Veritas College Uganda - Bible training enhanced by the beauty of fellowship

On one Saturday evening, the office made a trip to a growing Namanve industrial business park on the outskirts of Kampala City along the Jinja Road highway. Namanve is home to a community church called St John’s Kazinga Church of Uganda. The participants shared and related with each other as a family with a lot of energy and excitement. The eight participants who completed module one in June 2017 immediately embarked on the pursuit of module two, of our ‘Equipping to Serve’ bible interpretation training.

Despite the fact that the class is made up of participants who are all married with families, they have incorporated the training in their weekend agenda, to continuously be equipped with skills and principals that make them better and effective servants to the Kazinga community.

The Impact...

My name is Samson Kagenyi and I fellowship with St. John’s Kazinga Church of Uganda. I learnt about the Veritas College training during the envisioning by a team from the Veritas office and I took responsibility of registering the members who expressed interest in the training. In this church, which is a Sub-Parish, I am the Chairman for the Development Committee and Assistant Chairperson of the choir, a member of the Bweyogerere Parish Committee and a Councilor with the Luzira Archdeaconry Council. I own a Clearing and Forwarding Company and I am a family man with six children. My wife and I have been together since 1977 and wedded in this Church in 2009.
 
Veritas training in Module one has enlarged my understanding on how to read the Bible. For instance the steps of exegesis have enlightened me better, to go deeper in knowing the word of God, which I never used to do before. My favorite lesson was ‘How to preach’. It has enlightened me further on how to prepare a sermon and how to present it to an audience. I also enjoyed the time when each of us had to prepare and preached to fellow participants. I am taking part in the Veritas College 'Equipping to Serve' modules in preparation for my retirement because I want to join full time ministry of preaching the word of God in the village.
 
Having benefited from doing the Veritas training, I am now encouraging the other members of our church to start doing the training and some of them actually want us to teach them what we are learning once we complete.

My favorite part of the training was learning the steps of exegesis. Since we are currently doing module two, I love the unity and bonding we continued enjoy as a class, with the facilitators inclusive. while still in module one, whenever we did not understand a concept, we would request the facilitators to repeat and they willingly took us through that concept again until we understood it. Even if one of us still did not get it, we would repeat for his/her sake. This helped us to further our understanding. As a leader of the Men’s Fellowship, the training has equipped me to ensure the study is stirred in the right direction and the truth is brought to light.

I recommend that the lesson on the steps of exegesis be repeated about three times by the facilitators so that skill is mastered.