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Pioneering Stories: Democratic Republic of the Congo
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PIONEERING STORIES:
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO
It's really good to be here to share with you a little bit about the history of our Hope Churches in Democratic Republic of Congo. I suppose it all started when Helen and I had a vision: to be a part of the Great Commission, a part of Hope International Ministries movement, where we are planting churches and training leaders. So, we really wanted to be a part of that.
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We were sent to Adelaide by the leadership. So, we left everything, in early 1998 and started a small group in Adelaide. We started with a vision to build a church, train leaders, plant churches, and along the way, about 2004-2005, as we were growing the church, Pastor Helen had a vision to really grow the African group. She started an African life group with maybe one or two Africans, and I remember thinking, this is a bit bizarre, you know, starting with one or two Africans.
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But within six months, the African refugee crisis came, and there was a high influx of Africans coming into Adelaide and quite surprisingly, we had quite a few coming to church, and so it was really wonderful. We began building contacts with people in West Africa, and then we began to know a Congolese family. They led us to a contact in Central Africa in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). We started communicating with Pastor Mapya, around middle 2006 and building relationships with him at the time. He had probably about 25 churches under him. Because we knew this family, and we knew they were good strong Christians, we were be able to build a relationship of trust. Because of the family we already knew, they could vouch for Pastor Mapya’s reliability and trustworthiness.
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So, because of that relationship, I was able to go to Congo for the first time, I think was early 2008 and so the first trip was quite dramatic. I remember driving around to different churches outside the capital city of Bukavu on the Eastern side. It was treacherous. It was raining, it was wet, it was muddy, and some of the roads were very dangerous. It was really dangerous but God protected us and we are still here today. But we were able to build a good relationship with pastor Mapya during that trip. And when we were worshipping God with the Congolese in their Pastor’s training session. I remember sensing a very strong presence of God and the heart of God for these Africans which I didn’t know. I got really nothing to do with this type of people but I could sense God’s heart for them. I am like, “Wow, this is amazing. God really loves these people.” I could feel the vision God has for really all nations and for all peoples. God, I believed, wanted me to continue to work with these people through Pastor Mapya.
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We were able to build a good relationship, we returned the same year. In 2009, we travelled around to more churches, preaching in the churches, encouraging the pastors, so it was a great time of building relationship. It was a really good time of seeing people get touched by the spirit of God. Often when we go to Congo, in Bukavu, we pray for people, 20 people raise their hand for sickness for healing. After prayer we would say “Who’s been healed?” and everyone would raise their hand. I’d ask Pastor Mapya, “Hey, you should check, make sure they understand the question.” And everyone would be healed, and I am like, “Wow, God is really moving in these places. God is really saving souls.” We would do crusades out in the park, out in the open, and we would see quite a number of people coming forward, getting saved, and quite a few people getting healed. It was very encouraging to see God moving and God really loves these people.
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We need more help in Congo. It’s a really needy area. The pastors speak Swahili, they speak French, not much English. But it’s great to go and encourage the people. Our relationship with Pastor Mapya is getting better and better over the years. And he is planting churches in Rwanda, in Bukavu, Uganda, and in Burundi as well. He’s increased his number of churches from 25 to probably around 80 a few years ago. We began doing some pastor’s training, which we obtained from wiki life centre, some discreet package to train the pastors to plant small churches in a more rapid fashion.
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We picked up that model and we have been implementing that, training them for last two or three years. The church has been planting more and more quickly. So that’s been really encouraging. We have over more than 100 churches early last year.
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We’ve had a few opportunities open up in Kenya in the east coast. From Central Africa, moving out to the east. We’ve got a church plant down in Tanzania, we’ve got a number of rural churches in Kenya and a large church in Nairobi as well and an extra church plant in Kampala in Uganda. Things are really moving and we are encouraged that God is doing good things and we believe, that the Great Commission, reaching out to souls, planting churches is achievable. We do our part, we do our best for God, we pray, we fast, we rebuke the devil, we heal the sick, we train the pastors and we can see that God plants more and more churches through good training and trustworthy people who build good relationships.
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We would love you to get involved. We would love you to be a part and to pray for us, donate towards the missions work, to the needy pastors, many of them don’t even have mobile phones, most of the churches they don’t have Bibles. It’s a very needy area, very poor region, but it’s rich in terms of heart for God, and for salvation of souls. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your time and we pray that God would bless you and God will strengthen you and let us have a vision together to touch the world for Jesus Christ. Amen.
By Ps Brendan Kirby, Hope Adelaide
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