Once again this summer I had the privilege of ministering in Uganda and Kenya for Church Planting International and Christian life Teachings International (CLTI), the indigenous training ministry founded by Rev. John Robert Opio, one of the students on my first trip. I conducted a modular course in theology for two groups of rural pastors, one in Kitale, Kenya, and the other in Mbarara, Uganda. These are men in ministry who have had no opportunity to receive formal theological training. In these countries, the church is growing faster than it can train leaders. Since these men cannot go to Bible school, I take a little Bible school to them. With men of such zeal and dedication, a little goes a long way.

Thurs., 6/12-Sat. 6/14, 2010: Travel: Atlanta to Paris to Nairobi to Kitale, Kenya.

Sun., 6/20: AM, Preached at God’s Family Restoration Church, Kitale; PM, spoke to Kamukuya Pastor’s Fellowship, 21 pastors and elders representing seven village ministries from Pentecostal to Baptist.

Mon., 6/21-Thurs., 6/24: Modular course in Survey of Christian Doctrine taught to 34 pastors and church leaders.  For seven of them it was their last course with CLTI leading to a certificate in Christian ministry.

On the second day of the Kenya seminar, we covered the doctrine of the Trinity with special reference to Islam. Why do Muslims think Christians are polytheists? How can we get past that impasse? What does the doctrine of the Trinity actually affirm? Not that we simultaneously believe that there is one God and that there are three Gods–that would be a contradiction. Rather, there is one God who contains three Persons. This is merely incomprehensible, not contradictory. We went over a lot of Scripture that affirms as true the following propositions: there is only one God, the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God, and Father, Son, and Spirit are distinct persons, not just three different names for God. The doctrine of the Trinity is simply the only way to affirm the simultaneous truth of all these biblical statements.
There are four reasons to believe that the doctrine of the Trinity is true.  1.  The bible teaches it. 2.  Allah is just too simple. Any God I could understand without difficulty must by that fact be a false God.  3.  If God were a simple monotheistic deity like Allah, the incarnation would be impossible—for how should God abandon Heaven for existence as a Man and still rule the world?  Only a Trinitarian God could become incarnate without abdicating the throne of the universe.  Therefore, only the Trinity can save; Allah cannot.  4.  Only if the Trinity is the true account of God could the affirmation that “God is love” be meaningful. Before creation, there would be no one for Allah to love; but the Father, the Son, and the Spirit loved each other in the unity of the Godhead from all eternity, and now through faith in Christ invite us to share that love with them for all of future eternity. Now, that’s a God worth believing in!

In sum, the incomprehensibility of the Trinity is in the light of the above facts actually an asset to Christian faith, not a liability.  The Muslims cry, “Allah U’Akbar!”  “Allah is great!”  But we have already discovered two very important things that the God of the Bible can do and which Allah cannot do: save and love.  How great can Allah be?
There was a lot of intense attention to the apologetic points against Islam, because these people have Muslim neighbors. One man said, “I thought I was coming to a seminar, and I find myself in college!” Not quite–he doesn’t have to write a paper or read a systematic theology textbook (and a couple of C. S. Lewis books!) in addition to the biblical texts. But his unintentional hyperbole has a point–that is exactly what I was invited to bring these men.

Tues., 6/20: After the class ended for the day, spoke to an assembly of St. Philip’s Secondary School, Kitale, and then addressed the faculty separately after the students were dismissed.  I spoke to the students on the adventure of reading.  There is a poster one sees in Kenya that proclaims, “Literacy for Improved Food Production!”  I don’t doubt that improved food production is a worthy goal and that literacy can help attain it, I said; but there is so much more to reading than that!  It makes available to us the Word of God, the world of ideas, and the world of imagination—all of which can expand the mind in such a way as to facilitate things yet undreamt of (including better food production).  It was Newman’s Idea of a University recycled impromptu for an African context.  I encouraged the faculty to actively cultivate two things: love of their subject and love of their students.  It is only when both are present that transformative teaching can emerge.

