Education is revered in most countries and Iran is no exception. This can be a problem for the church since it is wrong to assume that someone who is educated can preach. Preaching is a skill to be learned like any other. To avoid this problem it is important that training programs put a strong emphasis both on the importance of spirituality and anointing for preaching and homiletics, the skill of preparing and delivering sermons. Elam Ministries certainly has that emphasis in its training courses. Every morning a student must deliver a twenty minute sermon - and then be assessed by both his classmates and his teacher. The trainee preachers must make sure they build a bridge to their listeners with a good introduction; there must be a clear proposition, strong support from the Bible, good illustrations, and practical application. As the students become church planters, these classes have a very positive impact: they prepare church planters to structure sermons new believers can easily relate to. Pray for •Homiletic teachers •Homiletics taught by Elam and other agencies to have far reaching impact •Anointed and skilful preachers