ABLI Forum 2022 Rediscovering Bibilical Vision for Mentorship by Prof. PLO Lumumba

[Music] [Applause] the Lord your God Lord [Music] I'm sure many of you know why it is so great to have a brother in the Lord PLO lumumba he is a renowned speaker especially on the continent of Africa uh Professor PLO who is a director of school of law he previously was also the director of the Kenya anti-corruption commission his anti-corruption activist he's an anti-corruption speaker he is a mentor of presidents members of parliament and he's a mentor for the whole of Africa we know him as a widely sought after speaker and I was very worried

when I thought he would not be able to make it but I found God that he found Rome in his diary to be with us today please welcome with me Professor PLO Le mumba thank you rediscovering the vision the biblical vision of mentorship and in my view it is very important particularly in Africa today when I travel across the continent and I do in many countries I am amazed by the number of buildings whose owners claim our churches in a distance of one kilometer you will see different denominations the Bible is now the greatest instrument

in creating false Industries in the continent of Africa and that is not to be celebrated it is to be frowned upon and we who claim to be Christians and I normally use this very deliberately we claim to be Christians as to whether we are is another debate we'll only discover that a little later when we are in heaven and therefore when we talk about rediscovering we are saying that it was once discovered but let us situate the Bible in its proper place Christianity as we know it today in the continent of Africa was midwife to

us in the continent through Europe through the missionaries when they came they were reading the very same Bible that we are reading today and were dividing the continent of Africa they were reading the same Bible that we are reading today the same Bible in which in Paul's letter to the Galatians at chapter 3 28 he says there are no Jews nor gentiles no slave nor free no woman nor man they read that verse it was not interpolated later after they came they read it but they came here and conquered us they came here and discriminated

against us the same Bible they were being mentored by that very same Bible they came here when they are divided the body of Christ the English had appropriated the religion in 1534 and they now had their Anglican Church complete with the Monarch as it said the Scots had appropriated their own and they had the Presbyterian Church the Greeks had their Greek Orthodox the Armenians there are many unorthodox the Roman Catholics were even bold as they called it the Roman Catholic Church so that even when they are in Uganda is not Ugandan Catholic Church it is

the Roman Catholic church and you are going there and you are saying you are Roman Catholic Church in apartheid South Africa they are the Dutch Reformed Church which became the foundation stoned upon which apartheid was articulated in 1948 by Hendrick for foot and his cohorts so the Bible has been misused don't be cheated let's not be nice to each other because we are Christians the Bible has been misused it has been used to support slavery it has been used to support colonization it has been used to pervert the truth that is the Bible that we

are saying we ought to ReDiscover so when we are gathered here as Christians and we are talking about rediscovery of mentorship in the Bible we must have a spirit that is a questioning spirit when his grace was preaching to us he said we must always be nice before we are good not always and I've always talked about two pro approaches to be found in the Bible one is of John the Baptist and herodias is a dangerous path where you go out into the public and condemn evil the only thing that you must know is that

when you follow that path shalomi will ask for your head but there are circumstances when it is necessary then their circumstances when it is necessary to follow the path that his grace has suggested read the conversation between Nathan and David and what he did to the wife of prophet Uriah he comes and tells him in this place there was a person who had a lamb circumstances Define which method you use and in a forum such as this we now live in a world where as Christians we are also very pretentious we don't speak the truth

as it ought to be spoken and when I read the Bible sometimes as a Christian I ask myself what kind of Christian would I be I often ask myself if I lived in the days of Jesus which of these disciples would I be because let us ask ourselves when while we fast called Christians in fact if you read the Bible and the history of Christianity and how we were first called Christians in Antioch it was not a badge of honor to be called a Christian it was not a badge of honor it was a statement

that these individuals who follow somebody whom we do not respect whose ideas we do not respect them we embraced it but do we question that as Christians when we are reading the Bible do we read the Bible many of us who met the claim that we are Christians are not good Bible readers despite your best efforts and best intentions I normally ask this test question to my audience rather lately and I'll test it this morning to determine how effectively you read the Bible when you read the book of Isaiah chapter 6. it says that in

the year that King was here died the Lord appeared unto Isaiah the son of Amos then I asked Christians and who is King who's here they do not know they have never read about him in the Chronicles because they are satisfied with what they are preaching to and about Christians don't read the Bible they read sections of the Bible and one of the instruments that has now made Christians not read the Bible is social media they Google a particular section Your Grace you'll see if you uh from the pulpit occasionally most of your congregation are

not looking at you when you are preaching the word they are under the table many times you read the word and they are looking for it as if it never existed that is the kind of Christians that we have today claiming to be Christians and if they claim to be Christians and you want them to ReDiscover mentorship from the Bible how can they be mentored by something whose content they do not know I remember when we were baptized we used to say I reject the devil with all his works I'm sure many of you remember

