotations that harvest would have had in a non-mechanised agricultural community? I asked a number of Kenyan friends to share their experiences of harvest to help me to hear Matthew 9:37-38 more clearly and richly. Here are seven things they taught me: 1. Harvesting is joyful “Growing up as a young boy, I really liked the harvest period. Harvest meant an exciting experience… happiness in the family… fresh food… It was a joyf...

Ministering the Word, whether it is to a congregation, to unbelievers, to children, patients or prisoners, is at the same time a wonderful privilege and an awesome responsibility. We are entrusted with the Words of eternal life and we want to minister them in such a way that they bring that life. We are entrusted with the living and active Word of God and we want to speak as those speaking the very oracles of God. At iServe Africa we believe that when God’s Word is taught faithfully as the testimony of Christ, the living God speaks, eternities are changed and lives and churches transformed. At the same time we are not ignorant of the massive pressures of our culture, of the vast amount of false teaching in our context and of our own deceitful hearts that would lead us away from a confidence in the pure Word of God. This book is a rather brief introduction to preaching the Word. As it has grown out of a course run by iServe Africa and may be used to accompany group ses...