Fri., 6/25: CLTI Graduation.  We had a graduation ceremony for seven students who had completed the whole pastoral training course from Christian Life Teachings International. After the service and before the recessional, an African graduate’s family and friends will come up and drop garlands of tinsel over their mortar-boarded heads, so that during the photo session afterwards (which puts most weddings to shame) they look like walking Christmas trees with black trunks (the bottoms of their robes still showing beneath). During the next American graduation I have to endure, I will be sure to remember that it could be worse!
The Valedictorian, Peter Sisunga, included in his speech–really a fiery sermon–some things he learned from me two years ago. That made me think maybe I’m not wasting my time here after all! Some of my American students have difficulty remembering things I said two weeks–er, sometimes two days—ago.
Sat., 6/26: Travel to Mukono, Uganda.

Sun., 6/27: Preach at Campus Church of Uganda Christian University.  The visit to Uganda Christian University in Mukono (Evangelical Anglican) was a great success. My sermons to campus church congregations of about 1,000 (first service) and 200 (second) were very well received. The Rev. Canon Frederick Baalwa, the campus chaplain, was astonished that I had actually presented the text and topic he had asked for (“The Place of Authority in Christian Leadership,” Mark 10:42-5). “That was powerful,” he said. Christian leadership is the theme for this term. When I saw the whole programme I was impressed with how he had broken it down. Perhaps the best thing that came of our short time there was making a connection between Rev. Baalwa and Rev. Opio. Baalwa was quite taken with the vision and ministry of CLTI and said that there were many rural Anglican (Church of Uganda) congregations led by lay preachers who desperately needed just what John Opio is doing. They soon had their heads together plotting blessings for the Kingdom–a wonderful ecumenical moment. Baalwa was astounded that I, a Muzungu (white man), was taking Public Transport to Mbarara. “You really practice the servant leadership you preach!” he marveled. Apparently Muzungus on public are a great rarity. There is a reason why.

If God has put anything in the world to remind us of human weakness, it must be the African public transportation system. The journey from Kampala to Mbarara Sunday afternoon–about 280 kilometers to the West–took a full eight hours of being bumped and pounded half to death. But I survived to begin the second week of classes

Mon., 6/28-Weds., 6/30: Second Modular Theology Course, at Mbarara, Uganda.  I used the same material as in Kenya but covered less of it because many of the men (and women leaders too) are even less prepared academically than the CLTI students I had in Kenya. Sometimes here it takes a while just to explain something to the interpreter so he can render it. In Kenya, half of the students were confident enough in English to ask their questions in English. Here, almost no one is. So the interpreters are even more essential, but they too are less prepared. Nevertheless, we are accomplishing some good teaching.  The Trinity explained as a positive response to Islam rather than a theological liability was a hit here too.

One encouraging factor in Mbarara was that several of these students had already seen through the Prosperity Gospel on their own–unusual in Africa. They were asking for effective ways to combat it. Apparently “Name it and claim it” translates into Lyancole as “Take it! Take it!” So I said, just ask people to read the Gospels and ask them whether they are seeing a Jesus who says “Take it!” or one whose message is “Give it!” Was Paul in perfect health right after being stoned and left for dead? Where was his faith? Was Jesus lacking in faith because He had no place to lay his head? This theology is not just wrong, it is blasphemous! What of the Missionaries who first brought the Gospel to Uganda? They packed in their coffins because they expected to die from Malaria–yet they came anyway. Aren’t we glad their preachers weren’t saying, “Take it! Take it!”  Makes you stop and think, doesn’t it?

Thurs., 7/1: Preached to midweek service of Ruti Reformed Presbyterian Church in Mbarara and addressed an assembly of Hillside Primary School in nearby Biharwe.

Fri.-Sat., 7/2-3: Journey home via Kampala, Entebbe, Amsterdam, Paris, and Atlanta.

