First Steps Toward Reconciliation
And Why I Decided to Stay in Rwanda By Thaddeus Rockwell Barnum
On August 31, I heard a word I never dreamed I’d hear.
I was on a monthly AMIA Council of Bishops (COB) phone call when our Chairman presented us with “options.” He asked, 1- if we wanted to stay in Rwanda; 2- if we wanted to go to ACNA or, 3- if we wanted to start a new Missionary Society. He asked each of us to respond.
“Option?” I shot back. “There are no options. We’re in relationship with Rwanda and Rwanda with us.”
Just a year before, we announced to our brothers and sisters in ACNA that we chose to be a Missionary Partner with ACNA because our identity was clear. We are Rwandans. We can’t be in two provinces. We can’t have two archbishops. We belong to an Anglican jurisdiction. It’s how we started. It’s who we are.
For ten years I have served in the episcopal office. On the document of my consecration, it states that I was “chosen a bishop for the Province of the Episcopal Church of Rwanda.” As I traveled the country helping to start new churches, preaching, confirming, ordaining, I did so as a missionary bishop in the Anglican Communion under this Rwandan authority.
And now, for the first time, I was faced with the word, “option” and the possibility — the real possibility — that division was just around the corner, crouching at the door.
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A month prior, in our July conference call, I’d learned that the June House of Bishops (HOB) meeting in Rwanda was difficult and chaotic. Their own House was negotiating change in leadership. There were new bishops and a new Archbishop. It was clearly confusing for our AMIA Chairman to witness this unrest but the plan forward seemed both clear and helpful: 1- for our Chairman to return to the next HOB meeting in Rwanda in September and, 2- for the Rwandan bishops and the AMIA bishops to meet together for a time of fellowship and prayer after the Winter Conference, January 2012.
But even more helpful was the miraculous gift that came in mid-September.
Before their HOB meeting, the Rwandan bishops came together in a retreat to seek the face of God. Led by retired Bishop John Rucyahana and focused on the biblical theme of reconciliation, the Lord did a powerful work in their midst. He brought them together in such a profound way that Archbishop Rwaje would later write, in a
letter of December 9, “…our House of Bishops continues to enjoy an unprecedented level of unity and fellowship in the Holy Spirit during this time.”
The Lord had faithfully seen them through a most difficult time of transition — a time no different than many of us experience in our local churches with the change of a new rector and new vestry members.
It was my hope that this meant the word “option” was off the table.
* * *
On December 5, my last COB conference call, I learned of a conversation that would eventually take root and change the course of AMIA altogether. Our Chairman reported that in June, at some point during or after the turbulent House of Bishops meeting in Rwanda, retired Archbishop Kolini said to our Chairman that he believed it was time for AMIA to leave Rwanda.
And with that, vision was born.
By mid-summer, our Chairman met in London with AMIA’s retired and founding archbishops. It was here, as I understand it, that the concept of a new AMIA Missionary Society took shape out of a perceived concern that AMIA was suddenly vulnerable to the leadership changes in Rwanda. As this meeting took place, the vision of the Missionary Society — a real, tangible “option” — was as yet completely unknown to, and outside the counsel of, our own Rwandan Archbishop, Onesphore Rwaje.
But it had momentum and strength. It connected the AMIA with our past because our three retired founding archbishops now put their full weight of support behind the vision. And I realized then, even when I first heard of this plan in late August, I knew that the possibility of leaving Rwanda and starting a new Missionary Society was more than just an “option.”
To me, it felt like a done deal.
A deal I knew would divide us. Or at least me. For I actually believed that we, in AMIA, at our very core, were more than canonically resident in Rwanda. We were in relationship with them, and them with us, and if the day ever came for us to be released into something different, something new, it would be have to be done together in prayer, over time, and by the unity and peace that comes from the Holy Spirit.
No, for me, I personally could not take the journey out of Rwanda.
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