No Small Harvest Field

By Jeanette Windle with Mado Fumunguya

Mado Fumunguna from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, has never been one to sit idle. A pastor’s wife with five adult children and four grandchildren, she has a graduate degree in English, taught French at the American School of Kinshasa (TASOK), and serves as secretary for the Église du Christ au Congo (ECC), or Church of Christ in Congo, a federation of ninety-five Protestant denominations in the DRC. But when Pat Govender, Africa director for In Step with the Master Teacher (ISMT), BCM’s children’s ministry training program, arrived in the DRC in April 2017 to hold training with ECC leadership, Mado took time from her busy schedule to be Pat’s translator from English to French, the DRC’s official language. Little did she know what all that would entail.

BCM’s association with the ECC dates to 2014 when BCM president Martin Windle met with ECC leadership in Kinshasa to sign a partnership for training children’s ministry leaders throughout the ECC’s twenty-five million membership (see “Please Come Back Again and We Are Waiting,” BCM World, 2014). Pat’s arrival in 2017 was the first major training planned in three regions of the DRC (see Keeping a Promise, BCM World, 2017). Mado spent eight days translating for Pat among different denominations in Kinshasa. Then came a setback. Pat’s partners scheduled to teach and translate in Goma over a thousand miles from Kinshasa had not arrived. Mado agreed to accompany Pat as translator.

“What Pat didn’t know was that she was raising a disciple through her translator,” Mado expresses. “While I was translating, I started feeling the call to become an ISMT trainer and equip the church for children’s ministry the way I saw her work. When Pat asked me to teach a portion of the training, that was a precious opportunity. Back in Kinshasa, I started doing ISMT training in local churches with Pat as my mentor.”

Shortly after her return, one church leader invited Mado to his village about five hundred kilometers from Kinshasa. Accepting the invitation, Mado held an ISMT training for sixty-four Sunday School teachers in that area, including church leaders. This was only the beginning of many such trainings. Along with her secretarial work, Mado has served as a resource person for teens and children in the ECC. She works directly for the first Vice President of the ECC, Bishop Nyamuke, who oversees the departments of evangelism, missions, and church life, which includes children’s ministry and Sunday school. Once Mado introduce ISMT to her boss, he immediately saw the value of this resource and appointed Mado to introduce ISMT to ECC leaders.

In 2019, BCM DRC director Dr. Djawotho Kisa appointed Mado as Lead Trainer for the DRC. Today she oversees ISMT training for 23 of the 26 provinces in which the ECC has churches. With ninety-five denominations encompassing twenty-five million members, multiplication of is vital. God has been raising up teammates for Mado. Kathy Shafto, a Baptist missionary, has provided transport and help with training in multiple ISMT events hundreds of kilometers from Kinshasa. Dalida, a Kinshasa-based children’s ministry leader, helps with organization and logistics.

To date, Mado has trained hundreds of church leaders, Sunday School teachers, parents, orphanages workers, as well as university chaplainship programs, which function as evangelism and local churches on college campuses. Another ISMT Lead Trainer Stephanie Sudman (see Taking the Lead, BCM World 2019), a missionary with Africa Inland Mission, oversees training for three eastern provinces, especially with CECA-20, the AIM-founded national church denomination that encompasses over two thousand churches, centralized in eastern DRC. CECA-20 ministry leaders Rilega Pierre and James D’Jadri are Lead Trainers who also spearhead training in eastern DRC.