Church Planting Among the Ik People

By Anthony:

This is a long post, but well worth the read!

I'm excited to share with you about how Resonate Global Mission is partnering with PAG Uganda to church plant in Karamoja, Uganda. While Uganda is largely a Christian country, at least in name and on the surface, there are still places and some tribes where there are few Christians. One such region is Karamoja. As Resonate missionaries, we do not plant new Christian Reformed churches in countries like Uganda. Instead, we give encouragement, prayer, teaching, and financial assistance to partners like PAG so that they can plant new churches. And in many ways they are far more suited and skilled to do this work of evangelism and church planting!

I wanted to share this with you not only so that you can join us in prayer for this church planting effort, but also to inform you that this is now a part of my work and ministry. I spent a lot of time formulating the ideas for this ministry initiative with leaders from the PAG National Office as well as the leaders within Karamoja Pastorate. And recently Sara, Stephen, and I visited the area to see the current situation and encourage the church planters. But before I talk about that visit, let me share more about the region and the initiative. Karamoja is a beautiful region, sometimes very flat with sparse vegetation, and in other places it has the most majestic rock formations. In some places, like where we visited, it actually can get quite cold (like 50 F).

The Karamoja region is very large and consists of many different districts and many different tribes. Most of the tribes are pastoralists and many of them have engaged in violent cattle raiding for decades, and perhaps much longer than that. PAG is first targeting to plant two new churches among the Ik people who are not pastoralists, but who do agriculture. They have been mistreated by many tribes around them and have been squeezed into smaller and smaller pockets over the years. They live closely together for security. They have been regularly raided by other tribes in Uganda, but also tribes from South Sudan and Kenya who can easily cross the border on foot, to raid and then return home. For the most part, the Ik have stopped keeping cattle at all, so that they are less likely to be raided. The Ik as a tribe have about 10,000 people total, and our friends from there estimate that about 25% of them are Christians. The other tribes live very close to the Ik people, and in the trading centers all the people are mixed. The PAG church planters are from the Ik tribe and will focus first on the Ik people, but they will reach out to everyone in those areas. 

Karamoja in general has been quite peaceful for most of our years in Uganda. We've had many talks with our friends in the Teso region who lost family members to raids in the past, but since then there have been many reconciliation talks, and the government has done a lot of disarming people of the AK-47s and other guns that are common in the Karamoja region. However, things have been heating up in Karamoja again, especially since the covid-19 pandemic started. Likely this is due to economic pressures which came from strict lockdowns. Guns are becoming common again, from Ethiopia, South Sudan, and Kenya, and the situation is continually getting more insecure. Here is a recent article about it, but my friends say this is just the tip of the iceberg of all the raids happening right now - Rustlers Strike Again. Since the pandemic started, our friends in Katakwi (part of the Teso region) have also been having raiders steal their cattle quite regularly. I will write more on the serious insecurity issues at the end of this post. 

It's very difficult to know who the raiders are. The same people you see in town one day may be the people raiding your village the next day. In our Teso region, it is very difficult to find any place that is just "bush." You are always walking or driving through people's homes and farms. In the area of Karamoja we visited, it's very different. You drive many kilometers through wilderness, (though people journey through it to feed their cattle) before you then stumble across a town or a village. People stay close together for protection, even those who raid from other tribes. It's hard to tell in this picture below, but this is a manyatta, a village in Karamoja. Inside the fence are many huts where several families stay together. Here is another photo from the sky of a similar one.

Karamoja as a region has a lot of material poverty and illiteracy (25% literacy rate). It has been flooded with humanitarian organizations and government aid over many years. But there has been little change and development. It is difficult for most of the tribes to change their way of life and begin doing more agriculture instead of only keeping cattle. And there has been a lot of really unhealthy dependency developed. A few years ago I was invited to do a training with development workers and pastors there (people who potentially have decent salaries) but I ultimately cancelled the plans because no one was willing to attend unless I paid for their transport, accommodation, food, manual, and a daily sitting fee to compensate them for their time. 

