By Pauline Luba
Uganda Christian University (UCU) Prof. Peter Nyende’s first love was football. In the 1980s, as a young boy at Kenya’s Jamhuri High School in Nairobi, he was part of the national team that represented the country in the under-14 football competition in South Korea. Nyende’s interest in the game made him harbor intentions of playing it at a professional level. However, his father thought he should pursue a “more serious career.” 

By the time, as the teenager started his A’levels at Jamhuri, his interest had shifted to economics. However, he says as time went on, he had a deep sense of God’s calling to serve him fully in the church. By 19 years, Nyende was fully committed to serving God in the ministry. While growing up, Nyende was an active member of the church and in the Christian Union in school.

“I felt a deep sense of God’s call in my life,” Nyende related during a Uganda Partners’ interview in his UCU-Mukono campus residence.  “That made me abandon the other ambitions I once had.”.

However, when he applied to join a theological school, he was told that he was “too young and too bright” to immediately venture into priesthood. He was advised to first study something else that he was interested in before joining a theological college. 

Again, Nyende’s father did not approve of his son’s choice of a career in the church over work as an economist. Later, Nyende’s father warmed up to his choice, noting that it must have been God’s plan. Nyende went to Daystar University, also in Kenya, for his undergraduate degree, with a major in Bible studies. He then undertook training at an Anglican college in Nairobi, and was ordained in 1998. Thereafter, Nyende obtained a Master of Pastoral Studies from Ridley Hall in Cambridge and a Masters in Theology in the New Testament from Edinburgh University. 

Currently, the 53-year-old is an Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at the Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology of UCU. He also is a canon in the Anglican Church and a commissioned evangelist with the Church Army Society of Africa. Nyende has interests in biblical theology and the interpretation of the Bible in African contexts. 

He says the “word of God must make sense in the context of the hearers.” Nyende has to date published 12 research articles and 2 book chapters. This year, he has hit another milestone, with his latest publication, a 288-page book, The Restoration of God’s Dwelling and Kingdom. 

In the book, published by the UK-based Langham Publishing, Nyende presents the central story of both Old and New Testaments as the restoration of God’s dwelling and kingdom in the world. “He traces this narrative through its many stages of development — creation and fall, God’s covenants with Israel, exile — to its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus, the church and the new Jerusalem,” says a short profile of the book on the Langham Publishing website. 

Though mainly written for theological students and teachers, the book can be read by anyone who wishes to deepen understanding of the Bible. Nyende says he began writing the book in 2019 and had completed it by December 2022. He was lucky to land a deal with Langham Publishing to have it published in 2023.

For a man who studied, lived and worked in Kenya, how did he end up as an academic at UCU? In 2014, he says he was approached by the Dean of UCU’s Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology to join the university community. Through the Archbishop of the Anglican Church in Uganda, the Archbishop of Kenya was informed of the need for Nyende at UCU. Nyende says when he was informed of the request, he accepted, and applied to join the UCU family, which he did in 2015. He says he has been able to witness how the Church supports activities of the Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology, enabling the preparation of well-trained pastors.

As an expert in the interpretation of the Bible, when Uganda Partners asked him how the challenge of the misinterpretation of the Holy Book can be dealt with, Nyende said to properly interpret the Bible, there is need to understand the context in which a section was written, why it was written and what prompted the writing.  There is also the need to understand the whole Bible as one book. 

“The Bible is one book. One cannot read one book (or a chapter in the book) in isolation of the books before and after, if one is to understand the Bible properly. Although it is made up of 66 books, they are interlinked,” Nyende explained. 

Born in Butere town of western Kenya on June 15, 1969, in a family of 10 – seven boys and three girls – Nyende’s academic journey got rocky when his father retired just before he began his university education. However, he says by that time, he was old enough to know that the responsibility of completing school lay with him. He says he made money teaching English privately to students and also raised some funds from friends and the church. 

