BASOGA
“This is the greatest opportunity to come to Buyende”
THE PEOPLE OF BUYENDE
Buyende sits in the Busoga region of eastern Uganda, on the southern shores of Lake Kyoga. Most families farm maize, beans, and cassava, or fish the waters where the Nile empties into the lake. Rain comes twice a year, and the harvest decides the year. Land is limited and a bad season can mean a hungry one.
Rising above the farmland is Kagulu Rock, the sacred birthplace of the Busoga kingdom, where every Kyabazinga must climb as part of his coronation. It sits at the center of the very district God called Every Bible Counts to serve.
THE SPIRITUAL SOIL
Buyende has long carried a reputation in this part of Uganda as a center of devil worship and satanic practice. Kagulu Rock, the sacred birthplace of the Busoga kingdom, sits at the heart of the district, and the spiritual authority tied to it runs deep. Pastor Andrew, our field director, has described Buyende plainly as a devil’s stronghold, and reported that many church leaders in the district had themselves been connected to that world before training arrived.
This was not always separate from church life. It lived inside it. Some pastors led from dreams and visions instead of Scripture. One well known pastor outside our program was reported to require fresh blood sacrifices of sheep before his congregation could receive forgiveness or deliverance. Syncretism, the blending of traditional spiritual practice with the Christian faith, was named directly by pastors themselves as something they had been living in and needed to repent of.
This is the ground the gospel had to take root in. Not indifference, but active spiritual opposition.
WHEN THE WORd TOOK ROOT
Buyende has long carried a reputation in this part of Uganda as a center of devil worship and satanic practice. Kagulu Rock, the sacred birthplace of the Busoga kingdom, sits at the heart of the district, and the spiritual authority tied to it runs deep. Pastor Andrew, our field director, has described Buyende plainly as a devil’s stronghold, and reported that many church leaders in the district had themselves been connected to that world before training arrived.
This was not always separate from church life. It lived inside it. Some pastors led from dreams and visions instead of Scripture. One well known pastor outside our program was reported to require fresh blood sacrifices of sheep before his congregation could receive forgiveness or deliverance. Syncretism, the blending of traditional spiritual practice with the Christian faith, was named directly by pastors themselves as something they had been living in and needed to repent of.
Yet this is the same district where pastors showed up by the hundreds through a downpour, where existing students turned newcomers into their own disciples because there was no more room to add them, and where space for training had to be built rather than simply found. The demand did not match the darkness. It outran it.
Shepherd the Word
287 pastors and ministry leaders completed eleven months of verse by verse training, representing 116 local churches. A one year follow up then carried them through four quarterly sessions of three days each, sharpening their expositional preaching. That follow up has now concluded.
Quarterly refresher trainings continue to keep them anchored in sound doctrine through expositional teaching. EBC is now preparing to plant an additional church in Buyende, led by the program's top student.
SEND THE WORD
More than 4,600 Bibles have been placed in pastors’ and church members’ hands across seven local languages, including Lusoga and Luganda. 110 study Bibles were entrusted to pastors for ongoing teaching.
SOUND THE WORD
300 Audio Bible Listening Groups now meet across the district, allowing over 4,500 people to hear God's Word every month in Lusoga and Luganda. Joseph Muwaya leads the Sound the Word initiative in Buyende, walking with 300 churches now in possession of a Proclaimer, visiting different groups weekly so no group is left to study alone. Trained churches also host 6 to 8 Gospel Film outreaches monthly, allowing roughly 14,500 people to watch and see the gospel of Jesus each year, carrying the Word into villages that had never held Scripture in their own language before.
$40 / MONTH
Keeps a village pastor in accessible Biblical Training: meals, shelter, printed curriculum, and real, in person, localized discipleship, taught in his own heart language.
After 11 months, a stack of translated Bibles is entrusted to his church, and an Audio Bible Listening Group begins within the community, extending gospel impact from one pastor, to the members, and to the entire community for years to come.