Chapter Twelve
“I beg your pardon?”
I was standing in the office of the general secretary of the Bible Society in Uganda. I had just come from a training course in Bible distribution and marketing at the University of Zambia. Outside was the usual noise, dust, and chaos of Kampala, a city made up of lives thrown together like a pack of playing cards released into a storm. Inside the office the occupant had done his best to keep the city’s disorder out. A lace curtain softened the window, and the dark wood desk was weighed down by neat piles of papers and small towers of Bibles. The walls were covered in homemade, handwritten posters that outlined the leadership structure within the organization. My boss’s name was always written a little larger and with a little more care than the others. He repeated his statement to me.
“Your performance is below average, your work is poor, and we cannot continue to employ you. Go and try your luck elsewhere.”
The room was small, and the man who was telling me that he was no longer my employer appeared smaller still. He remained calm, delivering his verdict without emotion or any obvious signs of malice. Yet nothing could suppress my anger. Nothing could keep the city’s chaos from this room.
During my work for various Christian organizations I have come to learn that forgiveness cannot be a one-time decision. I have discovered this as a father as well, and of course as a sibling and a son. But the lessons learned in offices like those of the head of the Bible Society have been some of the hardest to take. The Bible says that bad times will never fail to come; I suppose I never imagined they would come so frequently from those working for the wider church.
Back in 1994 I was in the office of the Bible Society’s general secretary because I was working as the Society’s national distribution officer. I had started well, and they had sent me to Tanzania to attend a course in marketing and Bible distribution. I went, studied hard, and performed well. They said I was the best-performing student.
I reported back to Kampala, standing before the neat desk and lace-fringed window, expecting to have my six-month probationary period signed off as a success. I had sold all the Bibles I had been given and believed I had performed well, fulfilling my potential throughout the preceding months. I was sure I was working well, and yet my boss was telling me otherwise. My boss was giving me the sack.
I was stunned. I had no inclination that this was going to happen, and with a wife and now two children to look after, the loss of my job—and the home that came with it—was a colossal blow. I had never been that angry since becoming a Christian, nor have I experienced such rage in the years that have passed since that time. I was mad at them for ignoring the truth that I was doing well, mad at them for duping me this way. Once more I was pulled down from the truck and left shocked and saddened at the roadside.
I considered appealing to the board. I felt that I had a case, that my dismissal was unfair, but what sort of victory would the board be able to grant me? I would still have to stand in this office, still have to submit to this man, and more than likely still end up at some point in the future being told again to “try my luck” elsewhere.
Later I discovered that at the time he sacked me, my boss was fearful for his job and was on a warning for his own performance. Later still we were reconciled, but we will get to that in good time. As I left the office of the Bible Society that afternoon, I wondered how to tell Connie that we were to be evicted from our house—our beautiful, well-appointed house that even had electricity. How to tell her that we would be on the move so soon after we had started this new life together in Kampala.
A friend reminded me that it is God who commands our destinies, not board members or paranoid bosses. I was not a lost cause, and there was no need for an appeal, no need to fight. And so I did what I had done so many times before when times of crisis loomed: I went back to my beautiful homeland around Kabale. I became a teacher at Kigezi High School once more. The only problem was finding somewhere to live. We could only afford an old abandoned house that had been home to nothing more than cows and an informal public toilet for almost a year. It was empty when we arrived, but the odor was repulsive and overpowering. We were now moving from our luxury bungalow to a toilet! Even the driver who had transported us and our possessions from Kampala wept with us.
We fetched water to clean the house, wondering through the tears what God had in store for us. But my son, even though he was small, sang one simple song over and over again: “If not for Jesus, I would not be here.”
Over time the place became our home. Despite the fact that the roof was missing in many rooms, the house became a refuge for us.
A few months later, a friend from England sent me a check with a letter that said, “They shall stay in houses they did not build.” For some reason (I must not have read the letter properly), I wondered whether God was about to provide somewhere else for us to live. So I banked the check, and Connie and I started to look for a plot where we could build a house of our own.