Nyende has been married to Josephine Njoki Marete for 17 years, and they have two children – 13-year-old Brodie, a student at Vienna College, and six-year-old Arabel, a pupil at Seeta Junior Primary School. Nyende says he visits his home country at least three times a year and usually enjoys Christmas holidays with members of his extended family there.

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To support Uganda Christian University programs, students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.

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By Kefa Senoga
The Rt. Rev. Onesimus Asiimwe, the newly consecrated Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of North Kigezi, grew up in a home where it was mandatory to pray. In fact, he used to even take readings in church. However, at some point in his life, Asiimwe took to drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes so much so that many people lost hope in him.

However, one day, after a night of heavy drinking, Asiimwe said he heard the voice of the Lord say to him: “Onesimus, do you not know that your body is the Temple of God?”

In response, according to a statement from the Church of Uganda, Asiimwe “threw away the cigarette that was dangling between his fingers and called on Jesus for salvation.” The day was January 8, 1988.

Since that day, Asiimwe, an alum of Uganda Christian University (UCU), says he developed a passion for preaching to youth, especially those facing social challenges such as alcoholism. By the late 1990s, Asiimwe was a household name among Anglicans as miracles would be reported during his crusades. 

In 1997, for example, he says he prayed for a couple that had been seeking to conceive for close to six years. The woman later conceived, and they had a child. In 1999, Asiimwe says he prayed for a man, Henry Mugisa, who regained his sight after a long time. However, Asiimwe’s type of ministry – one with “miracles” –  soon ruffled feathers with some church leaders in his diocese. 

Preaching at a UCU community worship in Nkoyoyo Hall on March 4, 2021, Asiimwe noted that when he had crusades in Kigezi, his home diocese located in southwestern Uganda, his ministry was considered incompatible with the traditions of the Anglican Church.

“Many times, I was summoned to explain where I was getting the power to perform miracles; we were praying for people and they were getting healed.”

Asiimwe said he was invited before a committee of 12 theologians who asked him to explain where he was deriving the power of healing. “I stood before them and confidently said I was simply following what the Bible says.” 

Asiimwe was later blocked from attending prayers in the diocese. However, he later mended fences with the leaders in the diocese, and, today, miracles are part of ministry in the Anglican Church. St. Peter’s Cathedral Rugarama, where Asiimwe was, in early 2000s, blocked from attending church prayers as a punishment for conducting a ministry that was considered alien to the Anglican Church, is where he was ordained a priest in 2012.

In 2006, the archbishop at the time, Henry Luke Orombi, shocked many when he appointed Asiimwe his personal assistant, who also holds the position of chaplain of the archbishop. It was the first time that a lay person was being appointed to such a position in the Anglican Church in Uganda. However, Orombi continued to persuade Asiimwe to pursue further studies so he could get ordained. In 2009, Asiimwe, a graduate teacher from Makerere University, enrolled for a Post-Graduate Diploma in Theology at the current Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology in UCU. He later returned to UCU, where he obtained a Master of Arts in Theology.

During his consecration ceremony on March 12, 2023, at Emmanuel Cathedral Kinyansano in Rukungiri district, western Uganda, Asiimwe, who has been the chaplain of the Anglican community at Makerere University in Uganda, thanked Orombi for being “a great mentor” in his life. In his sermon at the function, Orombi noted that he groomed Asiimwe because he knew that one time, he would become a bishop. Asiimwe now replaces Patrick Tugume, who has been the caretaker bishop since the death of the former bishop, Benon Magezi, who succumbed to Covid-19 in 2021.

Asiimwe was born on April 24, 1965 in Mparo, Rukiga district, in western Uganda, 

to Samwiri, and Samali Meisho. Samwiri was a lay reader in church. Asiimwe attended Kihanga Boys Primary School and later joined Kigezi High School for O’level and Makerere College

School for A’level. He obtained a Bachelor of Education from Makerere University and a Diploma in Education from the National Teachers College, Kabale. He has been married to Florence since 1993 and the couple has three children – Daudi, Ruth and Marjorie.

