How One Nigerian Pastor Found Hope in the Pages of a Book

Shepherding the Heart

“What would it look like to help Nigerian pastors transform from being professional clerics in their churches to being effective shepherds of the hearts of God’s people?” Rick Cordell mulled over this question day after day as the COVID-19 pandemic raged and life was on hold. He started doing volunteer ministry in Nigeria in 2015 by visiting prisons, serving as an occasional lecturer at a local seminary, and training Nigerian evangelists and pastors for effective ministry. But the arrival of the pandemic signaled a change of direction for Rick’s primary ministry efforts. While required to remain in the U.S. due to COVID travel restrictions, he planned for a new training group with the aim of teaching pastors to shepherd the hearts of God’s people as reflected in Ezekiel 34.

He wasn’t sure exactly where these ideas would lead, but he could no longer ignore the stirring in his heart. “And so I just started gathering materials—journal articles, books—whatever I could,” Rick reflects. Though some Nigerian pastors have received a level of training through a seminary or Bible school, what they’re taught in the classroom only goes so far in practically training the hearts of shepherds to care for the hearts of their people. During visits over several years to numerous churches, Rick witnessed that though church gatherings took place, the pastor often stood aloof to the true needs of his people and how to respond.

The books and other print materials he gathered would serve as a guide for conversations among the pastors he hoped to train. But he needed to find high-quality theological resources to bring with him on frequent trips to Nigeria.

Through Crossway’s Global Ministry efforts, Rick has carried numerous theological resources to pastors, elders, and church leaders throughout northeastern Nigeria. He launched his ministry, ShepherdsTraining, in the Nigerian cities of Abuja and Jos to invest in men and women for strategic training of pastors and church leaders.

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Investing in Ongoing Mentorship

Since the beginning, Rick has primarily aimed his training at pastors. He believes that once pastors are trained and mentored through relationships and reading theological books, they can then return to their communities to teach others what they’ve learned, both in their churches (especially elders and mature disciples) and with pastors of nearby churches. And in order to more strategically invest in pastors, he’s adopted a small group mentoring model.

Each person in the program has a mentor, and each of the participants are required to both shepherd a younger disciple through a Bible reading plan, and also to study various aspects of pastoral theology for five hours per week. These books focus on healthy practices of fruitful discipleship, in addition to servant leadership in the style of Jesus and his apostles, based on Ezekiel 34. We want to get them used to the idea that this is an ongoing mentoring ministry that also prepares them to participate as mentors.

What I’ve tried to do from the beginning is to build learning communities where a group is started and for two or three years they work through a set of books and conversations about those books and the Scripture passages they’re assigned. My prayer is that even after the group concludes, they’re still in contact with each other five, or ten, or maybe even fifteen years down the road. The goal is to leave behind well-trained leaders of these learning and accountability groups.

Rick knows that if he were simply to hand out books and encourage the pastors to read them, nothing would come of it. They may sit on the shelves for years without being opened and benefitting the pastors. Rick explains that their strategy is to “teach them to highlight, underline, and then stop at the end of each chapter to make a list of things that God’s Spirit wants to change either in their attitudes or actions. We want them to turn each book into a sort of prayer journal and use it as a practical tool for change. Though they’ll likely read fewer books over time, they’ll go deeper and it’ll make a much bigger difference.”

For one pastor, reading and digging into one of these books made a lasting difference in his life during an especially challenging time.

Hope in the Midst of Crisis

Nigerian pastor Gideon Yahaya recently shared his testimony of how God’s Grace in Your Suffering by David Powlison met him in a season of suffering in his own life.

Early last year, our mentor Rick gave me the gift of the book God’s Grace in Your Suffering by David Powlison as part of the study materials for our training. Shortly after receiving this book I married my wife, Favour. In the earliest days of our marriage, we struggled to settle down due to some unmet payments from the wedding. This led to us not being able to pay our house rent and for other basic needs. And just a short time later, my wife got pregnant, requiring us to go to the hospital for routine appointments. But due to financial constraints, we couldn’t afford these appointments.

In the midst of this crisis, the book God’s Grace in Your Suffering became the still but strong voice God used to help us in the face of these really hard circumstances. The author mentions in page 15 of the book that “God’s hand is intimately mixed up in our troubles,” and Powlison went on to affirm that in the midst of suffering, God develops a man into steadiness and depth of faith.

Additionally, this book gave me confidence that God is always with me, and he’s in the midst of every life experience. Suffering reorients our hearts toward eternity, and Christ’s suffering on the cross is central to how we understand our own pain. . . . And by his grace, God did come through for us financially as a family, meaning that we could afford to register for prenatal care and pay for house rent and those other basic needs.

God used the words of this Crossway resource to provide hope and confidence in an otherwise grim situation. The Lord continues to work on Gideon’s heart today, alongside the hearts of many other pastors receiving training and the opportunity to read theologically sound books. God sees and knows the hearts of his people, and through ShepherdsTraining there are many pastors seeing this too.

Through the support of donors to Crossway, books and ESV Bibles are provided around the world to those in need. This means church leaders like Gideon receive resources that help them care for and shepherd God’s people!

Pray for the Lord to place a hedge of protection from spiritual and physical attacks around the ShepherdsTraining team as they seek to further the Kingdom through mentoring relationships.

Pray for theological resources to impact the lives of many like Gideon and his wife, which then in turn will impact whole church communities.