On the way from the bank, cash in hand, I met the owner of the house we had been staying in since we arrived. He was a great friend of mine and a mentor. I knew that his wife was due to fly to America to start her PhD, and I accompanied him now to say good-bye to her.
As we were walking he told me she had just found out that she was unable to fly out, as she had not raised enough money. “She is not going,” he said. “We are five million short.”
“Oh,” I said. “That is not good.”
“Do you want to buy the house from us?”
I did, but there was no way this would be possible. Apart from the fact that it was in need of much work, it was far too expensive for us. I shrugged as I replied, “Eh! That is too much money for me. It must be worth twenty million.” Suddenly I stopped as I remembered what I was carrying in my pocket. “But I do have some cash here. We are going to buy a plot somewhere and start to build.”
“How much do you have?”
“I have five million.”
His eyes popped wide and his jaw dropped. “Eh!” he shouted. “Stay there!”
He disappeared inside to rouse his wife. She was lying on their bed, depressed. She had been due to leave for the airport that afternoon, and the disappointment at not going was too much for her.
I could hear her husband from where I was sitting outside. “Do you know that God has brought an angel here? The amount you need is exactly what Birungi has. We have abandoned that house anyway … why do we not give it to him as a gift?”
His wife rushed outside and grabbed me, shouting, “Where is the money?” I handed it over. Quickly we completed the paperwork, and I returned home—to our home.
“Where is the money?” said Connie as I entered. “If you hang on to it for too long, people will come and ask you to loan them stuff, and it will soon disappear.”
“I have a letter for you, Connie.” I gave her the contract and stepped outside to look at the home we did not build but which now was ours.
Eventually Connie came out to join me. There were tears all down her face as she spoke to me.
“Do you remember what our son sang as we were crying when we arrived here? ‘If not for Jesus I would not be here.’ That is precisely what God meant by all this: to remind us that it all comes from Him.”
God’s restoration went even further than that. After I lived through four months of bitterness and anger, the general secretary of the Bible Society was sacked. He was so shocked that his heart started to give him pain and he was rushed to the hospital. I was in Kampala at the time and a mutual acquaintance told me the news. He also challenged me: What would I say at this man’s grave if I did not put things right with him?
I was reluctant, but it was good advice. When I arrived, he wept as he apologized for sacking me and explained that he was motivated by a fear that I would one day succeed him. He admitted that he had persuaded the board to fire me, confessed that he was wrong, and asked for my forgiveness.
God gave me the courage to forgive, and we were reconciled. God healed him too, and he ended up as headmaster of a secondary school when I was working in the education department of the diocese of Kigezi. Today he leads revival meetings, and he often talks to people about our time together and the power of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not about merely being tolerant, pretending that nothing happened, or being diplomatic in public. Forgiveness is a deliberate act of the will, a full pardon, an act of love that is the key to freedom.
You can repent of all your sins until you are hoarse. You can confess your faith to all, pray without ceasing, give everything you have for the work of God, read the Bible every day, and still block God’s forgiveness by an unforgiving heart. No amount of repenting, confessing, praying, or reading the Word will ever cover over, atone for, or excuse unforgiveness. There is nothing you can do that can take the place of forgiveness.
The waterfall at Kisiizi had failed to claim my life; instead the hospital that lies at its foot was the place where so much healing among my family, including my aunt and my father, took place. It was also the place where I met some wonderful muzungu from England who were working in the hospital. They were kind to me and helped me get the contacts and the money to travel to the United Kingdom to study.
When I arrived in Britain it was a terrible culture shock. I thought that people would greet me when I went into their church, but on my first Sunday in the country I entered the local church like a ghost. Not one person spoke to me. It was a terrible shock, and it did not happen just once. I attended the church for a whole month, and still I passed in and out of the doors with not one person acknowledging me.
I was enrolled in a two-year course at a Bible college, and on good advice I tried another church—St. Andrew’s Chorleywood. As I passed through the doors I was asked my name and where I was from. I told them.
“You’re from Uganda? Do you know Bishop Lyth?”
