‘I promote the Bible
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| Pastor Chrisestom Nsereko, Ministerial Director of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, says any minister who does not promote the Bible Society 'is a backslider'! Kampala, Uganda. Photo: UBS/Larry Jerden (UGA02DJ-153) |
“I promote the Bible because it changed me,” he declares. “It saved me – I could have been a drunk but it saved me from that and from many other vices. Because of it, I am free.”
Raised a Roman Catholic in a family with a Muslim heritage, Mr Nsereko became an Adventist in senior school when he was introduced to the Bible.
Such a big book!
“There was an Adventist who taught me the Bible,” he recalls. “He started teaching me from a pamphlet which contained Scripture and later showed me a whole Bible. I had no idea that it would be such a big book!”
That was 45 years ago and Mr Nsereko has since used the Bible to help other people change their lives. One of these was Bible Society General Secretary the Rev Henry Kalule.
“The Bible Society General Secretary was once my student when I was chaplain at Macerery University,” Mr Nsereko explains. “He was a Muslim, but through our Bible study and learning the truth of the Bible, he became a Christian. I motivated his interest in God’s Word.”
Mr Nsereko still reaches out to students
with the Bible.
“When they come to the end of the semester and are facing their
examinations, many students want to consult a witch doctor,” he
says. “So I invite them to come to my house, I pray for them, and
I open the Bible. They are often very ready to listen.”
Vibrant
Mr Nsereko also has a vibrant prison ministry. He tells the story of a minister of a former Ugandan government who was imprisoned and became a Christian through reading the Bible.
“He is out of prison now and has left the country,” he explains. “The Bible helped him to understand and change his own life.”
Mr Nsereko also shared God’s Word with a former professor who was in prison.
Lecturer
“I gave him a copy of the Bible and we studied it together. He accepted Jesus and is out of prison and is soon to start work as a university lecturer.”
In his prison ministry, as well as in his ministry at large, Mr Nsereko, like other church leaders, has come face to face with a contradiction about Ugandan society – that while more than 80 per cent of the population claim to be Christian, crime and corruption are rife. He feels that a lack of emphasis on the Bible is at the heart of the problem.
“This should be a Christian country, because many more martyrs died for their faith here than any other country in Africa,” he declares. “But although there are many churches around not many people are reading their Bibles. If they did, things would be different.
“Some churches encourage their people to listen to the preaching, but they don’t encourage them to read their Bibles. So some pastors say things that are not in the Bible and the people trust them so they don’t check it for themselves.”
Solution
The veteran minister sees the Bible Society as being part of the solution to the problem, especially because it brings all of the churches together around the Scriptures.
“This new kind of ecumenism has
been exciting,” he exclaims. “We enjoy coming here [to the
Bible Society], praying together, distributing Bibles together, and
sharing our problems. The Bible Society is made up of many people from
different confessions who are centred on the Bible.”
Challenges remain, however, in supplying Bibles to a largely poor, rural
population.
“In the city of Kampala, things appear better off but if you go out into the bush, people are still living in very poor thatched houses,” says Mr Nsereko. “Sometimes we don’t ask the people there to buy Bibles, because they do not have the money. So we can only give them away.”
He insists, however, that there is great hunger for God’s Word that needs to be met.
“Recently I was planning to drive around the country, distributing Bibles to hospitals and prisons to people who wanted them,” he explains. “I was only able to get 50 Bibles but I distributed all of these at the very first prison I visited! When I went back to that prison, people told me they were studying the Scriptures and that more were needed.”(WR 375/17 - 3.03)
