Missions in Rwanda

Rwanda lies in the interior of east Africa.  Mission work in the country was relatively late compared with other African nations.  The majority of Rwandan Christians are Roman Catholic.  Roman Catholicism first made its way to Rwanda in the early 1900s by Catholic missionaries sometimes known as the White Fathers.  They established mission stations and schools beginning in 1903.[1]

The Holy Spirit began to move in Rwanda in the 1920s.  The Anglican Church has had a focus on missions in Rwanda since that time.  The Christian Mission Society (CMS) began mission work in Rwanda in 1925.  The first mission station was located in Gahini and included a hospital.[2]  Joe Church was a doctor from Cambridge who arrived in Gahini in 1928.[3]  He partnered up with an African, Simeoni Nsibambi, and planted the seeds for Revival in Rwanda.[4]  Church’s revival team out of Gahini affected the East African Revival which in addition to Rwanda, reached countries from Burundi, Uganda, and into Kenya by the late 1930s.[5]   

 

Dr. Joe (John Edward) Church, accessed at Dictionary of African Christian Biography, http://www.dacb.org/stories/rwanda/church_johne.html.

Today mission work at the hospital in Gahini continues.  The CMS is sending a couple, Stephen and Catriona Bennett, to the hospital.  He is a doctor, and she is an anaesthetist.[6]  They will continue providing medical care to Rwandans and furthering the mission work there that has lasted almost 100 years.

Islam is said to have come to Rwanda around 1901, by Muslim merchants.  The first mosque in Rwanda was built in 1913.[7]  There was no development of mission work for Islam in Rwanda.  The spread of Islam occurred due to Muslim merchants and traders marrying Rwandans.  Besides marriage, conversions occurred due to the appeal of the culture to some Rwandans.

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[1] “Rwanda – History,” East Africa Living Encyclopedia, http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/rwhistory.htm, ¶8.

[2] Brian Stanley, “The East African Revival: African Initiative Within a European Tradition,” http://churchsociety.org/docs/churchman/092/Cman_092_1_Stanley.pdf, 6.

[3] Ibid., 7.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid., 9.

[6] “People in Mission,” Church Mission Society, http://churchmissionsociety.org/people-in-mission/africa/rwanda.

[7] “Rwanda Wakes up to Islam,” Islamic Voice (December 1999): ¶1, http://www.islamicpopulation.com/africa/Rwanda/Islam%20Blooms%20in%20Rwanda%20Genocide%27s%20Wake.htm.