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To support Uganda Christian University programs, students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.

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By Pauline Luba
After the death of James Kibirige, the father of new Mukono Diocese Bishop Enos Kitto Kagodo, the burden of looking after the family fell on their mother. Ruth Kibirige found herself brewing local beer and selling fish to get money to keep her children in school. Occasionally, Good Samaritans would support Ruth with handouts for the family. At the time, Kagodo was in Primary Five.

While lucrative, the work Ruth engaged in to make a living for the family had a temptation hazard. As a 19-year-old, Kagodo befriended another teenager whose mother also brewed local beer.  Kagodo says his friend would steal alcohol from his mother’s stand and share it with him. What started as a one-off soon became a habit, leading Kagodo to alcoholism and juvenile delinquency.

“Peer pressure got me into a life full of drinking. We would sneak out of Bishop West Senior – my secondary school – and go drinking,” Kagodo said during an interview with Uganda Partners at his home in Mukono, central Uganda.

However, God seemed to have a different plan for Kagodo. While still in secondary school, Kagodo would attend church service every Sunday. One day, the church hosted a preacher whose gospel was especially connected with Kagodo. He felt the need to know God more and, in order to do that, he would have to get rid of his worldly pleasure. When he did, God, indeed, made him discover a new life.

But change, seldom a welcome idea in people’s lives, didn’t happen readily. For Kagodo, quitting alcohol meant losing his alcohol-drinking friends and figuring out how to spend the time when he wasn’t drinking.

He found answers to many of the challenges in service.  Kagodo has since been able to serve the Anglican Church in various capacities, including as parish priest, archdeacon, diocesan health coordinator and as the provost of St. Phillip’s and Andrew’s Cathedral in Mukono. His latest position of service is the Bishop of Mukono Anglican Diocese, a position he assumed on February 26, 2023, at a plush consecration ceremony at the St. Phillip’s and St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Mukono.

Kagodo says his story of alcohol and conversion is a testimony that encourages youth, especially those who may be facing the same challenge, to believe that there is always light at the end of the tunnel. He encourages youth to  seek a higher form of spirituality and to always think about their life after death, in cases where they get temptations to engage in inappropriate acts. 

To become bishop, Kagodo competed against his friend, the Rev. Godfrey Ssengendo, for the position. Kagodo said he was prepared for any result. 

“Whatever the outcome, I would have praised the Lord. Ssengendo is a good friend. Any of us is able to do the job well,” Kagodo said. 

A text message from his bishop, James William Ssebaggala, on the afternoon of January 18, the day the voting took place, announced to Kagodo that he had sailed through in the elections. Anglican bishops in Uganda are elected by the House of Bishops, which is composed of active Diocesan and Assistant Bishops.

After completing his Senior Four at Bishop West Senior School, Kagodo briefly stopped studying. He, thereafter, proceeded to acquire a certificate, progressed to study theology and then became a deacon. He studied at Uganda Christian University (UCU) from 2011 to 2014, obtaining a Master of Divinity. He says he enjoyed studying at UCU because of its deep roots in Christianity and a good studying environment.

“The university has many denominations and gives a chance for everyone to learn about God through its course units,” Kagodo said. “I also liked the fact that as an older person studying, I was made to feel welcome and comfortable at the university.” 

This year, Kagodo and his wife, Catherine Namuddu, are celebrating 27 years of marriage. The bishop says his wife has been his biggest support system. 

When not doing church work, one is likely to find Kagodo either playing sports with his children, listening to music or spending time with friends.

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To support Uganda Christian University programs, students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.

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By Kefa Senoga
The church relations department at Uganda Christian University (UCU) has embarked on training the Anglican clergy in Uganda with contemporary skills to be able to evangelize better in the ever-changing world.

The Manager of Church Relations at UCU, the Rev. Richard Mulindwa, said that one of the areas they have put emphasis on as they train the clergy is educating them to integrate Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in their work. The church relations department acts as a link between the university and the church.

