If you spend any amount of time around our ministry in Zambia, you will hear us talk a lot about discipleship. That is because we do not want to simply preach a sermon, shake a few hands, take a picture, and move on. We want to stay. We want to sit with people long enough to learn their names, hear their questions, open the Bible together, and walk with them as they learn what it means to follow Jesus.
Sometimes that happens inside Chabantu Missionary Baptist Church, sometimes it happens at the school, sometimes it happens sitting in someone’s village, and sometimes it happens under a tree. Actually, a lot of our story seems to involve trees.
It Really Did Start Under a Tree
Before Chabantu Missionary Baptist Church became a church, it was a Bible study. We gathered under a tree, opened God’s Word, and started teaching. Nothing fancy, no curriculum room, no sound system, no complicated strategy. Just people, a Bible, and a lot of questions.
We would teach, answer questions, come back the next week, and do it again. Little by little, something started happening. People kept coming. Relationships started forming. People began understanding the Bible. Some even began putting their faith in Christ. Others started growing in their faith.
Eventually, that Bible study under a tree became Chabantu Missionary Baptist Church. That experience changed the way we think about ministry. We learned that you do not have to arrive in a village with everything figured out. Sometimes you just need to show up, open the Bible, and be willing to come back.
We Have Covered a Lot of Ground
Over the past few years, our Bible studies have taken us through a lot of Scripture. We have studied Genesis, Exodus, Jonah, John, Acts, Hebrews, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, and other portions of the Bible. We are also working through the New Testament Epistles verse by verse.
Some weeks we are talking about creation and God’s promises. Other weeks we are talking about Jonah running from God. Then we are in John talking about who Jesus really is. Acts takes us into the growth of the early church. Peter gets us talking about suffering, holiness, standing firm, and living differently because we belong to Christ. And Romans has a way of making everybody uncomfortable sooner or later.
That is probably a good thing. We do not want Bible study to simply be about learning information. Eventually the question has to become:
What does this mean for me?
How should I treat my wife? How should I lead my family? What do I do with the sin I keep excusing? What happens when what the Bible says conflicts with traditional beliefs I grew up with? Can I really say I am following Jesus if I am still holding onto something He tells me to leave behind?
Those are the conversations that matter. That is where Bible study becomes discipleship.
The Men Are Learning to Dig Deeper
One of the areas I have really enjoyed is our men’s Bible study. We take our time. We read the passage. We explain it verse by verse. We stop and define words. We ask questions. And then we talk about real life.
Sometimes the conversations are encouraging. Sometimes they are hard. Sometimes a passage hits a little too close to home, but that is what we want. I am not trying to raise up a group of men who know how to sit quietly through church. I want to see men who know God’s Word, love their families well, stand firm in their faith, and eventually help teach someone else. Because if this ministry is going to continue growing, it cannot depend on me being the one holding the Bible every time.
Sharon’s Women’s Bible Study Has Grown… A Lot
While I have been meeting with the men, Sharon has been working with the women. What started smaller has now grown to around 50 women. That is a lot of ladies in one Bible study. They have already worked through the book of Ruth, and now they are studying Esther, and Sharon does not just tell them the story and send them home.
They talk about it:
What does faithfulness look like?
What does courage look like?
How do you trust God when you cannot see what He is doing?
How can God use an ordinary woman in an extraordinary way?
The women pray together, learn together, laugh together, and encourage one another. That group has become much more than another item on the weekly schedule. It has become a real community.
And Then There Are the Children
If you know Sharon, you probably already know where this part is going, Children. She heads up our Sunday morning children’s ministry at Chabantu with the help of two of our local ladies, Margaret and Josephine. And I love that part, because the goal is not for Sharon to do children’s ministry forever. The goal is for local believers to learn, serve, teach, and eventually train others.
Every Sunday, the children are hearing Bible stories, learning Scripture, singing, asking questions, and hearing about Jesus in a way they can understand.
We also use Baptist Publishing House’s Disciple Kidz curriculum and their Sunday school quarterlies, which have been a huge help to us. Good printed Christian material can be surprisingly hard to get here, and printing in Zambia is expensive. Really expensive.
