What is the most crucial gift that pastors can offer to their congregations?

In his message, Conrad Mbewe emphasizes the importance of making the Bible the primary focus for church members through regular expository preaching. This practice helps to cultivate a biblical culture within the church, contrasting the often negative influences of the surrounding secular culture. By faithfully expounding on scriptures, pastors enable their congregations to internalize the teachings and principles found in both the Old and New Testaments, thereby making biblical truth the natural lens through which they view the world.

Mbewe further highlights that this approach serves as a safeguard against the prevailing cultural trends, allowing believers to discern the difference between worldly values and biblical truths. As church members grow in their understanding of scripture, they affirm that Jesus, not worldly authorities, is Lord. This acknowledgment reshapes their perspectives on personal, familial, and societal levels, recognizing the significant impact of the gospel through individual responses to scripture.

2 Timothy 3:16-17 (NKJV): "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."

I would say to any pastor, make the Bible the primary menu for your people, regular expository preaching. Because what that does is it creates a culture in your people in the church that's a biblical culture rather than the culture that is out there in the world. Because even those of us who are in Africa, yes praise the Lord that the family is still being upheld in that sense. There's still a lot of negative stuff that is in our culture that can only be addressed as there is the regular exposition of the scriptures. Is exposition that's faithful to the context of those passages and going through the Bible, so that what the Holy Spirit had put in the minds of Moses and Samuel and all those prophets across the Old Testament, including the New Testament writers, who becomes the very natural air that your people breathe.

It's the way in which you inoculate them against that which has become so popular around them, because they easily sense the difference as they are exposed to the scriptures and then get out there and then get exposed to the world. And they ultimately finally say, it's not Caesar who's Lord, Jesus is Lord, and this is what his word says. So in that sense, you will find that your people will see the importance of the individual under Christ, the importance of the family under Christ, the importance of the church under Christ, and indeed the importance of even the nation, the society under Christ, the impact of the gospel being through individual response to the scriptures.