“During lockdown, many of our churches shut down completely whereas our colleagues from the Pentecostal church were using digital and online media to do pastoral work and evangelism,” the Rev. Mulindwa notes.

The gospel does not stop at preaching at the pulpit, Mulindwa argues, emphasizing that the clergy need to use all the available avenues to take the gospel to the people. 

“Social media, and even just an SMS (Short Message Service), can be powerful tools for reaching out to people with a word of encouragement,” he said.

Among the other issues that the training delves in is land matters. 

“Many land grabbers are targeting church land and part of the reason it’s happening is because some members of the clergy have limited knowledge in that aspect,” Mulindwa explained.

He said they have partnered with the UCU School of Law, to provide lawyers among the students and lecturers, to guide the participants on how best they can deal with issues related to land management.

The church has on several occasions been embroiled in disputes, especially on land situated in prime areas, with most of them having squatters. In 2016, Anglican Archbishop Stanley Ntagali and close to 40 other bishops escaped an attack by a mob when the prelates had gone to inspect a church-owned land in Mukono, central Uganda.

In 2020, operating on the orders of a businessman in Kampala, workers demolished a Church in Ndeeba, Kampala, with the businessman claiming ownership of the land on which the church was sitting. Situations like these make the training a timely venture for the clerics.

The Church of Uganda oversees 55 pre-primary schools, 4,904 church-founded primary schools, 460 secondary schools, 50 post-primary schools, including vocational training schools, and six universities. According to Mulindwa, the training, which usually takes up to three days, with a certificate presented to the participants, also focuses on how the chaplaincies in such institutions can be revamped so that they play a more influential role in the spiritual nourishment of the learners in the institutions where they belong. 

Many parents take their children to church-founded institutions with the hope that Christian values will be instilled in the learners, a role that is often played by the chaplaincy. 

Mulindwa said they have so far reached members of the clergy in the dioceses of Mukono, Busoga, Mbale and Rwenzori, and that some of the responses they have been getting are encouraging. 

“Many churches have started online prayers out of this training and many pastors have taken up online ministries from their respective dioceses and parishes,” Mulindwa said.

Since the members of the clergy are servants of God in the church and family people outside church, they are also exposed to the every-day challenges that families go through. “We also talk to the clergy about child upbringing, issues of marriage, and sex, among others, because they are a pertinent matter in their lives,” Mulindwa said, noting that people who are approaching retirement at their workplaces also have been included. 

Last year, UCU also extended an invitation to teachers in mission schools in the Church of Uganda to participate in a special training to enable certificate-holding teachers to be able to upgrade and attain bachelor’s degrees through specialized programmes that suit their work schedules.

“The government is nowadays demanding that all teachers are graduates. We are calling upon teachers from the mission schools to come and enroll for the courses,” UCU Vice Chancellor Assoc. Prof. Aaron Mushengyezi said last year. 

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To support Uganda Christian University programs, students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.

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By Pauline Luba
In 2022, Jessica Hughes, a USA missionary serving at Uganda Christian University (UCU), Mukono, found herself in every academic’s dilemma of trying to condense a voluminous thesis into a journal article. For Hughes’ case, she was adapting a 300-plus-page thesis into an article for Missionalia, a journal of the Southern African Missiological Society. 

She succeeded. Her journal article, titled The Influence of the Missionary Legacy on the Practice of Discipleship in the Anglican Church of Uganda, was published on December 30, 2022. The article, co-authored with Marilyn Naidoo, a professor in the discipline of Practical Theology at the University of South Africa, centers on discipleship, a subject Hughes confesses she has always been passionate about. Naidoo supervised Hughes for her doctorate.

Hughes argues that currently, in the Church of Uganda setup, “evangelism is still the hallmark and priority of the church.”

“The number of people ‘saved’ in a service is often publicized, even among the bishops’

press releases regarding their pastoral visits,” the paper argues, suggesting that such actions have made discipleship take a backseat to evangelism in terms of church priorities. Much as evangelism leads to widespread professed Christianity, it may not also lead to a “skin-deep” faith. 

