A team of ten from Grace Baptist Church has already begun planning, praying and paying toward a mission experience in Rwanda this summer (July 17-August 11, 2006). God willing, the trip will be successfully underwritten by personal funds of the team members (quite sacrificially given in many cases) plus donations to the church on their behalf. Frankly, this journey holds great promise to revolutionize the spiritual lives and vision of all who go!

Gary and Laurie Scheer, veteran missionaries in the country who primarily train poor rural pastors, will host the team by arranging food and housing and travel in the country, and by setting the agenda (which I’ve dubbed the “Rwandagenda”) as well as facilitating the experiences it entails. Gary calls it the “Let’s-Get-in-Touch” trip and says its primary purpose will be to expose the team to the realities of life and ministry in Rwanda and thus cement relationships between the permanent missionaries, the Rwandese and the American churches. Some of the exposure will occur by observation, some by meetings with people and visiting sites (like the Genocide Memorial in Kigali), and some by hands-on work projects to serve the missionaries and people there.

The major hands-on commitment of our team will take place the last part of the trip, at an annual spiritual life conference on a peninsula site called Kumbya, on Lake Kivu. Missionaries come here from all over that part of Africa, namely, from Uganda, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania, and it is a great highlight of the year for these families. They are from Quaker, Pentecostal, Baptist, Anglican and other churches. They come for refreshment, fellowship and spiritual renewal. We will get to serve the children of these families by providing a first-rate Vacation Bible School for them every morning. Gary says, “For the most part, these are not kids who go to VBS because their parents make them, but because this is a highlight of the year–they have no other opportunity like this....You will find it a super rich time of ministry to these kids!” I’m sure he’s right. Reportedly these kids are rather isolated all year (especially from other English-speaking company), and have little more than scraps for craft items–toilet paper tubes, some string and paper, and what-not. Our supplies and songs and stories and activities will seem like a taste of heaven to them! No doubt, if previous experience tells us anything, we on the team will experience the joy on their faces as a glorious feast for our hearts.

As we can all imagine, the situation in this small African country has never fully recovered from the horrible intertribal genocide of the mid-1990s. The government is still being reorganized and streamlined, which will cause thousands to lose their jobs. Many who even have good jobs are cutting down to one meal per day to make ends meet; the country continues to be on the knife edge of famine in this, the most densely populated country in Africa and one of the most densely populated in the world. HIV-AIDS, street kids, unemployment and poverty, widows and orphans, and very poor health care all continue as grave social problems in Rwanda.

Churches keep proliferating in the country, most of which are pentecostal or charismatic. But great immaturity and corruption characterizes many of these churches: church leadership becomes attractive because it is seen as a way to climb the social ladder of success in which the pastor is seen as a respected role in the community. To be blunt, many unspiritual opportunists get drawn into church leadership. The ministry Gary does (under WorldVenture)–training Christian leaders who are serious, discerning, humble disciples of Jesus–is crucial to the Rwandese church in its ability to serve lovingly as it brings the gospel of Jesus to people and challenges the culture and its strongholds.

Gary and Laurie Scheer - More information about their missions work in Rwanda through WorldVenture

Click here to go to the blog for the mission trip.