Hello, friends. About six days ago I returned from a training trip to Tanzania and Kenya. I will share more about Kenya soon, but I’ll update on Tanzania now.

Steve Jackson, Sr. Pastor from Santa Clarita, and I travelled to our Dar group of pastors and conducted the sixth Pathway workshop Oct.15-18. There was some concern prior to arriving because there was very little communication between our coordinator and several of the regular trainers, so we were not sure how many we would have in the training. As it ended up, we had 7-8 people present most of the time, a small group but good enough to work with.

During our time, I met with the core of regular trainers (whom I have known for several years) and had an “in-house” meeting on the state of our trainings, if we should continue, what expectations would have to be met if we did continue, etc. They unanimously stated they wanted to see the trainings all the way through to conclusion, and were committed to better communication and better performance. I have known these guys for over four years and am very committed to them. They will catch a few others up on a training or two they have missed, but others who have missed the majority of the trainings or who are not training others will not be invited to return for the final three trainings. We also set a general schedule for the final three trainings.

The training itself had highs and lows. One low was that a couple of our regular trainers were missing due to unavoidable commitments. We missed them, and with a small group we felt their absence. Another low was that only two of the trainers were fully prepared. We discussed this issue at length, but this is not a typical pattern for them. A high was that when it came time for presentations, each of the presenters did a surprisingly good job at sharing message statements and working through passages, even challenging theological ones from Romans. Pastor George gave an absolutely excellent message one morning on Rom. 5:12-21 for the devotional. These men have really come a long way since the days we started studying together in my living room. We wrestled with a number of theological issues as we worked through passages, but the majority of the time was spent on practicing Pathway tools such as Linking Words, which they thoroughly got into.

Another “high” was listening to the pastors share about who they were passing the training on to. In several cases I was aware what was happening, in others I was quite surprised. Each of our regular trainers are doing a good job at passing the training on, although they are not all up to speed in passing the training on that we have most recently taught. Our champion multipliers, Enock and Musa, are passing the training on to 13 other groups (136 pastors) and most of these are passing the training on to at least 218 other pastors and church leaders who are in turn passing the trainings on to about 500 others. Remarkable!! According to our closest count, it sounds like there are over 1000 pastors and church leaders being trained through the core trainers we are working with and their subsequent levels (possibly 1,117), with more networks scheduled to start soon. Praise God!!

It was great to have an experienced and flexible preaching pastor like Steve as my partner. He did a great job, quickly built relationships with the participants, and we worked well together.

The last day, I preached at Chiwalo’s church and was blessed by the love I experienced from him, his family and his church.

All in all, I would say it was a successful trip and the trainers advanced in their handling of the Word, and Steve, George (our coordinator), and I were all very encouraged. Pressing on by God’s grace, Eric