Investing in people

If there is one thing more exciting than having a new bishop, it’s the appointment of the bishop’s staff. All diocesan staff and clergy appointments are in the gift of the bishop, and as one other bishop perhaps unhelpfully advised, “no-one can tell you who to appoint, it is 100% up to you.” After a good few weeks of mulling, praying and being advised, I made 15 or so new appointments on Friday including diocesan secretary, bishop’s chaplain, theology college principal, head of schools and dean of the cathedral. And Anthea as President of the Mother’s Union … People seem reasonably happy, but you never can tell!

In the Anglican Church of Congo May has now become a month of evangelism and church planting, culminating on 30 May in the celebration of the life of Apolo Kivebulaya, the Ugandan missionary who planted the first Anglican Church in Congo in 1896. This year we focused on the city of Goma, and the 3 weekend evangelism campaigns resulted in more than 500 people trusting in Jesus, and over 200 being baptised in the lake, and a new church being planted which met this Sunday for the first time in one of our secondary schools.

Laying lasting foundations

We’ve also been doing a lot of buying land and building churches. Without land for your church or documents for your land, you live in fear of being evicted or taken to court in a lengthy legal battle, where justice can be bought or sold. We are doing all we can to pursue our vision to plant 35 new churches in 5 years and for each church to have its own land, documents, church building and pastors’ house. Things which make the difference as to whether the church can function well in DRC or not.

We give thanks for what God has enabled us to do so far this year with the support of churches and partners.

• Putting the roof on 4 churches including 2 main archdeaconry churches.

• The soon-completion the house for one of our archdeacons, who was previously living in a house through whose walls you could see the outside world.

• Being able to buy 4 plots of land for new churches, with another one the way, and many more lined up when funding allows.

• Having for the first time secured the necessary legal documents for our 3 main plots of land in Goma (Diocesan offices, cathedral and theology faculty) 

News from Give Directly

We haven’t been able to share too much recently about Anthea’s work at Give Directly. Suffice it to say it has been pretty full on, as yesterday’s article in the New Humanitarian can testify, outlining how they are responding to a $900,000 fraud.

Please pray with us

• That the Give Directly programmes can start again as soon as possible so that the money can get to the beneficiaries who are amongst the poorest people in DRC.

• For the new diocesan staff team – that we would work well together and no-one would envy anyone else’s post.

• For those who recently came to faith in May, that our church leaders would know how to build them up in their faith.

• For God’s leading and provision on where to buy land and build churches.

Thank you, as always, for reading, praying, giving and keeping in touch
Martin, Anthea, Silas, Zachary and Imogen