Cambodia 2006, Part 1

Last month I spent two weeks in Cambodia with Mark Mitchell, Teaching Pastor of Central Peninsula Church, and Paul Nuth, Cambodian native, pastor, and missionary. We were there to put on a preaching conference for a group of 50 Cambodian pastors.

In the coming days I will blog in more detail about the trip. For now, let me share three personal highlights from the trip.

Highlight #1: Hanging with Mark Mitchell. Mark Mitchell is a great man. I’m honored to be taken under his wing at CPC. Having begun my new role at CPC a mere two weeks before this Cambodia trip, it was a great joy to immediately have a time of extended ministry, adventure, and bonding with Mark. He and I had many laughs, much rich conversation, and a good deal of memorable ministry moments together. Mark is a great model of a Christian man who cares about intentionally and humbly taking on a young buck like me and offering wise and godly mentoring.

Highlight #2: Seeing the Success of the Preaching Conference.
The preaching conference we put on focused on teaching the Cambodian pastors how to do expository preaching. In preparation for the conference, Mark and Paul had a team of guys work on translating Haddon Robinson’s book, Biblical Preaching, into Khmer (the Cambodian language). With these books nearby, these Cambodian men devoured the material that Mark taught them. Mark did an excellent job of teaching these men the “what” and “why” of expository preaching and of showing them the steps involved in crafting a solid expository sermon. I ended up gaining a great deal from the conference myself. From listening to Mark teach I ended up making some significant adjustments to my own sermon preparation method.

Highlight #3: Preaching in Cambodia. The final highlight was preaching to these Cambodian men in our hot and humid conference room. I had the honor of preaching twice during the conference, offering the men an example of what expository preaching looks like. I had a blast doing this. I hadn’t preached through a translator since I preached my first sermon in Mexico when I was 16 years old (that sermon was a terrible sermon–a very poor example of expository preaching. It’s good to have grown as a preacher since those 16 year-old days).

In addition to preaching in Cambodia, I also enjoyed teaching the men how I went about crafting my two sermons (ie. the movement from text, to outline, to sermon). I found that through doing a bit of teaching about preaching I ended up learning a good deal more about preaching.

That’s all for now…