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This year we are celebrating 20 years of CEM’s work in East Africa (Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Kenya, S. Sudan and DR Congo). In this time we think it’s probable that around 1 million people in these countries have used Christianity Explored as a tool to look at Jesus in Mark's gospel. If you are asking, how did that happen? Join the club. Like all gospel growth it is the story of God at work.
Like all gospel growth it is the story of God at work.
This is Jim McAnlis. He presents with typical Ulster warmth and charm, (a spell under which not a few of us have fallen.) But this smiling man's story could be lethal to your midlife plans for an easy early retirement. Jim was an executive in the agri-chemical industry when, out of the blue, Kiwoko hospital identified him as someone with the skills to project manage the hospital's development in rural Uganda. This was not the plan. Neither Jim nor Margaret had the faintest inclination to do anything like that. But because they belonged to a church which took gospel mission seriously, and therefore encouraged them, and because they had an overwhelming sense of the Lord's hand on the matter, they retired early and moved from beautiful Bangor to rural Uganda.
Jim would tell you that with the exception of trusting Christ, and marrying Marge, this was the 3rd best thing he ever did. Folks like Jim and Margaret remind us not to be too restrictive in our idea of whom the Lord may call to serve in another culture.
If you were planning a means of introducing a million people to CEM materials in E. Africa, you probably wouldn't be praying for openings in rural Luweero. It is far from everywhere. And having arrived in Luweero town, travellers to Kiwoko hospital then have to endure a 7 mile drive down a road whose surface feels like the world's longest sheet of corrugated iron. But it's worth the jostling to see Kiwoko.
It is set in an area that suffered some of the most appalling horrors of the guerrilla war between Yoweri Museveni and the government of Milton Obote. Hundreds of thousands died in the Luweero Triangle between 1981-86. Kiwoko Hospital was established not long after the war, and that's where Jim went in 2003 and set about getting to know people in the local community.
One such relationship has proved pivotal in the development of CEM in E. Africa. This is Shadrach Lukwago. He was the hospital pharmacist, and leader of the hospital mission team who, at the end of a busy week's work, would head off into the bush for a weekend of evangelism. Jim used to join the team and go for these weekend tours, sleeping rough, eating on the go, and reaching villages with the good news of Jesus.
Jim and Shadrach developed a strong relationship of mutual respect and appreciation. And on return to Kiwoko from a trip home in 2007 Jim handed Shadrach a copy of the 2nd edition of CE - the blue one - with the caution that Jim thought red buses on Oxford Street probably weren't going to cut it in Kiwoko. But after 3 weeks Shadrach came back to Jim and expressed his view that this was exactly what Uganda needed as a tool for evangelism and discipleship, something that would introduce people to the Jesus of the Bible, not the Jesus of the enthusiastic preacher's imagination!
At this point CEM knew nothing of what was happening there. But this is how God works, through His people, by His Word. It was CEM board member, John McDowell, who is also a fellow elder with Jim in Hamilton Road Presbyterian Church, Bangor, who first put the CE course in Jim's hand, which he took to Shadrach in 2006, and then in 2008 brought Jim over to London to update us and begin to think about how we could support the introduction of CE to E. Africa. The following January Jim and John, Stephen Sizer and I arrived in Kiwoko.
In their first ever Leadership Training Conference where we launched CE, we gave about a thousand church leaders and members a general overview of Mark's gospel and the course, and provided more detailed training for 50 key leaders who had been identified by Shadrach. Then a week later, the cream of the 50 helped us train others further north in Massinde, at the next conference. And that became the pattern. We normally went to a main location for at least one 14-day trip for 3 consecutive years.
Soon we had reached out to many regions within central Uganda, and Kampala itself, and branched out to Carlile College, Nairobi, Kenya, then clusters of churches in Burundi and Rwanda who came on to our radar through Jim's involvement with Fields of Life who run primary and secondary schools throughout E. Africa and the majority of them offer CY/Soul to the pupils. Shadrach translated the CE/CY material into Luganda, Swahili, Kirundi and several tribal languages.
And, having developed the Kiwoko Bible Institute as a kind of Cornhill Training Course, he embedded CE into the training of hundreds of gospel workers who have taken it wherever they have gone. Last year Ian came with us, and here he is with Jim and John McDowell's brother, Brian (on the left) - Brian has given his time at least once a year for the last 7 years to help train folks in CE across these countries.
We look back in amazement at how the Lord has brought us the key people and the necessary funding from individuals, church families, mission organisations and Bible Societies, all of whom wanted to see the work of the gospel strengthened in E. Africa.
We thank God for the passion, humility and consistency of these people. Psalm 115 begins where I close this report, Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!
Not to us, O LORD, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! - Psalm 115:1 [ESV]
We marvel at what the Lord has done and is doing, for the solid foundation upon which we may continue to build.
Written by Craig Dyer.
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