Preacher & Author

It’s not easy to be a preacher and an author at the same time. This month of August is most telling. Early in the month I spent about 10 days writing up a research proposal and updating my CV and getting both my referees on board. Then, it was preaching in a church in KK but the Bible Study in the afternoon took a lot out of me until I rested for two or three days for full recuperation, spirit and body. By then, last Wednesday I prepared in earnest two sessions of praise and worship, all fresh and newly minted in two sets of PowerPoint. I also prepared to preach a sermon on Sunday.

The travelling was not too bad as my wife accompanied me. It was good that we stayed in a hotel nearby though we had to travel another 38kms from Tenom to the church back and forth twice before driving back to KK from Kalibatang Baru on Sunday afternoon after lunch from 12.40pm reaching home at 5.30pm. By then, my body is exhausted but my spirit rejoiced in the Lord for wonderful blessings to be of blessing to the Lundayeh tribe in the village. 

It was good to reconnect with the senior pastor and a number of District leaders after three years, in fact the first outlying district that invited me since the relaxation of SOP last May though my former church in Ranau had the honour of inviting me to speak on Mother’s Day. I told the church in Kalibatang that when in April the PM announced the relaxation of SOP there was a voice in my heart that I would preach every month and that had come to pass, four months in a row and counting. 

The village in the Kemabong and Tenom area is fully Christianized but as it is common for third or fourth generation of Christians, it requires revitalization and revivals from time to time. I believe the three sessions of preaching and teaching have gone some way in reenergizing the church of Jesus Christ in that place. Paul planted but Apollos watered. And I do an Apollotolic ministry, not of the apostles but of Apollos as one who waters the vineyard of the Lord.