Giants' Footsteps

The recent BBC2 series Reverse Missionaries saw three Christians from Jamaica, Malawi and Mumbai visit the home communities of missionaries that had first brought the gospel to their nation. For us in Wiltshire, seeing Jamaican Baptist Pastor Franklin Small preaching just up the road in King’s Stanley felt very local indeed given that his host, Nigel Price, is married to a Lay Minister at the Abbey, Catherine Price. That Pastor Franklin didn’t find it at all easy in the Cotswolds is a bit of a relief frankly. If people were to fly into the UK and convert towns and cities across the nation overnight it would be joyous, of course, but our own ineptness over the last century would be all too plain to see. But his sadness, that a country of 19^th century missional fire could become a country of 21^st century spiritual tepidity, is a lament we can share with our Jamaican brother.

For me, visiting the Diocese of Kigezi in Uganda in 2010 (see above, where Canon Stanley Byomugabe is graciously correcting my preaching, or translating as he called it) was to walk in the footsteps of giants like evangelist Bishop Festo Kivengere, who was radically converted to a spirit-filled Christian life, worked with Billy Graham, challenged Idi Amin, and ordained women before we did over here. But he wasn't the first giant. I was aware that there were deeper footsteps still of missionaries like Leonard and Esther Sharp who, at great personal cost, brought health care, sanitation, education, justice, the gospel of Jesus Christ and a lot of Victorian hymns to Kabale, as the Holy Spirit birthed the church in Uganda and transformed a nation. 

So another journey is reversed this week as Peter Kasamba arrives here from Kampala with the singers and musicians of Uganda Fire, treading in the footsteps of those earlier missionary journeys, bringing the fire back. You can find out more about the musicians and their time in the UK at http://www.bristol.anglican.org/churches/uganda/ and you can join them in the Abbey for a free concert at 7.30pm on Saturday 12^th May and for an all-age service at 4pm on Sunday 13^th May.