Come, Let Us Rebuild: Rebuilding the People - Dr. David Ogbueli
We cannot rebuild a nation without first rebuilding its people. This was the burden Dr. David Ogbueli carried into the Pastors and Ministry Leaders Forum, as he challenged the Church to look beyond broken systems and structures and begin with the most important building project of all: the human being.
Africa has so much potential, so much God-given wealth and possibility, yet the key to national transformation is individual transformation. When God wanted to rebuild creation, He created man in His image and entrusted him with the responsibility of taking raw materials and turning them into finished products. In the same way, rebuilding begins with developing people who have the capacity, character and responsibility to transform whatever has been placed in their hands.
Raw material, finished product
The argument, in marker pen
He did not only say it. He drew it - a pyramid, then development and process, then raw material becoming finished product - working through the argument on a board at the front of the tent while the room copied it down.
Dr. Ogbueli reminded us that the Church's greatest assignment is not simply to gather people, but to build men and women who can be deployed as gifts to society. Human capital development must therefore become a priority, because buildings, economies and systems cannot transform themselves. People do.
Drawing from Genesis 1 and 2, he showed that creation involved both God's work of creation and man's responsibility to cultivate what God had made. Things grow; they do not simply appear because we spoke. Dominion is ultimately expressed through responsibility and productivity.
Buildings, economies and systems cannot transform themselves. People do.
Dr. David Ogbueli
Out of Egypt, and then what
He then brought a necessary balance to our understanding of the Gospel. There is the Gospel of salvation, which brings us out of Egypt, and the Gospel of the Kingdom, which matures us and teaches us how to build in the Promised Land.
Africa, he said, has stayed too long in the grace period. We have learned how to bring people out of Egypt, but we must now learn how to raise mature people who can build what lies ahead. Grace is beautiful, but grace was never a licence for irresponsibility. After salvation comes responsibility. We must preach grace, but we must also teach people to work, build, create, produce and take ownership of what God has entrusted to them.
Perhaps the greatest call of the sermon was therefore not simply to pray for Africa, but to become the kind of people Africa needs. If we rebuild men, we rebuild families. If we rebuild families, we rebuild communities. And if we rebuild communities, we can rebuild nations.
Outside the tent afterwards, a group of young artists stood with canvases they had painted themselves and a sign they had lettered by hand. Raw material, finished product - the morning's argument, carried out into the daylight by the people it was about.
The cry of Nehemiah becomes our cry today: “Come, let us rebuild.” Not someday. Not when someone else comes. Now - and it begins with us.