Rwanda

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) works in partnership with the Presbyterian Church of Rwanda, which was established in 1959. Today, the church consists of 800,000 members in 96 parishes country-wide. The mission statement of the church is “to evangelize by proclaiming the love and salvation offered by God through his son Jesus Christ and to manifest the love of God through concrete actions of human and social development.”

In 2013, Presbyterian Church of Rwanda established house groups across the entire church. Congregations were organized into cells of 12 to 15 families, and members of these groups began meeting weekly for Bible study, prayer, and social support. These groups have contributed significantly to numerical and spiritual growth of the church. In 2013 and 2014, the church, challenged by the spread of Pentecostal approaches, also held a series of workshops to train pastors in Reformed perspectives of deliverance. Through its many schools, Presbyterian Church of Rwanda provides education to thousands of Rwandan children. The church’s Development and Health Departments work to improve health and to address challenges of poverty and declining availability of agricultural land for the country’s growing population. The church does remarkable work at all levels of the church to reconcile those whose parents were jailed for acts of genocide and those whose parents died during the genocide. Through the church’s efforts, God has healed families and relationships in unimaginable ways.

Presbyterian Church of Rwanda trains theological students at the Protestant Institute of Arts and Social Sciences, Butare, Rwanda, an institute privately owned by five Protestant Churches. The Institute has expanded to include faculties of Education and Development Studies in addition to the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies. Training of desperately needed theological students is restricted by limited funds available for their support.