Summary: Preached in five services at four churches, spoke to two Pastor’s Fellowships and two school assemblies, held two training seminars for about seventy pastors and church leaders, and spoke at one graduation service in two weeks of intense ministry.  Pray that the men who attended the seminars will commit what they heard to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. That way, the church will be strengthened and the mission will have been a success.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

Even people who do not agree with him admire Protestant Reformer Martin Luther for standing up for his convictions.  What many people do not understand is that his famous “Here I stand!” was not simply a bold assertion of modern individualism but sprang from much serious agonizing over what Scripture was telling him.  It was faithfulness to God’s truth as he understood it, not rebellion against church authority, that drove him.

Martin Luther

Sonnet XXXV

Can one lone monk be right, and all the rest

Of Christendom for near a thousand years

Be wrong?  The question brought him close to tears

And troubled Luther sorely, he confessed.

But other problems had to be addressed,

Like, shall the Gospel reach the waiting ears

Of people whose good works were in arrears

And had no chance but Grace to pass the test?

He meant by that just simply every man,

And thought of men who’d lived by faith before—

And doubted then his Gospel’s truth no more:

With Athanasius contra mundum, and

With John the lone disciple at the Cross,

He clung to Christ and viewed all else as loss.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

Enough blank verse!  Now for something completely different.

Oh Sight beyond all Seeing

(Christmas, 1980)

Oh Sight beyond all seeing,

Light in the dark of the sun,

Fact behind the face of Being,

Second of Three in the One:

What motive could have moved you hither thus?

The Life that was ever begotten, never begun,

Began to be born, to mourn.  For us

The daring deed was done.

Burned by angel-light,

The shepherds’ eyes were blind

To everything except the sight

That they went forth to find.

It was a Baby wrapped in swaddling clothes,

Laid in a manger: such had been the sign.

The sign they saw by then still shows

The perilous paths that wind

Between the Tree and the Tree

This much the sign makes clear:

The Light invisible we see,

The silent Word we hear.

What motive could have moved Him hither thus?

We hear pegs pounded, see the thrusted spear,

We hear, “Forgive them!”  Now for us

The day of doom draws near.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

Is this too long for a blog entry?  I don’t care.  Narrative poetry needs to be revived.  Here’s a challenge:  How long will it take you to figure out who this is about?

Campfire Tale

“I will tell you a story.

It is a true story, I did not make it up.

I learned it word for word from the way the words

Followed each other like first stars in the dark

When they came to me the first time, long ago.

I am still learning it.

And though it grows in the telling, it does it the way

A seed grows into a cedar, because the cedar

Was there in the seed all along, and had to grow.

You can find them tall and majestic in the fields,

Daring the lightning, or stooped, twisted, stunted,

Clutching at some impossible crack in a rock,

Living on soil they had to grind themselves,

But living to scatter their seed.

You are hearing the story from me, I am telling it now.

The seeds ride on the wind.  If I should stop,

Sooner or later one would take root near you;

You find them growing in unexpected places.

I will tell you a story.”

“The story has no beginning, but we will start

With a cold night in the desert, the stars fierce,

A light wind stirring the sand, the hints of dawn

As yet too faint to challenge the blazing blackness.

There is no moon tonight, you must look closely.

You see that hill?  It seems to be moving.  Ha!

It is a tent collapsing.  There are camels

Kneeling to be loaded.  I hear bleating

Of sheep.  And there, that man off to the side,

He seems oblivious to the whole commotion,

Standing motionless against the sky

As if in meditation.  One of the servants

Approaches him now, but stops, patiently waiting.

That man must be the master here.  He sees

The servant, sighs, and turns back toward the others.

I’ve lost him, but he must be mounted now;

There go the camels, lurching, one by one,

Rising clumsily into the sky.

And now they’re moving.  What a host they’ve got!

How could we have missed those flocks?  They’re gone.

Before the sun is up the wind will sweep

Away all signs that they were ever here.”

The boy stared deep in the fire.  “You tell it as if

You were there when it happened, as if it were happening now.”

“And how do you know it isn’t?”  The old man’s eyes

Glinted.  He shoved a stick in deeper and made

The sparks fly up.  “The story is still going on,

And you and I are in it.  The man was traveling

With everything he owned, cattle, servants,

Their wives and children, deeper into the desert.

None of them knew where they were going or why.

His wife had asked him point-blank, and he had told her

That God had told him to go, and that was that.

