One Year of BCM Uganda

By: Joshua Anguyo, National Executive Director

October 2022 marks one year of BCM Uganda ministry (see Uganda Joins BCM Africa). For various urgent reasons, our focus remains empowering and training church leadership in children’s ministry. First, almost half of Uganda’s population is fourteen and younger. Though eighty-five percent of the population identifies as Christian, children have historically not been considered a priority by the church. They attended adult services, and if there was a Sunday school program, few trained teachers or materials were available.

This story has changed greatly. With churches matching national population demographics, half of those attending are children, and larger churches may have hundreds and sometimes more than a thousand children in attendance. This has led to a great awakening in Uganda for children’s ministry. Over the past year, BCM Uganda has been meeting that need in the following ways.

Trainings: In Step with the Master Teacher (ISMT) trainings were held in central, eastern, and northwestern parts of Uganda with a total of 713 children’s ministry leaders trained. In May 2022, thirty-three trainers graduated from a nine-month course called Holistic Child Discipleship Mode (HCDM) that uses curriculum from Global Children’s Forum (GCF) and BCM. In keeping with BCM’s strategy of multiplication, 514 out of the 713 new children’s ministry leaders were trained by these thirty-three graduates.

Camping: In partnership with Soroti Calvary Chapel and its branch churches in east Uganda, a three-day intensive children’s camp brought together 525 children of different age groups. This was just the first of a partnership to help churches run children and youth camps based on BCM International camping ministry models.

Pastor Training: For generations in Ugandan churches, it was believed that children and teens weren’t capable of genuinely accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior so there was no point in professing salvation or being discipled until adulthood was reached. This too is now history, and the door is wide open for reaching and discipling children and youth. A major gap is that the course of study for pastors in Bible colleges and Christian universities focuses on all aspects of pastoral ministry except children and youth ministry. Together with Global Children’s Forum (GCF), BCM Uganda is seeking to bridge this gap by partnering with Christian academic institutions in teaching clergy and pastors to understand God’s heart for children and how to raise up a next generation that honors God.

Ongoing Pastoral and Leadership Training: Serving pastors through ongoing training in leadership, professional development, and other aspects of ministry is another priority. This year through the generous giving of HMK, a Christian donor agency based in Germany, in partnership with SIM Nairobi, BCM Uganda received one thousand tool kits for empowering church leaders. Each set includes eighteen books covering leadership, evangelism, marriage and family, discipleship, Muslim evangelism, ministry to young leaders, and other topics. A two-day conference teaches church leaders how to use the material, which they then take back to put into practice within their local congregations.