June 11, 2010 5:15AM

(Jeremiah)

This morning was the first time that I felt coherent enough to get up early and work on my class prep. I got a fair bit of sleep last night (as did the girls- thankfully) and woke up again at 4am. This morning however, my mind was racing with thoughts for class, and because we begin on Monday, I was anxious to get working on the notes and material for the students. Am I really teaching a class at ETC...? I have to pinch myself to be sure that I am not dreaming!

So here I sit, enjoying a 5am tea time in the down country kitchen, my heart racing with excitement at the opportunity to study the Word of God with a class of Ethiopian students. My own passion to serve the Church here in Ethiopia has been fueled by a statistic I learned yesterday afternoon in my meeting with ETC’s president, Frew Tamrat. In order to help us understand the need for theologically trained pastors in Ethiopia, he gave a stunning statistic: if all the graduates of all the theological schools in Ethiopia were to take up the pastorate, each graduate would have to shepherd 10 churches of 600 people.

6000 members in 10 churches. While Rick Warren or Bill Hybels would see this as normative, in Ethiopia, it is unthinkable. The technology and transportation issues alone would make it impossible for one Ethiopian pastor to shepherd that many people.

It was a sobering thing- and made me realize that teaching a class on Bible doctrine for a summer has great ramifications for the future of the Ethiopian church- not because of what I am teaching, but because of who I am teaching. These students literally are the future leaders of Christ’s church in Ethiopia, not only because they are exceptional people, but because they are among a few whom God has given the desire and the means to be trained toward that end.