Brian Larsen – SOC Director/Vice-President (Left), Brother Maxi – Field-Worker (Center), Pastor Edgardo Noceda (Right).
Greetings, may the Peace of the Lord be with you. My name is Pastor Edgardo Silvino Noceda and I went to the School of Christ in Argentina in 2010.
At that time I was a Youth Pastor and worked together with Pastor Edvaldo Ferreyra de Melo. I attended the SOC because my Pastor asked me to go through the training, so that I could be of more help to him in the ministry. At that time our church was going through enormous conflict. Brethren were not getting along with each other or the ministers.
When I went to the School, I didn’t really understand what I was doing there. However, the Word of God says that when we are where God wants us to be, then we are in the right place, at the right time. When we began to study the series, “Unity of the Church,” God touched my heart. In Psalms 133, God, through the psalmist, speaks of how brethren are supposed to dwell together in unity.
God showed me a vision of the church where I was a member. He showed me a woman and her body was torn apart. Legs and arms were ripped off. God said, “I’m not coming for a wife like that. I’m coming to marry a bride, a beautiful one.” So I said to the Lord, “But Lord, who did this?” Then I looked back and I saw all the brethren in our church with rocks in their hands throwing them at our pastor and his family. I said, “Lord, why are they
doing that?” And He said, “You are doing it as well.” When I looked down at my hands, they were dirty from the rocks I was holding. That day, God helped me understand that we were not serving Him the right way. Since then, a change has started in my life.
Those 15 days in the School of Christ, (Monday-Friday for three weeks), prayer in the morning, and prayer in the evening has led me to an intimacy with God where He has taught me to seek Him.
When the School of Christ was over and I went back to my church, the first Sunday that I preached, I shared what God showed and taught me, and my experience in the School of Christ. I was a little afraid that the church would reject what God showed me.
But I started to preach out of Psalms 133 and told them the vision that God showed me and the shape we were in as a church at that time.
When I finished preaching, I wanted to invite the brethren to an altar service. Before I ever gave the invitation, I looked up and everyone that was present, including the pastor and his family, were on their knees before the Lord’s altar. They were asking forgiveness from God, and that He would restore their lives. From that day on, the ways of the church and every form of doing things has changed. Since that day, I shared with them how good it would be if they could go to the School of Christ.
To me it has been something that
altered my life, even until this day. I have been a pastor now for two years. Thank God, everything I share and teach to the church I pastor, is what I learned during my time at the School of Christ.
Pastor Edgardo Silvino Noceda
2010 SOC Graduate