The growth of Seventh-day Adventist Church in Gisenyi City, North West Rwanda Field

Abstract

Gisenyi SDA Church was established in 1968 in the Northwestern part of Rwanda. Since then, this church experienced a very slow church growth to the point that the total gross of its membership went up to 3782 church members over the City population of 83,623 by 2015. That is to say a rate of 4.5 percent of SDA Church members of the total population of the City. Even though many evangelistic campaigns were done in Gisenyi City, the growth rate of church members is still very low compared to the population. This being the case, focus is needed in evangelizing this City in more systematic and strategic way. The most promising methods to evangelize would be mobilizing pastors and laity, elders and church members at the same time as one man. Since most of those who will be involved in reaching out to unreached people of Gisenyi City are uneducated church members without skills in matters concerning evangelism, the program of equipping them is an obvious necessity. The researcher used the purposive method in sampling data. Both secondary and primary data were consulted during this research. Primary data was collected with the help of interview given to the church pastors, elders, and church members. The major findings revealed as shown in tables 7 and 8 that both four pastors and fifteen church elders agree that church growth is hindered by members being so busy and lacking training. After a spiritual revival and training of Gisenyi SDA Church members, a remarkable change appeared. The mid-week prayer attendance rate increased from 55.8% to 75%. Following oikos and public evangelism, 267 people were baptized and integrated into small groups for retention. Therefore the researcher concludes that without equipping the church members, growth will still remain low. It is recommended that more training should be carried out if the church is to realize the mission of the Master.