Some of them even believed him!”  The light of the fire

Showed a smile that wrinkled the old man’s cheeks

At the point.  “Yes, there were some of them that believed him.”

The old man paused ‘til the boy thought he’d fallen asleep,

But then he shook his head.  “It is not to be thought

That the man knew fully himself why the journey was ordered.

He thought it had something to do with becoming a nation.

The begetting of seed was central in it somehow,

And some great blessing for all mankind was at stake.

He thought it had something to do with the Curse and the Promise

Of Eden, the Seed that was coming to bruise the Serpent.”

“So that old story’s the same as this one?”  “Yes.

There is only one story you know.  But all he knew

Was that Jahweh had told him to leave Ur of the Chaldees

And God had promised a land and a seed and a blessing.”

This time it was the boy who stirred the fire.

“And did he ever find the land he was seeking?”

The old man laughed.  “Well, we are here now, aren’t we?”

“And did he find the seed?”  The old man’s hand

Descended gently on the boy’s young shoulder.

“The story goes no further for tonight.

We’d better get some sleep now, for tomorrow

We’ll come to the place appointed for sacrifice.

Tomorrow night we may know more of the story,

And if we do we’ll tell it to each other.”

The fire was watchful beside them through the night,

And the silent tears of Abraham were tiny

Pools of mud in the dust by the sleeping form

Of Isaac the promised seed.  It was a cold

Night on the edge of the desert, the stars fierce,

The hints of dawn still faint, but growing stronger,

A light wind stirring the thicket where the ram

Had gotten himself entangled on the mountain.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

This poem tries to capture a truly magical moment and reveal it as a useful image of a spiritual truth.  The relationships between appearance and reality, and between faith and sight, deserve more thought than they sometimes receive.

North Campus, The University of Georgia, Spring, 1980:

The Ninth Sphere Reflected in the First

“This mist just barely lets the moonlight through.

We’ll see no stars tonight.”  “But where the moon

Is shining, you can bet the stars are too.

No matter we can’t see them in this noon

Of silver foglight, for tonight the trees

Are all intent on standing in for them:

New dogwood blossoms, ranked in galaxies

And constellations, glow on every limb.

Somehow they gather in the diffuse light

And give it back in concentrated flares

Of brilliance, making dark the softer white.”

“What strange astronomy is this, that dares

Set stars ablaze so far from their own sphere?”

“Well, one that knows how much we need their light

And feels their unseen influence down here

And, having seen them once in their full height,

Thereafter walks by faith and not by sight.”

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

Rudolf Bultmann is no longer “hot” in biblical criticism, but his disciples continue to wreak their havoc on faith, not to mention common sense.  He thought we could no longer believe the New Testament because it was mythological, and that we had to “demythologize” it in order to find what was true there.  Never mind that anything that did not fit with Modernism, Rationalism, and Scientism was automatically dismissed as “mythology,” nor that when you removed the supernatural there was very little left.  Well, the joke is on the Bultmanniacs.  Did they really understand even mythology any better than they did the New Testament?

A Parable for Demythologizers

To Rudolf Bultmann

“We come with rusty hatchets to chop down

Old Yggdrasil, the mightiest of trees;

We come with buckets full of air to drown

Old Triton, ruler of the seven seas.

For we are Modern Men, the heirs of Time,

And won’t be ruled by anything that’s gone

Before.  So if we think it more sublime

To exorcise Aurora from the dawn,

Then who is there who dares to say us nay?”

And so the desert wind swept through their minds

And found no obstacle placed in its way

To stop the stinging dust, the sand that blinds.

Blistered, parched, and withered, one by one

They fell beneath the branches of the Tree,

Succumbing to the unrelenting Sun

In cool, green shade beside the roaring Sea.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

This was a fairly early sonnet, but I still think it’s one of my best.  It stems from the fact that Bethlehem in Hebrew (Beth Lechem) means “House of Bread.”  And so, some two millennia ago, it came to be.  The poem was in New Oxford Review, Jan.-Feb., 1982, p. 31.