So when we are able to get good Sunday school material, doctrinal studies, children’s lessons, or teacher resources, we use them and make them stretch as far as we can. We have also used Baptist Publishing House material on BMA doctrine and theology to help our people understand not only what we believe, but why we believe it. That matters more and more as we look toward training local leaders and eventually planting more churches.
Then We Found Ourselves Under Another Tree
Not long ago, Sharon and I drove an hour and a half from our home to Chabantu. Then we drove another thirty minutes deeper into the bush to two villages where we had never held a Bible study before. When we arrived, the women welcomed us with a traditional song. And sitting under a tree were more than 60 people waiting for us.
I had one of those moments where you almost laugh because the whole thing feels familiar. Another village. Another tree. Another Bible study. Here we go again. We started in John 1 and asked one simple question:
Who is Jesus?
We taught for about an hour. Then we finished. Except we did not really finish. Nobody left, instead, people started asking questions. And kept asking questions. For another hour.
Questions about Jesus.
Questions about salvation.
Questions about God.
Questions about the Bible.
We ended up sitting under that tree for nearly two hours talking about Christ, then we learned something that stopped us. Not one person in those two villages owned a Bible. Not one.
There are more than 300 people living in that area, and Chabantu is the nearest Bible-preaching church. For some of them, that would mean nearly a three-hour walk one way. At that point, this could not just be a one-time visit. We knew we had to come back.
So now we are walking through the Gospel of John with them, slowly. Week by week, just like we did at Chabantu. And because there are so many children coming too, Sharon is starting a separate Bible study just for them. So once again, we have adults under a tree opening God’s Word and children nearby learning about Jesus. There is something wonderfully familiar about that.
The School Is Part of This Too
Discipleship is not limited to church and village Bible studies. It is happening at Chabantu Missionary Baptist Academy too. Our students hear the Word of God during the week and attend chapel. About 60 of our students also attend Chabantu Missionary Baptist Church regularly. So we may teach a child during the week, see them again on Sunday, and then keep watching them grow year after year. That is a rare opportunity.
We are not just teaching a lesson and hoping they remember it. We get to walk with them. Some of those children may someday become Sunday school teachers. Some may become pastors. Some may become church leaders. Some may simply become godly mothers and fathers who teach their own children to follow Jesus. All of that matters.
Our Goal Is Actually to Work Ourselves Out of a Job
Maybe not completely.
I still like preaching, but when it comes to discipleship, success cannot mean that everybody needs Sharon or me forever. That would actually be failure. We want the people we teach to become the people who teach. We want the men in Bible study today to lead Bible studies tomorrow. We want women who are studying Ruth and Esther with Sharon to someday sit down with another group of women and teach them God’s Word. We want Margaret and Josephine to grow as children’s workers and help train the next person. We want local believers discipling local believers.
And that is one reason the future BMA Global Zambia Bible Institute is so important to us. Yes, we are excited about the buildings, but the buildings are not really the vision. The people inside them are.
We want to train pastors and future pastors to understand the Bible, teach it faithfully, preach it clearly, and take it back to their own villages. We want churches planted by people from here. Then we want those churches to plant more churches.
From One Tree to the Next
Sometimes I think back to that first Bible study under the tree at Chabantu. At the time, we could not see much beyond the people sitting in front of us. Now there is a church there. There is a growing men’s Bible study. Around 50 women are studying with Sharon. Children are learning God’s Word every Sunday. Students are hearing Scripture at school. Local believers are beginning to teach and serve, and now we are sitting under another tree in another village doing it all over again.
That is probably the best picture of our ministry right now. Not big events. Not polished programs. Just one faithful step after another.
One Bible.
One conversation.
One question.
One man.
One woman.
One child.
One family.
One village.
Then another.
We do not want to simply gather crowds. We want to see people know Jesus, know His Word, live it, and teach it to someone else. And maybe years from now, somewhere in the Sikute Chiefdom, someone we discipled will sit under a tree with people we have never met. They will open the Bible. They will begin to teach.
And someone will ask a question.
Then another.
And another.
We may never even hear about it. And that would be just fine, because discipleship was never supposed to end with us. It is supposed to keep going.
From one person to the next.
From one village to the next.
From one tree to the next.
