At our services on Sunday 19th October Lee will report on his visit to Rwanda for the Anglican Church of Rwanda's Centenary celebration.

“The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad!” Ps 126.3

Dear Friends,

It was a great joy and privilege to be invited to the 100th anniversary centenary celebration of the Anglican Church of Rwanda. A party from parishes across Lyndhurst Deanery travelled out to visit their respective link dioceses, before heading to Gahini Cathedral for the centenary celebration.

St Thomas Church formed a link with the Karongi Missional Diocese, a newly established diocese led by Bishop Jean-Pierre, who some of you have met during his stays here in Lymington. As a missional diocese, their role is to plant new churches in an area with little pastoral coverage. Bishop Jean-Pierre invited Bishop Rhiannon, her husband Philip, and myself to come to Karongi and see the churches being built.

Karongi is situated in the west of Rwanda upon the shore of Lake Kivu. It’s verdant, mountainous, and beautiful to behold. The population is largely rural and dependent on agriculture. The town and region are also home to a developing eco-tourism industry, creating employment and helping to diversify the local economy.

Karongi Diocese had five churches at the time of our visit, with land being acquired for further development. Just over a year ago, the government enacted a revised building code that required churches to enhance their facilities and improve vehicular access. This resulted in almost 80% of churches in Rwanda closing until they could complete their works and comply with the revised building code. In Karongi Diocese, only one of their five churches was able to open for worship; the others, including St Peter’s Cathedral, remained subject to remedial works.

This has proved to be a very significant challenge, to which the church has responded with great resolve and faithfulness. It has made an undeniable impact on their financial resources due to church closures reducing income at the time of greatest need.

Bishop Jean-Pierre shared stories of people’s generosity and God’s provision through this period. They are also having to be creative. In Karongitown, we were taken to see a half-built residential structure with glorious views over Lake Kivu. This was to have become the Bishop’s house, but changing diocesan priorities mean what they need is a stable and durable source of income. To this end, Bishop Jean-Pierre is developing a project to convert what would have been his home into a guest house catering for the burgeoning tourism economy.

From Karongi we headed to eastern Rwanda to Gahini for the centenary conference and celebration. Gahini is both the birthplace of the Anglican Church in Rwanda and the cradle of what became known as the East African Revival. In a developing country, the Rwandan Church has provided and continues to provide a significant contribution to education and health services, with a strong emphasis on providing economic and training opportunities to enable families and communities to flourish.

Among the 5,000 attendees of the conference and celebration were missionaries who had served this ‘land of a thousand hills’ over many decades, captivated both by the beauty of the land and the passionate embrace of the Gospel by the Rwandan people. 

And it is this land and these people that gave me so much to reflect upon during my visit. Memorials to the Rwandan Genocide stand throughout the land as a permanent reminder of the dangers of destroying civic cohesion through the malevolence of stirring up ethnic tension and the labelling of others as unworthy of place in society. What lessons can we learn from this across the western world today?

Thirty-one years since the genocide and following a healing process of justice and reconciliation, Rwanda has emerged as a rapidly developing nation with a dynamic population with a passion for the Gospel as its beating heart. At the cathedral in Gahini, the bitter sting of tears has been turned into an outpouring of praise and thanksgiving: “The Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad!” Ps 126.3

Blessings,

Revd Lee Thompson