that that is not true you never rejected the devil with all his works those who are words that you just spoke on the spa of the moment I remember one day when my little daughter was getting baptized so we went for a preparation for baptism at my church at the old Saints Cathedral and the Provost of the cathedral asked me do you believe in child baptism I said I do not believe in child baptism and they say why are you bringing your child I said because I don't want you to give her trouble asking why

were you not baptized and we entered into a debate and he asked me why don't you believe in child Baptist I said it has no biblical basis because if it had biblical basis Christ would have been baptized as a child that debate still lingens and I'm quite certain some of you may not agree with me but it has no biblical basis as many as believed were baptized children cannot believe they have no power of discerning I'm still talking about rediscovering mentorship in the Bible in this congregation if I were to pick any one of you

to recite for me the Ten Commandments in the order in which they were given to Moses I can assure you and I'll not try it I don't want to embarrass anybody out of 10 possibly only two would recite them in the order in which they were given because to you and me Ten Commandments have become 10 suggestions 10 suggestions to be obeyed only when it is convenient and yet if we were to use the Ten Commandments alone as the basis of governing Our Lives we would need no other laws in in the world we would

need no other laws in the world but we do not look to the Bible the Bible does not guide Our Lives the Bible is a convenient thing that we make reference to when we want to cover our sins it has become a moral fig lift that we use to hide our nakedness and I want to tell you that until and unless we change our ways and is the constant struggle for all of us I Now understand why Christ said how difficult it shall be to get into the kingdom of heaven I do not know whether

he's in Revelation where there is an attempt to say the number of people will get into heaven and Heaven is described I used to think it was very small I now know not many people may get there not many people may get despite our pretension to the contrary it is in Matthews 24 24 where it is recorded that there shall arise many christs and many prophets who shall work wonders and in as much as it were possible even the very elect would be cheated by those Christ and there is no shortage of them today in

every corner there is a prophet and they have no shortage of names Almighty mighty prophet all names of individuals and we follow them faithfully and their Bible thumping they can make reference to the Bible but remember Paul's second letter to Timothy at chapter 3 says in the end in these and days and these are those days don't worry that it may even take another million years before the world ends God I'm told doesn't count the way we do but these are those days and therefore when we are gathered here as Christians we must ask ourselves

painful and difficult questions are our lives Testaments to our acclaimed Christianity forget the many hallelujahs that we Shout we can shout hallelujah all we want forget I'm born again that we shout every minute is our life our lives Testament to the person that we claim to follow Christ or we are merely church-going Christians on Saturday if we are from the SDA we go to church because that is where you meet your friends and I won our summon is too long you lose your pastor after 10 minutes and you are busy playing video games in the

pews is that the kind of Christian you are Sunday going Christian who thinks he's God's gift to the world is that the kind of Christian you are a Christian whose business is to judge others thinking that you are holier than everybody else is that the kind of Christian you are because if that is the kind of Christian you are then you cannot Mentor anybody in Greek mythology which I want to believe you are all familiar with there are many gods one of them was Apollo and The Story Goes that he sent out the Oracle who

sent out to discover the wisest man in Greece and when they had gone Yonder they came and said that Socrates was the wisest of all men because when he was asked what he knew he said the only thing that he knew was that he knew nothing in other words in order to be truly knowledgeable you must have humility in you are we humble because only the humble can't be true mentors and the Bible is full of mentors Adam was meanted by God but somehow he was confused as the Bible says by Eve who also claimed

that is Satan who confused eye in the first place so it is not always the case that when you Mentor your mentee turns out right but that does not mean that mentorship must stop you rightly said that Moses was mentored by Jethro indeed he was you'll discover the conversation when Moses visited Jethro and for a whole day he was out judging little petty things he was told divide you are people into different groups mentorship delegation without abdication do we do that or where we are we think we are the only ones who know Omni important

omniscient in our little offices because your Christianity is not just about saying you are Christian no no no on a Sunday where you work can people testify where you work the little things you do can people testify that you are a good person not by you saying so by your words by your dead can people do so you will excuse me but many times now when people tell me they are born again I say what are they hiding and is out of experience what are they about to hide that they start by saying I'm born

again because when you are born again my interaction with you in 10 minutes will show me that you are born again and I've gone into restaurants and I see somebody and I asked them are you born again by conduct not by mere words there is no shortage of Bible thumping individuals running around training they are born again those are not mentors we are here to ReDiscover mentorship in the Bible Moses mentors Joshua Elijah mentors Elisha and if you go through the Bible for every King there was a mentor for David Nason and whenever you are

not mentored then you lose out read second chronicles 26 he says during the whole period that King Uzziah listened to Zechariah he did great things but when he stopped doing so he tried to do that which was resolved for the sons of Levy and when he entered to perform a sacrifice leprosy was on his head and he died a lip we are rediscovering mentorship in the Bible which means that we must read the Bible which means that we must understand the Bible you know sometimes I ask myself at the risk of blasphemy why is it

