In our initial meeting with Santos we briefly shared with him our methods for discipling believers and training them to begin small groups, and he requested to meet again in the near future for more details. We were humbled that by the end of our second meeting he was graciously inviting us in to train some of his key church leaders in our methods. 

After a few weeks of partnering together we were really encouraged by the leaders' activity and new found confidence in leading others in discovery Bible study. Santos not only felt like he now had the tools to reach Gulu and his congregation’s relational network, but actively started sharing with other pastors this vision and method.

Santos is the pastor of a local church in Gulu, and is dedicated to sharing God’s love with his congregation. He had been unsatisfied with the typical methods of outreach in Uganda. He found evangelism crusades costly and ineffective in making lasting disciples for Jesus. 

By the end of 2019, we had trained 27 members of his church and prepared them for taking the Gospel out to their villages as they traveled home for holiday break. We had also seen multiple Bible sharing groups started, and one of those groups had birthed into a second generation.

Santos has helped us try out new ideas and continue to refine our methods. It has been a blessing to have him working with us. Santos’ vision for 2020 is to help other pastors learn our methods, starting groups in new towns, seeing another 50 people trained within his church, and generally leading leaders in taking the gospel out of the four walls of the church building.

One of our greatest realizations as we developed our model for House to House, was that when someone became a believer in Jesus they would stop interacting with their friends and grow an entirely new set of friends within the church. We realized that by doing this, people were cutting off their former friends from the opportunity to hear God’s truth through this new believer. So when this happens, one person becomes God’s disciple, but we left behind their entire community! 

We see this often happening with the attraction model of church. If the goal is for people to go and bring new people to the church to hear from a Pastor about God… eventually you are going to need a building big enough to house everyone. And a church attractive enough to keep people there! 

We, at House to House, have different goals. Our goal is to spread God’s word INTO new GROUPS of people! When someone gathers their friends and family to learn about God together, they can do all of the things the bible calls us to do as a church. Church just happens, not in a building, but when people are meeting in houses, under trees, in businesses and anywhere people naturally gather. Then those people will want to share about their experience with other people in other parts of their lives and they will be able to go and replicate this simple model of church with other groups of friends and communities. These new groups of friends and communities will want to share what they are doing and they will want to go and create this simple church with more communities.

So while people are embracing relationships they already have, God’s message is moving IN.