I did not, but I had heard of him. He was the founder and first bishop of the diocese of Kigezi, the man who had laid the foundations on which the East African Revival was able to thrive.
The greeter at the door knew Bishop Lyth. “He has been a pastor here ever since he retired. Would you like to meet him?”
Within a few days I was sitting in a comfortable English drawing room, drinking tea and talking Rukiga—the language of my people—with a man whose legacy had strengthened my own history as well as the history of thousands of others.
But Bishop Lyth was not the only connection with Kabale that this London suburb had to offer. I was told that there was another church nearby that was well loved by Bishop Festo. He would preach at Emmanuel Church Northwood, and his personal secretary was still a member of the congregation there. As I arrived they were very welcoming, the vicar asking me to come up to the front and say hello. As I approached I spotted a picture of Bishop Festo on the wall, and I was happy to oblige when they asked if I would give a little of my testimony. They said I had five minutes, but I was on African time: I took fifteen. But people wept as they heard what I had to say.
I was invited to return and give my story in full the following Thursday night. The impact it had was immense; people asked me to go to their houses to speak to their children, their husbands, or their wives. The vicar asked me to come and speak to people who were suffering from depression, and I am still in contact with some of those I was privileged to pray with and see Jesus heal.
I started to walk the streets, praying for the people living in their large houses whose doors were always shut. Often I felt God push me to knock on one of those doors. Most of the time what happened would be fairly brief. Once their eyes settled on me their faces would be set with fear, so I would quickly introduce myself as “Medad from Uganda.” I would ask if I could pray for them. They often said no. I later found out that there had been some Nigerian con men at work in the area, and that had made residents wary of any strange African men acting unusually. It did not bother me, though; I was just going bananas for Jesus.
One time my introductory speech was cut short as the lady on the other side slammed the door hard in my face. She must have felt convicted, as she opened it again a few moments later.
“Why are you here? I have heard so many people talk about you. What is it about?”
I told her my testimony—the short version! I told her about grace, forgiveness, and the ability to start again.
She started to weep. She had separated from her husband many years earlier, and he was now in the hospital, dying. She asked me, “Do you think my husband would forgive me?”
“Why not?” I said. “The moment you accept Christ and ask forgiveness, ask Him for His hand of peace; your husband will forgive you.”
Some days later her son drove her the four hours up to Manchester to visit her estranged husband in the hospital. That very night she called me and told me how she had cried in his arms for an hour. And she told me that before she could ask for his forgiveness, he apologized to her for mistreating her and asked her to forgive him.
I was able to attend his funeral a few weeks later. He had died at peace with his wife, who spoke words of powerful grace and healing in front of the mourners.
During my two years living in the West I never overcame the sense of shock at the way people dressed, especially on the odd occasion that I visited a beach. They were—by African standards—naked and did not appear to be ashamed at all. I talked to my friends and they said it was normal, but I was still shocked. The divorce rate was equally worrying, as was the number of children who wandered around the streets, doing nothing in the day and embracing trouble at night. I would talk to them, too, and I developed a pub ministry as a result, talking to young people and bringing them to the church.
I made the mistake of thinking that a Bible college was a place where students would dedicate themselves to the pursuit of a more godly way of living, where they would sacrifice the appeal of the world in favor of getting closer to God. But the way they behaved was just like those who attended a secular university. I saw people drinking and behaving in inappropriate ways with their boyfriends and girlfriends. But I made many friends. I knew from my own experience that God calls His people to deal in grace far more than judgment. As the principal told me, God does not call the qualified, but He qualifies the called.
Living in England with my wife and children was good in many ways, but, despite being offered a job as a youth pastor, I felt strongly that I had a role to play here in my own country. And I wanted my children to grow up in Africa. Children in the West are given too much freedom, in my opinion, and there is little sense of right and wrong. They have too much freedom with too little framework for their behavior. Connie and I talked about it for four months, and we decided to come back to Uganda. And so I began work for the diocese.