While there are churches in Karamoja, many of them are full of people from other areas who are working in Karamoja, while comparatively fewer of the people from the various native tribes in the area are Christians. It is difficult for most of them to become Christians because it means giving up many of their traditional practices, such as cattle raiding. PAG has learned in the past that it is possible to reach these people with the Gospel, and they have seen that the Gospel and the new churches bring much more social transformation than many of the humanitarian agencies with all of their programs. For example, in areas where PAG has reached out and started new churches, many people have changed their view of education and started to send their children to schools. 

It is a difficult area to be a church planter, and foreign missionaries or Ugandan missionaries from other nearby tribes have had trouble living there for long periods. PAG's new strategy is not to bring in outside evangelists, but to focus on recruiting and training the indigenous people of the area so that they are the ones doing the church planting. We fully affirm this approach. These church planters may not have a lot of education, but God can use them, and PAG and Resonate will focus on equipping them as best as we can. Part of that equipping will be trying to bring TLT to many areas all over the Karamoja region. In our partnership with PAG in this ministry initiative, the focus is on several areas: 

1. Starting two new church plants in Tultul and Morungole through evangelism, preaching, and church fellowships which involve inviting people for a community meal so that people can hear testimonies of Christians. 

2. New TLT groups and pastoral training for the church planters, and other church leaders from the other closest churches. 

3. Church planting conferences and trainings for the PAG churches of the entire Karamoja region.

You may have difficulty finding Morungole and Tultul on google maps. But you should be able to find Timu, which is a town in between the two places. Morgungole and Tultul both are at the very end of the road in two different directions. They are quite remote. Timu has a healthy PAG church already and will be the base of operations for trainings in this church planting effort.

Now that I've shared the background, let me share with you about when Sara, Stephen, and I visited during August to see all of these places and pray for and encourage the church planters. It took us about 6 hours to drive from Soroti to Timu, and then it was farther still to both of the church planting locations. First, here is Jacob Lochul. You may remember him from this TLT testimony video. He was one of my TLT students in Kotido (which was a far journey for him). He is the pastor of the PAG Timu church, and he will be the one supervising all of the church planters. Here is Jacob and his wife.

Here is Jacob's home where many of his relatives also stay together with him. There are quite a few more huts in the fenced in area that you can't see here. Remember people stay close together for protection.

After reaching Timu, we traveled to Tultul to see the first place where they will try to start a church. We first met the representative from the local government in the area. The PAG leaders informed him of the church planting plans and he welcomed the idea of a new church. Eventually, if the evangelism outreaches are successful, PAG will buy land in that area to construct a church building. The church planters here are natives to the town, Daniel and Monica (the first photo). They have 6 children. Previously they have been traveling quite far to attend another PAG church, but now they will spearhead the effort to start a church in Tultul, and Daniel will be the pastor. They are getting help from John and Sarah. 

We prayed briefly for all of them.

As we drove through the area, we drove over countless plastic alcohol bottles. We learned that alcoholism and drunkenness is a big problem in the area. This seems to be a common issue around the world in areas of material poverty.  

Near Tultul, PAG owns a school. It was started by the community and then they got help from World Vision to put up some more structures, but later the community handed it over to PAG to run it. People in the area have really been appreciating the school and they keep sending their children there. The number of children increases all the time. It is a primary school and now they have 564 pupils. Unfortunately, due to the hard living situation, and the lack of resources to pay teachers, the school has only 1 teacher. Previously they had 2 teachers, Lochap and Paul - the men in the photo below, but now only one has been able to remain there as a teacher. So it's basically like the one room schoolhouses of old America, where you have many different grades of students needing different subjects, but only one adult to manage all of those children and teach them. Can you imagine? The teachers said it is okay to share their photo with you so that you will pray for the school.

This is the view behind the school. It may be a materially poor area, but they are rich in the beauty of God's creation. We are standing with our friend Amadi, a TLT graduate, who is also the secretary for Karamoja PAG Pastorate. He and Jacob will be the ones who will lead the two new TLT groups that are starting soon. 