God appears to use individuals whose ways are not straight or permits things that are not straight in order to straighten man what is the message look at the story of Jacob and how he works for Rachel and then given unto him is a layer not fair but yet God in his Divine wisdom allows it look at Jacob and Esau what is God telling us look at Moses a murderer he's the one that is used look at David a Serial adulterer Syria yet he says it is a man after my heart look at Solomon twice but

confused by women 700 of them and that is not even enough 300 concubines had we today when the judges met good decisions we say they are solomonic what are we being told about mentorship look at Soul turned poor it appears to me that God sometimes picks people from the gutter in order that he may host them Perhaps it is because they have seen the other side and they can give a testimony and therefore they know why people should not go there I remember one time I'm at the airport in Dar es Salaam and I get

into a conversation with the clergyman of the Catholic Roman Catholic Exposition but he was black he was a black African but he was a Roman Catholic but the beauty with Roman Catholics is that they they really know the Bible they read the Bible so we got into this conversation about Paul and he told me something in kiswahili which I think was great and I think remained great in my mind today he told me God does not call the reserving he makes deserving Those whom he calls and I think that is what we should do we

must always in humility recognize that we are only sharing that which we can in the knowledge that if that is Midwife divinely it can create something that is good and that is why I hold the view that this particular congregation that is here and is taking a solemn vow that we are going to ReDiscover biblical mentorship and the word ReDiscover is very important because it means it was once discovered and it was lost where was it lost it was lost in denominations anglicanism Roman Catholicism presbyterianism sdaism that is where all these was lost and until

the day that we rise above all these our Christianity must be subject to scrutiny there was a time when a friend of mine wanted me to go to the robot to join the Roman Catholic church and he gave me a book which I read over a weekend the book was called Home Sweet Rome you can Google it you'll find it home sweet Rome and I asked myself when I become a Catholic now my spiritual orientation will be to Rome which is home and which is sweet what is wrong with my home that it is Home

Sweet Room I told him I'll never join this genome I found myself in one and to me it is just an Avenue there are many Avenues as long as we are preaching about God and we know that there is Christ resurrected I'm not God just about to to to to change my denomination because sometimes our denomination of faithfulness is a lot deeper than our christianness the blood of our ethnicity is thicker than the blood of Christ and I want to say that because we are in Africa Africa is dangerously diverse today and not tell you

which church even when and my Lord his grace will know this the beauty is that I have the podium now I can speak ex-cathedral point the bishop today in many churches ethnicity becomes a fact not Christianity you know you'll hear them saying this is our Bishop not Christian Bishop our ethnic Bishop and when they have been consecrated as Bishop they even hold parties in their tribal home because it is their Bishop if that is the attitude that we have and that is the attitude that we want to use to Mentor you are Dead on Arrival

heaven will not welcome you because you are tribal Bishop and yet fall to the Galatians says there are no Jews no gentiles no man no woman no slave nor free unless your Bible was edited last night and that particular provision removed still the same in all that I read and you read so ladies and gentlemen we are here to rededicate ourselves one day a friend of mine who is the Muslims and I love Muslims because they are more prayerful than us if there was a Muslim in this assembly there would be a segregated prayer placed

there they remember their gods on average five times a day so even the time between sinning and repenting is made very short so they are like David in many ways but we Christians we remember our God once a week many of us except the clergy who I know do a better job than us but many of us Bishop at Bishop that is the truth and with these days of virtual churches even in the morning on Sunday that is when we are most tired in the morning because we'll meet you virtually and I was telling you

about this Muslim friend of mine and he was telling me at one time whether this was true or untrue I do not know but at an airport in one of the Arab countries they had a message you can leave your birth they are safe there are no Christians here that is not meant to be a compliment if you come to Uganda here they'll tell you there are possibly 70 Christian Kenya 90 Christian we are all Christian but we are thieves everywhere Christian thieves rediscovering mentorship from a Biblical perspective thou shall not still is one of

The Commandments but we are things why because we are departed from the biblical prescriptions so we must not have the beaten of God which defines what theft is biblical mentorship The Book of Leviticus say thou shalt not lie with another man now the mother Church you are saying in England is saying civil marriages using the same Bible when the colonialists came they came and gave us laws one of them that the offense of sex against the order of nature now they are telling us that that has changed and very soon in Africa Aid will be

made conditional upon accepting homosexuality if it is not already the case they'll tell you the IMF and the World Bank is not going to disperse money to Uganda or Tanzania or any other country unless you accept that that be decriminalized it is happening already and after that they'll tell us bestiality is fine there is no stopping us was a song that I used to listen to there'll be no stopping us and that is why we must ReDiscover mentorship according to the Bible because that changes not you know on Sunday I was watching the history of

