Beatrice Adong

Beatrice has been a follower of Jesus for many years. She always tries to share his love with the people around her wherever she goes. However, she was becoming frustrated with some of the methods of evangelism and discipleship that were known to her. She was able to share about God’s love, but people were not growing in their relationship with God. 

When we asked Beatrice if she was interested in discipling her neighbors with our methods, she gave a loud YES! 

She grasped our approach to sharing Jesus and discipling and training so quickly. She was able to start a small group of believers in many places in her life, at her work, with other believers at church, and with her neighbors. 

Beatrice and Disciples in Orom, Uganda

With all of the groups she has started she has been able to keep God’s word as the focus, each person is experiencing their own journey with God and obey the things that the Holy Spirit has called to them. No matter if the people in the group have been believers for many years, or if they have not yet committed their life to Jesus, everyone in her groups are able to participate. 

Beatrice has even been able to navigate her work group through time constraints and issues that pop up at work through allowing God to be the true leader of the groups while she remains a supportive facilitator.

Have you ever watched the olympic sprint races? For the 100 meter dash, the whole race is over in about 10 seconds. But what about the work leading up to that race? How much time went into training for that event? 

In a fast paced world, we are tempted to want to see fast paced church growth as well. Especially when we’re trying to start a disciple making movement. Looking at a high view of disciple making movements globally it looks like they grow overnight! We have a friend heading one and we hear new reports every few months about another 100 or more house churches starting. It’s exciting, we want in, we want to see those numbers of people in our own movement out of Northern Uganda…. Yes! Let’s do it! Go! Go! Go! 

But wait…. Let’s zoom in on some of these movements…. 

Many of the people initially trying to start them spend 7-11 years plodding away trying to train, teach, disciple and encourage with little to no fruit. And then, when they do find someone who gets it those people invest in a few…. For a very long time. And then from the few they invest in some of them gather a group of their own to invest in. And on and on it goes. Everyone begins a new group pretty quickly in the movement and from a birds eye view it looks so sudden, so fast growing, so intense. Though the replication of groups happen quickly, the result is many people committing to disciple the people around them for the long haul. People are not just playing a game of telephone “Did you hear about Jesus? Pass it on.” No! People are committing to go deep into the word together. They are in community with people regularly, walking alongside them as everyone grows in their understanding of the word, and relationship with God. 

Slow growth, investment, commitment, regular, walking together…. Sign us up for that. We want to live amongst a group of people who are going to be in it with us, not for a flash in the pan, but for the long haul. This is community, this is church. 

Find sustainable resources instead.

Northern Uganda has been through some terrible times. A 20 year war isolating the North from the South of the country, placing people in camps, constantly worried if they will make it through to the next day. Aid groups have mercifully worked in the region serving for decades now helping through the crisis and the rebuilding of social norms.  But 20 years of living like this has had long term impacts on the internal monologue or messages people tell themselves here.

One of those messages is, subtly being told that they are not able to sustain themselves. That they are not strong enough to do it on their own. Aide must come, and it must come from outside.  These messages have come across in practical skills as well as in ministry.

Northern Uganda has been bombarded with missionaries, from around the world, as well as from within Uganda’s own borders, handing out bibles, tracks and making big speeches about converting to Christianity. The truth of the Gospel is sometimes proclaimed, but the model given is that leaders must come from the outside of the region.  The message is clear, you need Jesus AND a foreigners help to get on the right track. 

For a movement to be sustained here everyday Northern Ugandans need to be able to follow Jesus within their normal life schedule, and have the confidence that they can make disciples themselves.  When growth or discipleship is tied to outside leaders or resources provided by foreigners, movements stop.  If we are providing bibles, pamphlets, audio readers, and endless supplies to Ugandans who want to follow Jesus, then we are hinging the growth of a movement on the resources we provide. That is simply not sustainable.  The short term benefit from handouts is out-weighed by the dependence it continues to reinforce.

We have challenged our leaders, and they have challenged us, to find culturally relevant ways to answer these places of need in ways that will  reinforce community values and strengths. We have to think outside of the typical resource provision to find simple ways Ugandans can pass on their methods to others.

We cannot introduce financial constraints when God is moving. We want to give Him as much space as he needs to move and do his thing, and reducing the barriers to encountering his word together is something we are very serious about. 

We have the patience to see God move here in a way that honors and respects our friends.  That lifts them up and says we believe in your ability to lead others into all that God has for them.  

God gave us the free gift of Jesus. All we have to do is recognize that we need him and  believe that he died for us, then we are welcome into the kingdom. Those are the only steps necessary when people are deemed “Christians” or “Born Again.”  All done. You are a Christian.  The end….

Except that’s not the end. We are called to make disciples not just converts. 

People, in Uganda, are hungry for more of God. They are so hungry that we see them repeatedly attending the many tent meetings, conferences, crusades, evangelism outreaches, and prayer meetings that come through our region. They raise their hands to be counted as a “born again.” Sometimes this is for the first time, but often it's for the 10th time. The result is thousands of coverts to Christianity that can be tallied and marked as a job well done, but there are no disciples of Christ made from these moments.

Making disciples is our goal, knowing that after someone accepts the free gift of Jesus, they will then need help learning how to follow his teachings. We help people work through the Bible in a really simple way by focusing on small, attainable obedience steps that people set for themselves (with the help of Holy Spirit). People take small steps, focusing on getting one foot in front of the other. Each time their community meets to seek God together, they encourage each other to continue that slow but important growth in their faith. 

This is accessible discipleship, small incremental changes leading to lifetime growth. 

Up close it doesn’t look like much, but when you zoom out, you see many people who are growing in their faith as directed by the Holy Spirit. In time, these people will be confident disciples of Christ because He matured them through these small steps, week-by-week, through a simple methods anyone can do and fit into an already busy schedule.  

We are all called to disciple people. We at House to House are simply providing tools to help that happen. 

---

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.