Global Christian Book Fund (GCBF) exists for one purpose: distributing books for international Christian leaders and theological schools, and Bibles for those without access to them.
At the Hall of Tyrannus, the training school of our partner Reaching Africa’s Unreached in Uganda, pastors from the Madi and Aringa tribes gather for a five-day hermeneutics course built around 40 Questions about Interpreting the Bible by New Testament Professor Robert L. Plummer of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. This essential resource addresses the questions every serious student of Scripture eventually asks: whether the biblical manuscripts were transmitted accurately, why interpreters disagree, how to read the Psalms, and how to use the Bible faithfully in daily life.
Professor Plummer has spent more than 20 years tackling these questions with his seminary students. Now through GCBF, his answers are reaching pastors who would never have access to this training, or be able to afford it, on their own.
The training at the Hall of Tyrannus is not only for Ugandans. Alongside Madi and Aringa tribe members, pastors from South Sudan and the Republic of Sudan (North), representing many different tribes living in the nearby refugee camps, study together in the same room. 40 Questions about Interpreting the Bible is placed in the hands of everyone who visits Reaching Africa’s Unreached, along with other helpful titles provided by GCBF.
Reaching Africa’s Unreached, led by Jacob Lee, trains and equips church leaders across this region of Uganda and the surrounding camps. GCBF supplies the theological resources that put books directly into the hands of pastors who carry them home to congregations most ministries never reach.
Many of the pastors trained in this course carry the material further still, into South Sudan to church leaders in the Nuba Mountains, Blue Nile, and Darfur, and into training sessions held in the nearby Bidi Bidi refugee resettlement camp. Right now, two groups of Sudanese church leaders in Bidi Bidi Zones One and Two are working through the book together, studying how to correctly interpret God’s Word in the middle of displacement and uncertainty.
For three years, that work in the camps has been led by Joshua Abraham, a Darfurian co-labourer who faithfully returns to teach what he has learned to others who have lost so much. GCBF has supplied approximately 1,000 copies of this core leadership resource to support the effort. It is one of the books Reaching Africa’s Unreached returns to again and again, because sound interpretation is the foundation everything else in pastoral ministry is built on.
None of this happens without partner-donors like you who believe that a pastor in a refugee camp deserves the same quality theological training as a seminary student anywhere else. Every book placed in Joshua’s hands in Bidi Bidi is a resource someone donated to make this possible. May the Lord bless the study of His Word in Zones One and Two, and bless the donors and co-laborers who make it available.
Help equip the global church
Stories like this one are made possible by donors who believe Church leaders and believers everywhere deserve access to sound theological resources. Consider partnering with Global Christian Book Fund to help put books and Bibles into the hands of those who need them most.