Church Planting Tour: Katete

As I'm beginning a shift into doing some church planting work in addition to my student ministry work, I'm currently going around with Barry to see the different churches and Bible study groups that are scattered across the vast land inhabited by the Banyankore people. On Wednesday I visited Katete, a group started back in the day by Kari.

Currently Roland (red hat), a young Munyankore guy who works with Barry leading a large number of groups, has been providing the teaching for the Katete group. Attendance has been really strong at this group lately and there are some ladies who are very committed. When I went there were 40-50+ adults in attendance! Many, if not most, who attend are HIV/AIDS patients with the Words of Hope program that Kari managed. Unfortunately, however, there are no men in the group other than Roland; all those who ever attend are women (yes, there is another man pictured but he's Aloysious, the pastor of the Runyankore service at UBC, who decided to visit with us today). This is a problem that is encountered in almost all the groups that are close to town.

Though the group has been strong of late, there are a couple of problems that it faces. First it is dependent on Roland...if something were to happen to him then there would be no one to lead the group. Second, it's difficult to form a church without any men. Pray for us as we try to figure out how to get men to join this group (imagine trying to get a guy to join a Bible study group of 40-50 women). Please pray for me also as I make observations, come up with questions and try to formulate ideas as to how to proceed with our church planting efforts.