Four years ago, our church hosted a group of pastors from Malawi, Africa to develop training curriculum for pastors in their country. One of the pastors, Samuel, stayed in the guest room at our home for the duration of his stay, which provided us an opportunity to have many conversations about life and ministry in Malawi.  A common theme shared by Samuel were the challenges he and other pastors faced in attempting to acquire theological books and even the Bible. Some churches are required to share a single Bible with surrounding churches to even have any Bible intake at all; meaning some weeks there is no Bible from which to preach. Hearing all of this my mind couldn’t get over the constant cry of, “we need resources because don’t have the funds or access.”

In the weeks leading up to hosting Samuel in our home, I had been reading the biography of Susannah Spurgeon. It was one of those books which was hard to put down. One area of her life which really stood out to me was her heart and passion to assist the lowest incomed pastors in England with biblically-based resources. She used her own personal, remaining household allowance to raise funds and collect used religious books to supply pastors who were impoverished with theological books, copies of sermons and her husband’s weekly publication, The Sword and Trowel. Having just read about this wonderful ministry of Susannah and now these pastors from Malawi sharing with us their need for resources to expand their knowledge of God’s Word in order to accurately and faithfully teach and preach God’s Word in their churches sparked an idea and a passion.

Several weeks after the pastors returned to Malawi, I poured out my heart to Michael about my passion to find a way to send resources, books, sermons, bibles and whatever else we could to help the pastors from Malawi preach and teach the truth of God’s Word. If Susannah Spurgeon could do this with hard copy books, there was no reason we couldn’t with digital books and e-readers. The capacity of most e-readers offers the ability for pastors to access hundreds or even thousands of books in a cost efficient, timely and logistically feasible manner. This was the beginning of the idea which became Susannah Project.

The idea to provide international pastors and leaders the same resources our American pastors have at their fingertips with just a click of a few buttons on Amazon. Since many countries are oral cultures, we are not just stopping with written books, but audio books and Bibles which can be spoken in a pastor’s native language.

Fast forward three years and we have achieved a major milestone. On July 12, 2018 we handed a good friend from our church, the first digital resource kit with 40 books on a Kindle and a power bank to deliver to Samuel in Malawi. This included a New Testament Bible in Chichewa, the native language in Malawi. This is just the beginning of what we hope to be the sending out of hundreds of kits to pastors across Malawi and ultimately in any country where pastors are unable to access sound theological resources. Thank you to those who have supported us to make the launch of this ministry successful.

Erin Miller
Executive Director, Susannah Project