This was made possible because in England I had met the new bishop of Kigezi, Bishop George. He and I had got on well, or at least that is what I thought at the time. He had offered to ordain me when I returned to Uganda, and having felt as though I had been through a period of revival within my soul while abroad, I was excited to see what was in store for me once I was back home in Uganda. Surely there were even more exciting things ahead.
In 1998 my family and I returned once more to Kabale, ahead of my proposed ordination. I was funded by clergy back in England and took on what I thought would be the interim role of diocesan education secretary. Within a few months I would become the Reverend Medad Birungi and could set about taking on some fresh challenges. While I was settling into my new job, I presented my thesis on charismatic renewal to the bishop and his staff; soon afterward things started to go wrong. They did not like what they read and called me a heretic. I kept preaching the gospel, healing the sick, and casting out demons, but my hopes for ordination were dashed. The bishop refused to ordain me.
The same thing happened the next year. And the next. For three years I was told that I would be ordained along with the next batch, but each time the plans were put on hold. I felt rejected, abandoned, and useless, now that the church had also rejected me. Bitterness and unforgiveness were rekindled, and it made me depressed again and again. But I kept repenting and forgiving. My relationship with the bishop deteriorated, particularly as the teacher and orphan sponsorship programs that my department was running were attracting increasing overseas support. There was also greater jealousy and envy from the clergy. I became increasingly stressed, until I got a scholarship for a PhD and asked the bishop to release me. I left the diocese but kept lecturing at Uganda Christian University, Kabale Campus, part-time to pay for my wife’s education, as she was working toward a degree there. Until I was fired. They told me that since I had left the diocese, I should not teach in a church-founded institution.
For a long time I had wanted to start an evangelistic association, to work alongside the increasing number of people from the West who wanted to visit Uganda to help preach and teach. Eventually Swallow Evangelistic Revival Ministries was born. It was a non-denominational organization, though we did ask the bishop to be our patron. He agreed on the condition that the diocese would oversee it. We knew we could not limit it that way, and more trouble followed as the relationship between us suffered further.
I started to exercise spiritual gifts, particularly healings and deliverance, but the more these areas of my life seemed to grow, the greater the tensions between the bishop and me became. When I resigned my post as diocesan education secretary, my wife’s job with Kigezi High School was also terminated. In 2002 the bishop called a synod to ask people whether they thought I was forming a heretical cultic movement, and he advised the synod not to have anything to do with me or Swallow Ministries. The majority said yes, I was a heretic. They thought I was going to follow in the footsteps of a Ugandan Catholic cult called the Restoration of the Ten Commandments. In 2000 they had burned 1,500 people alive in a church. The diocese claimed I was just as dangerous as the priest who had started the cult and suggested that they should not associate with our ministry or me. They stopped me from preaching; almost overnight I found myself in exile in Kampala. For the sake of peace the organization was disbanded. But the root of bitterness started to grow again.
Life was difficult once more. My wife and children had to leave our beautiful home in Kabale because some of the local Christians had taken to intimidating them, whispering accusations, and blackening their names. All the rejections from the past lined up and added their force to this latest blow from my spiritual father figure, the bishop, together with the clergy and Christians who followed his lead. I suffered from the poison of malicious, unjustified accusations, and the rejection did not stop when we left the diocese. I had a scholarship for further study, but it was canceled. I went to work at Kampala International University but was sacked after one term. I was invited to attend an interview at Kyambogo University, but they canceled the appointment without explanation. I managed to get another job, one that came with accommodation that had been provided by a kind muzungu who knew me, but the employer ended up taking the accommodation away from us when the contract was terminated.
We were financially crippled and had to live on charity. We had four children and no job. We were living in people’s houses, sleeping on the floors of whatever friends we could find. It was difficult and served only to increase the sense of bitterness and anger within me. Eventually we were saved by a kind church that paid for our accommodation and by some faithful overseas believers who supported us for two years.
But what happened next was what really destroyed and shattered me.
