Church Planting in Uganda

Last summer, by invitation of Bishop John Muhanguzi of the Diocese of North Ankole, the bishop of one the youngest Anglican dioceses, Ben Phillips and I (senior MDivs) traveled to Uganda to study church and diocesan planting. We were privileged to go as result of a grant from the Seminary Consultation on Mission, financial support from the Stanway Institute, and churches in the Diocese of San Diego. What an amazing experience it was to see the Holy Spirit move and the Church grow in a way that is thoroughly effective and at the same time thoroughly Anglican.

The diocese is located in southwestern Uganda, just south of the equator. Remarkably, Ben and I were the first Anglos to visit many of the more rural parts of the diocese. We spent three weeks specifically in the Diocese of North Ankole, traveling, observing, and learning how and why the church is booming there at an exponential rate. Of course, prayer plays a big role in the growth of the Church; but from a program perspective, I would say it is because church planting in Uganda is a layinitiated movement.

Most of the action in the diocese takes place at the parish level. A parish will typically serve a village and several neighboring small communities, usually between five to eight sub-parishes (what we would call church plants) in its care. These subparishes are a result of local parishioners wanting to minister within their own local communities. Maybe this community has a significant Muslim or Animist population or just enough de-churched people (they do exist in Africa) to warrant a new parish.

Once a desire to plant a church is made known, the rector of the mother church then sends a lay leader with this selfinitiated team. These men and women are usually taught a little theology, Old and New Testament, etc. by the local rector. The lay leaders then lead a Morning Prayer service on Sundays, with the group returning to the mother parish for Holy Communion on the fourth Sunday of the month – all the while continuing to support the mother parish financially.

Meanwhile, the members of the sub-parish begin to appoint a local lay leader and members to organize outreach and pastoral care. They also work at becoming a self-sustaining independent parish by building a church, a home for their future rector, a school, and self-sustaining business in order to generate funds to support their pastor and the diocese. Once all of this is established, with the bishop’s approval, the sub-parish becomes a parish and looks for ways to generate new sub-parishes. Typically the lay-leader becomes the rector of the parish and is allowed to function sacramentally in that parish and the mother church, and then goes to seminary to begin a diploma in theology.

Each diocese is divided into archdeaconries. An archdeaconry is a collection of geographically connected parishes, with the largest parish in the area being led by an archdeacon. Not surprisingly, an archdeacon is an extremely busy person! He not only runs his own parish and the sub-parishes underneath it, but he also pastors the rectors that are in the archdeaconry, addresses pastoral issues before they get to the bishop, and advises the bishop on other issues specific to the archdeaconry. This is all with the expressed purpose that someday the archdeaconry will have enough parishes, enough clergy with diplomas and degrees, and enough income to become its own self-sustaining diocese. Meanwhile, the bishop and his staff uphold and encourage this vision.

Ben and I learned several things in Uganda regarding church and diocesan planting. The first was the importance and power of the laity. The growth of the church in North Ankole does not revolve around a few gifted clergy; it is driven by passionate, mission driven lay people. Secondly, the diocese is designed to support the mission of the local parish as opposed to the parish supporting the mission of the diocese. It has been my experience in the US that the parish functions to not only keep its own programs functioning, but the diocesan programs as well. What we saw in the Diocese of North Ankole was a bishop and diocesan staff whose primary purpose was to uphold the mission of the local parish. What was so beautiful was that because of the diocese’s support, the parishes were then in return freely able to support the ministry of the diocese and see to it that it would not only grow, but multiply.

This led us to another profound observation about the effectiveness of the Diocese of North Ankole. When it comes to growth, they are into multiplication and not addition. Often times in America the goal is to grow from a plant, to a parish, to the next mega-church. However, in North Ankole, the goal is to grow from a sub-parish (plant) to a parish, in order to start more subparishes. What we saw was not only more people being reached for the Gospel through sub-parishes (plants), but that the mother churches, instead of being stunted, also continued to grow.

This was an amazing trip for Ben and me. It made global Anglicanism a reality to both of us and immersed us in the Anglicanism of the Global South that we have prayed for and heard so much about. Although there is much about this method that needs to be analyzed and translated into a North American context, we saw a form of church growth that was effective and thoroughly Anglican, and more importantly, gives us hope for the future.

Jacob Smith is a senior MDiv student from the Diocese of San Diego.