According to Hughes, a missionary serving under the Pennsylvania-based Society of Anglican Missionaries and Senders (SAMS), seeking to gain more believers and numbers rather than deepening the spiritual maturity of the believers makes the church “send people to evangelize, yet they are supposed to make disciples.” And she bases this argument on Matthew 28:19: “Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

Discipleship is not only bringing people to God, but also being able to relate to them and deepening their faith, Hughes, who has been a lecturer at UCU for over a decade, explained during a Zoom interview from the US state of Virginia. In addition to being a lecturer, she is currently UCU’s head of the Online Distance Learning (ODL) department – more commonly known by students as eLearning. 

During the interview, Hughes offered suggestions on how the faith of a newly saved soul could be strengthened – by spending more time in prayer and answering questions together, so that there is more learning. “It’s hard to grow in faith when one is not being corrected,” she reasoned.

Another central pillar in Hughes’ paper is the concept of inculturation, which is the process of assuming or assimilating the behaviors and beliefs of another culture. The paper argues that the lack of the inculturation of Christianity “has caused it not to become a part of the culture, and that means that Christianity, though widely accepted, has not been involved in molding and shaping the Ugandan worldview.”

The experience of Christianity, it has been argued, can be expressed by cultural means. And Hughes believes that inculturation is one of the easiest ways to attain this. The Gospel can be fused with traditional practices, she argues, citing the example of cultural dancing and singing, while still glorifying the Lord. Such a blend, Hughes’ paper argues, will lead to an African Christianity, which “honors both the culture and the gospel,” and is more relatable to Africans. Western Christianity, according to the paper, rarely gives room to the voices from the global south to be heard.

“Tribes could still have their beautiful dances and speak their beautiful languages while continuing to worship God and spreading the Gospel,” she said during the virtual interview, where Uganda Partners sought to deeper understand reflections in the article.

Hughes is aware that through her propositions, she is not asking for too much. And she subtly makes this point by drawing from the practices in Kenya, Uganda’s neighbor to the east: “An example of how to inculturate the gospel is found in the Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) and how they develop liturgies, rather than only importing liturgies from the West,” she writes. 

“The ACK has contextualized the liturgies to reflect African culture, by incorporating the ancestors, particularly in the section of the Holy Communion liturgy. Rather than the standard ‘therefore, with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven’, the Sanctus in the ACK reads, ‘therefore, with angels, archangels, faithful ancestors and all in heaven’,” she writes in the paper, as though reading from the same script that Pope Francis has always read.

In 2021, the Pope called for Christian freedom, by rooting for the respect for other people’s cultures and traditions. “How many errors have been made in the history of evangelization by seeking to impose a single cultural model,” the Pope asked during his address to the weekly general audience at the Vatican. 

Explaining that unity does not mean uniformity, the Pope argued that in the call to freedom, one discovers the true meaning of the inculturation of the Gospel.

Writing on her blog, the Virginia-USA-born missionary notes that she initially had no plans of coming to Africa as a missionary. However, this later changed. “My bishop, the Rt. Rev. John Guernsey, had suggested that I study abroad for my M.Div., and then suggested Uganda, since my home church (All Saints Anglican in Woodbridge, Virginia) had come under the Church of Uganda when we left the Episcopal Church,” she writes. 

Hughes obtained an undergraduate degree from the George Mason University in Fairfax Virginia and a certificate as a legal assistant from George Washington University in 1993. In 2005, she earned her first master’s degree in human performance systems at Marymount University based in Arlington, Virginia. Her second was the Master of Divinity from UCU, which she got in 2011. She is now a lecturer at the university’s Bishop Tucker School of Divinity and Theology.

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To support Uganda Christian University programs, students, activities and services, go to www.ugandapartners.org and click on the “donate” button, or contact UCU Partners Executive Director, Mark Bartels, at m.t.bartels@ugandapartners.org.

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