After Tultul, we drove an hour and a half or so in another direction, also to the complete ending of the road, to Morungole. PAG has a church building there already. There was a young church meeting for worship but unfortunately the church members scattered during the lockdowns in Uganda. The main problem was that the pastor left the church and went to Kenya. So now there is a building, but no church. The church planters will begin new outreaches in the town and also try to reconnect with former church attenders.

Immediately after we arrived, nearly everyone in sight walked over to the church building to see what  we were up to. Here is George from the PAG National Office speaking to some former church attenders about the plans for outreach. 

Amadi decided not to waste an opportunity to talk to the curious people who had gathered. He preached a very short sermon about Jesus.

He challenged them to give their lives to Christ. Some of these girls decided to do so. From what we understand, some may be doing so for the first time, but others may have formerly attended the church and now are recommitting their lives to Christ again after backsliding. Either way, a lot of teaching and discipleship to truly understand the Gospel is going to be needed!

Joseph will be the church planter and pastor in Morungole. Here he is with his wife who was very shy.

It was a short trip but it helped us to really get a sense of the area, and we are glad we were able to encourage the church planters. We made it home safely. The worst things that happened to us were having our front parking mirror break off on bushes we were driving through, and having kids throw rocks at our car.

Unfortunately, as soon as we got home, the security situation in all the places we had just driven through deteriorated rapidly. The next day, we heard a report that Jacob had been ambushed by Karamojong warriors on the road. They were on their way to go raid in Kenya. Jacob is alive and well, and he gave me permission to share his story. He was on his motorcycle going to Kaabong to buy things for his family from a shop. He used a shortcut road (different from the one we drove on). He had to slow down to cross a stream at one point and that's when a whole group of warriors jumped out and pointed their guns at him. He shouted at them that he would stop, and to please not shoot him. They didn't shoot. He stopped, got off the motorcycle, and went down on his knees. He started begging for his life. He said he is a preacher and that they have probably seen him many times, and why would they want to kill him?

A struggle broke out between the warriors. Some wanted to kill him and others didn't. One tried to shoot him but the gun misfired. Then this warrior tried to take his friend's gun. In the struggle, shots were fired but no one was hit. But ultimately, they decided not to kill him. They took all of his money, but then they let him go, and even let him take his motorcycle. They are mostly interested in cattle or money, they are not interested in having a motorcycle. He continued going to Kaabong where he had been headed because he was afraid if he turned around that they might think he was going to go report them. Please realize that this is not a normal thing. Jacob says something like this hasn't happened to him since 2009. However, it has happened to others in the area this year, and some other motorcycle drivers have been killed. Strangely, they don't attack vehicles these days. Jacob said that it's because they know it's those same vehicles who will rush them to a hospital if they ever get injured.

After this happened to Jacob, the newspapers and the security group I am both blew up with lots of stories about insecurity in Karamoja. Everything had been calm before we left on our visit. But after the visit there were people being ambushed. The Ugandan army had skirmishes with the warriors in several places. And it's gone beyond the remote sections of roads. Even the towns have had violence. Warriors have attacked Kaabong several times in the past few weeks, including attacking the police and the army barracks. We have a friend who stays there but thankfully he is okay. I won't share all the details, but things have been bad, and we are praying for the safety of our friends. Some of the roads are blocked off right now.

All of this insecurity makes the church planting effort even more essential. It is only the Gospel that will change the hearts of those causing this violence. This region that has been in turmoil for decades can truly develop and change and have peace when people come to know Christ. The Bishop of Karamoja Pastorate was telling us some amazing stories of warriors who have repented of their former ways of violence and come to know Christ, and are completely transformed, and are now leading churches. This is the change that Jesus can bring.

Please pray with us for their safety. Pray for the church planters. And here are some specific prayer requests from PAG:

1. For God's presence and guidance for the planning of this outreach.

2. That the community would be ready and receptive to the Gospel.

3. That God would help the leaders to disciple the new believers and nurture new leaders among them.

4. That God would bring holistic lifestyle change in the communities through the Gospel.

5. That God would equip the church planters with oral communication skills (storytelling techniques for reaching an illiterate people), cross-cultural skills, evangelism techniques, leadership, and the ability to serve in these hard environments.