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Monthly Archives

December 2022

January 2023 newsletter

By Impetus

January 2023 Impetus.

Welcome to the latest edition of Impetus.

We are hugely grateful for your continued interest and concern for APF.

Thank you especially to those who responded to our recent cost-of-living appeal. We have not yet turned the corner but remain faith-filled as we embark on a new year with ambitious plans to scale up eVitabu and support a growing network of African partners in their teaching and pastoral ministries.

As part of our commitment to our friends and supporters, we are offering an exciting new opportunity for you to engage directly with APF’s UK personnel and, from time to time, African partners through something we are calling Impetus Live!

Impetus Live! will be an hour long interactive gathering taking place by Zoom in the month following each new publication of the Impetus newsletter.

The online meeting will include verbal and visual updates, a brief inspirational message, as well as opportunities for interaction and prayer.

The first Impetus Live! will take place on Tuesday 17th January at 7pm.

The Zoom joining details are as follows:

Zoom Meeting ID: 87101408353
Passcode: 200863

Please contact me if you need any assistance in joining the call – or for any reason at all.

Thank you again and a Happy New Year from all of us at APF and from our partners in Africa.


Revd Dave Stedman
CEO

Download 'Impetus' here
December 15, 2022
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Team ministry in Africa’s Great Lakes Region

By Burundi, eVitabu, Rwanda, Tanzania, Training

Victor Imanaturikumwe and Heavenlight Luoga met at an APF event four years ago and have stayed in contact ever since. Recently, with APF’s support, they met up once again to run training workshops for rural pastors in western Rwanda. Victor explains what happened.

Many local churches in rural Rwanda are fragile as pastors have few opportunities for training. This makes tackling the spiritual needs of the community a constant struggle. As I am a beneficiary of APF theological scholarship support, I am now committed to spending my time contributing to effective ministry here in Rwanda by running pastors’ conferences and trainings in rural contexts.

Recently, Pastor Heavenlight and Kesia Luoga from Deeper Life Church in Karagwe, Tanzania, travelled to join me in Rwanda and together we led a training conference for rural church leaders. Some of the leaders had received almost no in-service training so this is vitally important work.

I found APF’s eVitabu app a very helpful tool when I was studying for my theological degree. As textbooks are so hard to find in Rwanda, all the materials used during the conference came from eVitabu. Pastor Luoga and I selected and adapted resources on eVitabu and developed a conference programme to equip the pastors with skills in teaching and preaching the Word of God and in leadership.

We also trained the pastors on how to set up small income projects and adapt their farming practices to meet the challenges of a changing climate and poor soil. The overall theme of the conference was ‘Being a Good Shepherd’ and the leading Bible passage was John 10:1-21.

The conference hosted forty pastors and church leaders from different churches and communities in western Rwanda. We are already registering a lot of impact in their communities and churches and we want to continue to invest in them so they become agents of spiritual and community transformation.

I first met Pastor Luoga in Uganda at an APF regional leaders’ conference in 2018. Since then, he has become like a spiritual director to me. He is a very experienced pastor, ministry trainer, teacher, preacher and mentor. I believe APF is helping to break barriers by encouraging fellowship with other pastors from different backgrounds and cultures. We all benefit from one another’s insights and expertise when we work together in partnership.

I would like to thank all APF donors, friends and supporters who give generously of your money and your time in prayer to support APF and its partners in Africa. Know that your gifts are being used well and are making a big difference here in rural Rwanda and across Africa.

After training in western Rwanda, Heavenlight travelled south into Burundi to work with groups of untrained pastors serving in churches near Gitega. Gitega is the new capital of Burundi and it is the newest capital city in the world, replacing Bujumbura in 2019.

December 14, 2022
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Building digital capacity in the Ugandan Church

By eVitabu, Uganda

The Church of Uganda is the largest denomination in the country with around 11 million members. APF are working closely with the Church of Uganda to support their vision of building digital, pastoral and theological capacity amongst their clergy. In November, a hundred ‘Group 2’ clergy gathered for training. Group 2 clergy serve in semi-rural communities or informal urban centres. Moses Muwulya, an ordinand, describes his experience.

In November, pastors from the Church of Uganda were led on a training journey by APF’s Revd Dave Stedman. Attending were ordained clergy and ordinands (trainee clergy) from various dioceses from across Uganda.

A key part of the training was about accessing the eVitabu app. This was, for us all, the headline part of the experience. We learnt how to download and install eVitabu on our smartphones and how to search for resources in the app. eVitabu will quench my thirst for Christian education material because it has a wealth of information from many different contributors. I am really looking forward to exploring the app further and finding resources for my community, church and family.

We also discussed digital culture and theology. The training on digital theology in Africa was very timely. We were all forced to embrace digital ministry during the Covid-19 pandemic out of panic as a response to the crisis. We were reactive and not prepared. This training helped us build on those experiences by having time for theological reflection around the opportunities and dangers of technology in church ministry.

During the training, we dived into some deep theological discussions around recent developments in technology and how they will impact society and ministry. For example, we discussed the theological implications of giving and receiving the sacraments during an online gathering. This was a very significant discussion with important implications for Anglican sacramental theology.

We also discussed the difference between online church and church online. Online church is a community coming together online to worship, but church online is a hybrid form with both on-site and online worship. This was so useful to understand and gave us much to think about.

We all left the gathering and returned to our dioceses ready to share with Christ’s Church in Uganda our new skills and information, as well as eVitabu. God’s people shall not perish because of lack of knowledge (Hosea 4:6) because our cup of information is overflowing courtesy of eVitabu.

December 14, 2022
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