Same Task, Different Context
Training Leaders in Uganda
African Christianity is highly significant; significant for Africa and significant for the world. “At independence it was commonly thought that Christianity in Africa would become ever less significant, because it was associated so closely with colonialism, and depended so strongly on its school systems, which would be taken over by the new African governments. This prediction has proved completely false (Paul Gifford, 1998).”
The gospel has taken root in African soil in a remarkable way and nothing seems able to shift it. While in the West declining churches and an increasingly resistant culture is the general trend, here growth and a continuing openness to the gospel is the pattern. African Christianity and Christianity in the non-Western world generally have led to a tremendous shift in Christianity’s centre of gravity. This shift may well mean that “the Christianity typical of the twenty-first century will be shaped by the events and processes that take place in the southern continents (Andrew Walls).” The derogatory terms the West uses when talking about Africa, such as ‘Third World’ and ‘developing’, masks the spiritual wealth of the continent. It is good to be serving Christ here and exciting to be involved in a church that has such an important contribution to make to global Christianity. But growth has its problems and the church here as everywhere is a mixed phenomenon. When this is coupled with ubiquitous poverty it presents particular challenges for ministry.
Veritas College (www.veritascollege.com) works in leadership development in partnership with the churches in a number of countries world-wide. Its radically church based form of training helps individuals develop skills for interpreting the Bible for themselves; apply its message to life and ministry; and train others to do the same. Here in Uganda my work focuses on the Church of Uganda (Anglican), a denomination that is similar superficially to the Church of England but which has some real differences. For example, a typical vicar will have between 6 and 20 village churches under his care (though I have met one with 40). He may or may not have had formal training; and if he has, that training may or may not have been adequate for the work he has to do. His church leaders have usually had little or no training in the essentials of handling and teaching the Bible. While these churches will often put us to shame in the richness of their faith and love, they are radically under-resourced in terms of training and support. How can a denomination stretched to its limits begin to turn this situation around?
Veritas aims to make a contribution. For me this means training trainers for different areas and helping them to design, implement and resource training strategies. These projects vary. For example take a vicar called Yonasani. His goals were, after some training: first, to build a study so that he could give himself to prayer and reading (he kept his few books in a plastic bag on the family sofa in the room where whole family and its chickens et al come and go); and second, to train 6 of his 13 church leaders. Stephen, on the other hand, is keen to tackle training in his area where only 94 out of 600 lay preachers have received any level of training. At the same time he is translating materials into the vernacular for use at the grass roots. Someone called James wants to see church leaders in 300 rural churches helped in some basic ways – the starting point is to work in depth with him and three others he has picked for the task of training the next level of trainers in the structure he has developed.
What the greatest encouragement in all this? At a fundamental level, it is seeing the sufficiency of Scripture and the power of the Spirit in a fresh way. When faced with limited resources and the need to develop sustainable patterns of training one is forced to view essential resources in a new light. In contrast to the glut of commentaries we have access to in the UK, most pastors have few if any books. What they do have, however, is Scripture and it is challenging to ask if the Bible can stand alone as its own bank of interpretative resources. Do we really believe in what we could call the hermeneutical sufficiency of Scripture or are we stumped without our usual range of guides? It is exciting to put oneself in the shoes of most Ugandan pastors and to see how Scripture sheds light on Scripture. And these people pray. While we in the West often struggle with prayer these believers naturally and powerfully turn to the Lord and, when there is little else to depend on, rely on the power of the Spirit. If we in the West are to be effective in our task in our context and are to avoid squandering the privileges of our Christian heritage, perhaps we could do little better than to look south with much humility and to learn from our brothers and sisters in Africa.
Jem and Lucy Hovil live and work in Kampala for Veritas College and are associated with Crosslinks, UK. hovils@spacenetuganda.com. As well as being a busy mother of two Lucy also works part-time in research and advocacy for refugees.