Bethlehem

Sonnet XXXII

Bethlehem, Beth Lechem, House of Bread:

Your white stones waited silent in the sun

For long years (long as people feel them run).

The prophets wrote no more; the Rabbis read

The old words and unraveled every thread

And found your secret out:  You were the one.

Yet when the time can and the thing was done,

They spent the night at home asleep in bed.

Oh, they could put their fingers on the pages

That told the old fox Herod it was you.

But those uncircumcised, stargazing sages

Came first, and shepherds, wet with evening dew

Had long since been there, and had all been fed

In Bethlehem, Beth Lechem, House of Bread.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

 Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

You’ve probably figured out by now that theology and literature are pretty inseparable disciplines for me, two areas of study that I feel compelled to pursue together, however well I may be able to integrate them.  The interesting thing about this poem is that it was inspired, not by Calvin, but by Chaucer, who wrestles with the question of predestination and free will in a number of his poems, “The Knight’s Tale” and “Troilus and Cressida” among them.  Of course, having read Calvin and a few other people didn’t hurt.

On Election and Free Will

All night long we’d sat up and debated

If Man is free, or if his will is fated

To choose as it has been predestinated.

Or, if Man is responsible and free

By God’s immutable and fixed decree,

Yet God rules all by strict necessity,

How can necessity and freedom mix?

The whole thing left my mind in such a fix

That I went walking, trying to explain

It all, and so got caught out in the rain.

The first drops turned to steam upon the road,

But then they all came thick and fast, and flowed

Together.  It was possible to tell

The precise moment they no longer fell

Directly on the pavement with a hiss

But joined to form a watery abyss

That rushed to pile itself up in a heap

Along the curbs, and soon was ankle deep.

And all that water had to go downhill

Until it found some river it could fill

Which, in its turn, would have to find the sea.

They did not ask advice from you or me

Or stop to talk abstruse theology,

But just went on about their business, free

To be what their own natures bade them be.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.”

            John Skelton was an early Sixteenth-Century English poet whose lines are, in some people’s eyes, so bad that they’re good.  He gave his name to the form: iambic dimeter rhyming AAAAA etc. as long as you can keep it up, then switching to B for as long as that will go, etc.  Skeltonics aren’t the right form for many things, but they work well for some kinds of light verse, and also seem strangely appropriate for any phenomenon that just keeps coming back like a Skeltonic rhyme, er, bad penny.

A Skeltonic Upon Sanctification

When in did ride

My foolish pride,

I vainly tried

To run and hide;

But God espied

It, mortified

It, so it died,

Until again

It rose.  So men

Do ever sin.

But God, to win

Them to come in

And save their skin

From burning Hell

Doth in them dwell

And sweetly tell

How from the well

Of Jesus’ blood

A crimson flood

Did drown the Tree

At Calvary

To purchase me

That I might be

Forever free

His slave to be.

Then Godly fear

And holy cheer

Did drive out sin

Until again

Straight in did ride     

My foolish pride,

I vainly tried

To run and hide;

But God espied

It, mortified

It, so it died,

Until again . . .

(This poem, my friend,

Will never end

‘Til Christ comes back,

And that’s a fact!)

Donald T. Williams, PhD

REFLECTIONS

                              From the initial moment of surprise

                                            By piercing light they never had expected,

                                             The Magi mulled the meaning of the skies.

                               Was the betrayal worse, or were the lies?

                                             What in her swelling belly he’d detected

                                              Joseph couldn’t find in Mary’s eyes,

                               And that was puzzling.  Puzzling to the Wise

                                              Men were their stumbling thoughts as they reflected

                                              Deeply on the meaning of the skies.

                               Joseph made them gentle, his good-byes,

                                             Turned sadly from the girl he had selected,

                                              Still haunted by the tears that filled her eyes.

                               Who knows what led those scholars to surmise

                                              The answer to the problem they’d dissected

                                              And journey toward the meaning of the skies?

                               An angel and his faith made Joseph prize

                                              The woman he had earlier rejected.

                                              The Magi mulled the meaning of the skies,

                               But Joseph saw the Star in Mary’s eyes.