“Mangu mangu!” Pastor Twikirize shouted in the Luganda language as he rushed to the tent where we were preparing for the day. “The anchor on our boat has come loose and the whole thing is crashing on the shore! You must hurry, mangu mangu!” Three of us sprang to our feet half-dressed, and after fumbling the boat key we sprinted the 100 meters to the landing site where, sure enough, our boat had broken free of her moorings. Our faithful security team struggled against a raging lake to hold its smooth fiberglass surface and large outboard motor off of other boats and obstructions. The large public transport boat had spent the night snuggled up against our vessel until morning at which point she ripped our anchor off the lake bottom. Without apology she left our guys without means to secure her on such troubled seas. With quite a bit of effort we we able to re-anchor her and assess her minimal wounds, grateful the outboard wasn’t damaged and that we wouldn’t be stranded on the island or have costly repairs.
Before leaving the mainland at the start of the week we received a phone call from one of our island pastors with a strong prophetic warning about demonic activity in the region. That very day we experienced wild waters on the lake—an occurrence that seems to be more and more common during our large events, as if Mukasa, the lake demon, throws his weight around when he’s shaken. Upon our arrival we found a handful of partisan church streams with deeply hurtful histories and a great hesitancy to work with other groups. Because of these rifts, some leaders wouldn’t gather at all and others refused to ride in the boat we had provided for the occasion. Another boat borrow failed and our first day left us without most of the invited leaders.
Once pastors did start arriving we had good meetings, but were met with a cautious skepticism. We’re never afraid of that—it’s preferable to have watchful shepherds who check out our doctrine and inspect our fruit than capricious followers who readily accept any white skin or religious organization that wanders into their pulpits. This was our fifth visit to the Koome Islands and our third attempt to meet with every lead pastor of every “born again” church. We are attempting to bring them together in unity, to develop a strategy to reach their region, and to fill the gap that existing church structures may have left them with.
We chose the fishing village of Zingoola, the geographic center of this chain of seven inhabited islands with a total population in the tens of thousands and thirty-eight churches dotting the islands’ vast shoreline. Despite the difficult beginning, our week together was powerful. About sixty leaders representing fifteen churches not only sat under the same roof, but were unmistakably inspired to walk and work together. Every morning they received teaching on Doing What Jesus Did and would afterward blanket the village with the Gospel, yielding many names of individuals who gave their hearts to Jesus, ready for follow-up by the two churches established there. In the evenings they would meet over bowls of rice and beans to talk over area leadership issues and form deeper relational bonds.
Our daily outreaches were well attended by an eager crowd of hundreds desiring the Word of God. The local government leader praised our Gospel work from the makeshift platform, and many of the area pastors joined our mission team in local songs, traditional dances, powerful testimonies, and the preaching of the Word. Many of the participating pastors expressed their surprise and delight that our team conducts such bold events, and the response of the villagers confirmed that the message had hit their hearts.
During one morning session we taught on receiving the power of the Holy Spirit according to Acts 1:8, and spent time waiting on the Lord in groups that overflowed the shed-like structure of Jesus is Lord Christian Fellowship. Normally an intense time of crying out to God or of quiet seeking, our team enjoys this session the most during our regular regional events. But after a few minutes of intense prayer, it was clear we had a problem. Those who sincerely desired God to clothe them with power to be His witnesses were almost immediately discouraged by two ladies who began screaming and flailing their arms. Seems their spiritual tradition had become one of emotional overflow and the violence of their “prophetic” utterances succeeded in stifling the longings of the entire congregation. Very quickly the whole church fell silent as these two bantered back and forth, and attempts from the pulpit to quiet them were left unheeded. The moment was gone, and a look of helpless despair hung on every face. No one wants to ask for a fish and end up with a strange flailing scorpion. We took time in the next session to look at Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians that seemed all too appropriate for such a group, and while all were visibly encouraged, there remains much work to be done to see the Church flourish in the gifts of the Holy Spirit while firmly grounded in the Word of God.
The anchors of God’s church on Lake Victoria’s Islands seem to have come loose, ripped up by subjective spiritual experiences and compounded by the builders of individual ministry kingdoms. A heavy emphasis on dreams and visions, a fear of transient apostles and prophets, and a lack of leadership backbone continually crashes lives of fickle believers on the church’s fractured shoreline. But by the grace of God and through much effort we will succeed in re-anchoring the Church in the Word of God. As she stands up in unity, no demonic force and no tradition of men will be able to stop her advance to every unreached home and village in her region.
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