“Our grandpas and grannies had a hard life. They had no mosquito nets to sleep under at night. If the mosquitoes got especially bothersome, people would have to get up and build smoky fires under their houses. If they got cold at night, there were no blankets to keep them warm, just wallaby skins.”

The interior of the bush house glowed in the flickering light of a kerosene lamp. I sat cross-legged on the floor listening to the men tell stories of the old life of the Gogodala. I looked up at the shadows dancing on the ceiling and imagined what life must have been like for the ancestral communal dwellers.

Earlier that day, I had held a leadership training session for the new church members at Awaba. “What makes a good Gogodala leader?” I had asked. A discussion ensued about the kanabas, the traditional Gogodala leaders of the past. The man who went to war and brought back the most heads became kanaba of his longhouse.

The leadership style of Moses stood out in stark contrast to the kanabas in the minds of the participants as we read stories from the Bible about Moses’ life. He was humble and cared about his people. Moses’ only similarity with a kanaba was his bravery. But Moses trusted in God, not himself.

Sin has marred the cultures of all people on earth. Satan has twisted people’s views of what a leader ought to be like. We want our Gogodala people to exalt their most important Ancestor and Leader, Jesus, and to replace the flaws in their culture with heaven’s culture.

• Twitter