Martin Luther and how he was persecuted by the church when he pinned his 95 Theses at the church in Wittenberg and how he was telling the pope then that you cannot sell purple Bulls people's sins may be forgiven them how he was many people trying to persuade him to change at the deity of arms under the deed of Augsburg but he was prepared to die and how he translated the Bible into his mother tongue and how that changed remember at one time those of you who are a little older the Bible was presented to us

even the word of God as if God could not understand our languages God could not understand luganda until very recently do not understand when you went into a church you'd say Domino's there was a time when God was presented the only language he understood was Latin we now know better my message is that we must have the spirit of people like Martin Luther is he aside than that but it is in for us such as these that we must remind ourselves that we are almost back to those early days when the church is under siege

when there is a new kind of Christianity when there are new christs and new Prophets walking wonders and even you who are the very elected you can't be captured there are many people who may be Distributing the Bible without reading it warn yourselves that you are not in the Bible distribution business but not in the right Bible reading and practicing business let us not confuse those two because we are in difficult days and we as Christians we must now be Christians of Berea in our spirit because it is only when we have the Berea spirit

that we will be Christians for who is a mentor other than an individual who by what and did encourages others to do that which is right because it is right to do right forget the complicated definitions accept my definition that is all it is that you want those who are behind you to be better than you and that there is no greater recompense for you than to produce people who surpass you if you are not in that space you are not a mentor because a mentor warns those who are coming after him of the landmines

which is stepped on which she stepped on that they may never step on them that if his journey was long their journey is short and smoother and much more successful that is who our Mentor is when you read the Bible and you read extra biblical sources like Philo and Josephus and I do when they try to find out whether there was a historical Jesus because there are some who still doubt then they do all the mathematics and say they was such a man a what kind of good deeds can it be said of you that

you are a walker of Good Deeds do your enemies in the acquired moments acknowledge Behold a good man or a good woman these are the questions ladies and gentlemen and let me not be very psych about it let me not talk for too long I'm happy to be in your presence in the knowledge that this is not just another annual Jamboree because there are too many jamborees around the world but this is a meeting of men and women who in their minds and hearts they are decided to go out there and to change minds and

hearts I'm a curious student of religious practices and one of the practices that I want you to read about is about the Benedictine monks when they are being constituted into monks they lie prostrate on the ground and then it is said that they have a conversation a complete conversion of the heart conversation you who are here before you go out there do you have a conversion it does not mean that you will not be without sin you are with sin we are all with sin but is our conviction to the words are the words of

your mouth weathered with the thoughts of your mind and the feelings of your heart so that we can ReDiscover mentorship in Africa particularly those of you who are clergy when we come before you do you speak from your hearts of your or you have prepared summons that you read which do not touch even your own hearts do you touch us do you care whether we come to Sunday or Saturday as a ritual do you care more about our tithing and offerings or you care about our well-being and those of us who are delated we think

the church is the clergy these are the questions that we must ask this is a daily struggle for all of us and I'm saying that if we use the Bible at the point of reference for mentorship then there is hope for this world because the Bible is a gem there are people who said There is a book which I have written reading the Bible from the beginning to the end that is mechanical reading every time you read the Bible keenly you discover something great every time when I read Matthew 24 21 I've read times without

number and sometimes I read it again and I say but this one I did not see when I read Paul's letter to the Galatians at chapter 3 28 I say but this one I did not see there is almost a revelation every time if you read it keenly enough and how it applies to our lives today so Christian brethren go out into the world and I hope that this meeting will be like that of the Pentecost that when you come out of here you shall be touched you know and this is what I want to

conclude with people are fond of this particularly people who are called upon to pray they say and I normally also said oh Lord ignore the messenger but receive the message nonsense if the messenger is bad are known to be a crook the message will not be received so in as much as we want to ignore the messenger we also want to know that the messenger is trying to be good not good so don't come here as the crew can tell us ignore the messenger and receive the message only we want to know you as a

pastor who is struggling to be good but because you are human you make mistakes so as Christians when you come here we can for you that you are struggling Christian and this is what I want us to do because when we do that it will be true that the Bible can actually be the guide for mentorship and if you have it you need no other thing in fact if you don't read any book in the world only read the Bible there is science there is war there is everything there is everything in the Bible if

you want pornography there is pornography in the Bible there is science in the ground there is everything in the Bible thank you very much and God bless [Applause]