After resigning amicably from his post as senior pastor of the largest Cameroon Baptist Convention (CBC) church in Bamenda, Shadrach Vegah moved to Vermont in the summer of 2008 to start the NETS Residency Program and also to finish his M.Div. from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Gladys and the children hope to receive visas and join him soon. By 2010 we plan to send the Vegahs back to Cameroon to plant a second NETS church at Mile 6 in Bamenda. This move is enthusiastically endorsed by the CBC leadership. Shadrach will then team with NETS church planter Sam Jato, who has already planted a church in Bamenda, to form the basis for the NETS-Africa training center. Through these sister churches and their pastors, NETS-Africa will offer selected seminary graduates (primarily from the Cameroon Baptist Theological Seminary located in Ndu) a local two-year church-planting mentorship, as well as ongoing support once they enter the field.

We caught up with Shadrach to get his point of view on these exciting events, just on the horizon.

Why are you excited about being mentored? The reason I’m excited about studying at NETS is because I’m very much interested in and very excited about church planting and they are good partners to mentor me in church planting because that is where I find God calling me at this point in ministry. Studying at NETS will really prepare me to do it the right way. I believe my skills in planting churches will be polished and refined so that we can plant gospel-driven churches that will bring glory to God’s name.

What are some of the things you would like NETS to help you with in church planting? We will be looking forward to NETS helping us in Bible interpretation, hermeneutics, and also in Christian family living, and church administration. Managing people is not easy. It’s easier to manage things than people. I would like to study and learn some of the dynamics involved with these things and to know how to apply them in our context in Cameroon.

What are you hoping to accomplish when you come back to Cameroon to plant a church? First thing, we would like to have a church where the gospel is preached, a gospel-driven church, because we believe it is the gospel that brings salvation. Next, we want a church that will really show Christ’s love because a church that is truly fellowshipping in the love of Christ will cause people to come. Next, we want a church that will plant churches that are really Christ-honoring, and respect the pastor as the honored shepherd because, at most of the churches we have in the CBC, many of the people see the pastor as a carpet to walk over. They don’t respect him and so we want a church where the pastor is really the overseer that leads and guides the church, walking with the church to accomplish God’s purpose for the church.

What do you need in order to come to the U.S.? Being at NETS in Vermont will be another culture for us, so we’ll need to learn how to adapt to that culture. Also, while in NETS we also see that it will be very, very expensive to keep a family like us (we have 4) so we’re just trusting God that God will use people to join the NETS vision to be able to train ministers who go out and plant churches to the glory of God. So we are counting on people to pray for the NETS vision. And if God is also leading you to give to support this vision, we’ll be happy. That way ministers of the gospel will be trained to plant churches that are about the gospel of Jesus Christ. So we want to thank you for deciding to pray & to support NETS in whatever way God is leading you to so that ministers can be trained for planting gospel-driven churches.

How have you been encouraged with the work that Sam Jato is doing since he’s come back from NETS & planted Redeemer Baptist Church? In many different ways. We were classmates in seminary. Since he came back from NETS, I’ve been very encouraged by his preaching of the gospel, very consistent, and they spend a lot of time digging into and exposing the word of God. Also the way the church started. The structure was there and we have 350-400 people attending church each Sunday, listening to the gospel. And people are giving their life to Christ, that is very encouraging. And when I look at him, I really admire the training he was given at NETS, and I want to also benefit and be able to perform at this level after attending NETS.

What would NETS-Africa look like? Why is it needed? It’s very important to have NETS-Africa because in most of our seminaries, we train pastors to pastor already planted churches. But with the NETS program, we’re looking for pastors who are willing to do church planting to bring a new paradigm – not for the pastor to wait for a call from a planted church but for him to go plant a church and grow it – to go out to areas where there are not churches, so the gospel of Jesus Christ can be promulgated in those areas and people can some to salvation through that gospel.

Distinguishing true faith from false faith is very important because in the context where we live, there are many different world religions coming in, so people want to pay allegiance to all kinds of religions. Again, the preaching of the gospel will help distinguish true faith from false faith. And as we train gospel-driven church planting pastors, it will show the difference between the gospel and all the other false religions, and show the true way to salvation through Jesus Christ.

Gladys, what do you look forward to in being mentored by Sue Pastor and the other elders’ wives & women in the church in Vermont? At NETS, they train men to show the kind of love to their families that Christ showed to the church, and it is something that is lacking in our culture. When we go out to preach the message of salvation to people they don’t feel it because the love is not there. But when we go out with that kind of love & train the people to love the way Christ did, I think it will have a great impact in our churches. And I would love to be trained how to bring up children in the fear of God and also how to work with women in order to use them as instruments even in their neighborhood.