The archbishop of Uganda at the time—a man called His Grace Livingstone Nkoyoyo—was supportive of me. And I liked him. He took me on and sent me on a short course at Uganda Christian University so that he could ordain me. At last my dream of being ordained was about to be realized. I approached September 2003 with my confidence high; if the head of the entire Anglican Church in Uganda was behind me, what could possibly go wrong? I invited people from all over to attend the ceremony. There were guests from back in Kabale, Rwanda, Burundi, Kenya, and even the United Kingdom—two hundred in all.
On the night before our Sunday service ordination, I gathered along with the other ordinands to make our vows. Suddenly the archbishop was called out. I was suspicious, even more so when a friend from Kabale in the room warned me that something was happening.
I was called into a meeting with Connie. All the big men from the church in Uganda were there. They told me that the bishop had objected to my ordination. He had repeated his accusations of heresy and had threatened to resign if they went ahead and ordained me. Their verdict was as sharp as that knife my uncle had used to slash my foot as I grazed on bananas at the top of the tree: “We are canceling your ordination until you sort things out with Bishop George.”
Connie screamed and fell to the ground. She was having trouble breathing, and my own sense of being crushed was momentarily lifted as together with a friend I struggled to carry her out to a car.
But the feelings could not be buried forever. The sense of devastation was immense, as potent as any poison I had ever feared. All the old bitterness returned: from my father, from my uncles, from my aunts, from my mother-in-law, from the Bible Society. All the anger, humiliation, and shame returned. What would I tell people? How could I explain this to them? I wept all night. Connie recovered after thirty minutes as we were driven home, where two hundred visitors were waiting for us in a preordination night vigil. We were all exhausted, overcome by stress, humiliation, fear, anger, bitterness, and depression. Connie was so weak that four men had to carry her to her bed. When the cheering crowd of visitors, friends, and relatives were told what had happened, they wailed and cried; others screamed, and my sister fainted. Hearing the cries of all those people sank me into bitterness again.
I cried all night. It was only in the morning that I was saved by a phone call from Bishop Henry Orombi, the archbishop-elect. He told me to meet him right away, and when we met I cried in his loving arms. After twenty minutes I stopped. He encouraged me, prayed for me, and asked me to attend the ordination service anyway.
I turned up at the next day’s ceremony. The archbishop stood up and explained the situation to the assembled congregation, who knew nothing of the previous evening’s events. “We were going to ordain Medad Birungi, but there are problems with his bishop that need to get sorted out. Pray for him. Pray for them both. But we are going to commission him as a lay evangelist.”
Months passed, and eventually I received a job offer from the vice chancellor of Kyambogo University, the place that had canceled my appointment. The fuss at the ordination ceremony had set him straight, and he offered me a job.
Perhaps it might seem an odd thing to spend so much time and energy pursuing ordination, but for me it offered the potential to work much more effectively within the country I so dearly love. Perhaps it is a system that will not last for much longer, but for now the Anglican Church in Uganda—as well as in much of Africa—is a powerful force with the potential to serve and support millions. To work outside of its power structures would have been to turn my back on my spiritual forefathers and my spiritual heritage.
Mercifully it took only another year for me to finally be ordained. In 2004 His Grace Henry Orombi, now the archbishop of the province of the Church of Uganda and bishop of the diocese of Kampala, a long-standing friend and mentor, made it possible. I had worked with him in evangelistic missions and conventions and in the healing and deliverance ministry, and I used to translate for him whenever he came to preach in western Uganda. On my ordination he declared to me and to Connie, “The time of tears and humiliation is over. The time of joy and glory has come!”
He was right. He has been a loving, caring, affirming, close, and dependable father to me. We love him, and we are proud of him. He has done an incredible work in restoring my confidence and vision of reviving the Anglican Church of Uganda. He is not only my bishop but a very close friend and spiritual father. He has prayed for me, trusted me, and protected me. He made me an acting chaplain of a big chapel even when I was still a deacon. My ministry flourished, and the church grew in quality and quantity and became one of the fastest-growing churches in Uganda. After five years of a joyful, fulfilling, and anointed ministry, he promoted me to my current post of diocesan missions, evangelism, and church-planting coordinator for the diocese of Kampala. I like this job, and I am now coordinating twenty-three congregations in the areas of mission and evangelism, discipleship and church planting, healing and deliverance. Many people are getting healed, delivered, and reconciled.
When I look back upon this journey now I can so clearly see God at work. He was never absent. He never went missing. He has always been with me. How else could anyone explain the growth of the church I planted? We tried to practice what had once been branded heretical by the bishop, bringing together the best of the Anglican tradition with openness to the Holy Spirit. I found a chapel growing with a congregation of some one thousand members, and by the time I left, there were about six thousand of us. We started with a small church and built a huge cathedral. God and God alone was the architect.
My journey along the winding roads of forgiveness was not over. In many ways I know it never will be—I still have to practice forgiveness today. But as the church grew, I knew I had to put things right with Bishop George.
So I telephoned him and told him I had forgiven him. He said, “Okay,” but nothing more. Six months later he met with Connie and me at Namirembe Guest House in Kampala. We met and sat and sorted our things out. Almost. The reconciliation did not really take place—he did not tell people in Kabale that we had fixed things, and the ban on my ministering in the area remained in place.
And then in 2005 there came the final breakthrough. I smile today when I remember the setting: an East African Revival convention meeting in Kabale. I was asked to be the translator for a visiting muzungu speaker who insisted I attend. He spoke about the episode from the Gospels when Jesus and His disciples were caught up in a great storm. They needed a great prayer to be answered by a great person in order to have a great landing.
Holiness, integrity, truth. These had been the hallmarks of those involved in the great revival of the past, but they were not the only traits that were valued. Repentance and forgiveness had featured just as highly. There must have been something in the air during that meeting, but I was not so aware. All I knew was that this was the first time I had taken to a stage in Kabale in years, and the conflicts had hurt me. Forgiveness had cost me.
The speaker finished his sermon, and the bishop walked onto the stage. As he reached the front he asked me to stay where I was and not to sit down just yet. And then it came—out of nowhere, it seemed to me. The bishop, in front of thousands, said the words I longed for but never thought I would hear. He said he was sorry for all he had wrongly done against me. He asked for my forgiveness. He asked for reconciliation. Then he announced that I was free to preach in any church in the diocese.
How can I explain the joy and peace between us that followed? I accepted and asked him to forgive me as well, which he did. I also asked for forgiveness from those who had been wounded by our conflicts, and the bishop asked other bishops from western Uganda to come up onto the stage and welcome me. I forgave him publicly, and Connie was called up to the front: It was like a pair of prodigals coming home! People embraced one another and sang, and there were tears after tears flowing from every one of us.
The bishop and I embraced for a long time. The tombstone had been rolled away, and Lazarus had come out. Just as Jesus told the mourners to unbind His friend and let him go, so too has the bishop continued to release me. Since that meeting he has continually invited me to preach in meetings, retreats, and conventions in his diocese. The bishop is now a very close friend of mine, and I love him, trust him, and am proud of him. He is special to me.
I had to repent of my bitterness and anger toward the bishop, and doing so added to the long list of things from which the Lord has released me: family hurts, economic hurts, academic hurts, work-related hurts, political hurts, religious hurts, sexually related hurts, and sectarian-related hurts. I am now healed, delivered, and free, and I have realized that the only way for us to be released from the past is to forgive.
What does it mean to forgive? It means obeying a direct command from God. It means following Jesus’ example. It means being open to the healing and deliverance that follow. It means embracing repentance, reconciliation, and brokenness. It means seeing a release of prayer and intercession, an increase in joyfulness, and a radical rise in missionary zeal. To forgive is to grow, to live, to love. To forgive is to follow Jesus. To forgive is to leave behind the tomb and to walk out, surrounded by fresh air and new life, toward the open arms of a waiting, loving God.
Back on that stage, with all the holy chaos breaking out around us, my face covered in tears, I knew I was in the middle of a life-changing experience. The bishop’s words were simple, as was our embrace, but it was nothing short of a revolution.