Inching Closer to North Africa

World Witness has been seeking partnerships in recent years that may help us begin work in the predominantly Muslim region of North Africa. World Witness may have found such a partner. 

Over the years, World Witness leadership met Pastor Patrick Jok of the Sudanese Reformed Church (SRC). The SRC is a member of the International Council of Reformed Churches, a Reformed, confessional church network. Pastor Patrick is the General Secretary of the SRC.  

South Sudan separated from Sudan in 2011, after a decades-long civil war in Sudan. The goal was to give the South Sudanese, primarily a Christian people, their own country. In theory, this would prevent further slaughter by the regular Muslim Sudanese population and local Arab Militias. Unfortunately, South Sudan’s own civil war began in 2013, less than two years after it became a nation. 

This spring, Lee Shelnutt and I traveled to South Sudan to explore a new partnership with the SRC. Pastor Patrick met us when we landed in the capital, Juba. He drove us through the downtown, which has few central buildings and is mostly a mix of small storefronts and markets. Pollution is rampant, and sewers run through the streets in places. The city is pockmarked with refugee camps, one of the largest being a Sudanese refugee camp set up in the city’s central cemetery. Sudan has recently entered their own civil war which has swelled the population of Juba significantly. 

There is a general sadness in the people of South Sudan that I have not seen among other Africans. Driving through a city where every house has a wall topped with razor wire, or at least a menacing bamboo fence, one can grasp how a persistent lack of security has robbed the South Sudanese of joy. Still today, you cannot leave the city limits of Juba by vehicle without the risk of being robbed and/or killed. The violence of the civil war here, which officially ended in 2018, and a new civil war in neighboring Sudan, has stripped most of the hope from the population.  

We visited a large refugee camp of internally displaced people. In the camp was a small preaching station, where people gathered to greet us in the name of Christ. They remarked at how happy they were to be remembered and visited by Western Christians. The children’s choir sang a heartwarming song that radiated hopefulness. Though the lack of food and security peppered most conversations, their main prayer request was for more Bibles. These are truly a people with so little earth-bound possessions that they are left only with heaven-bound joy.  

Amidst all these difficulties, the Sudanese Reformed Church persists. It has started four schools and maintains about 15 churches in South Sudan. The churches in predominately Muslim Sudan have had to close due to the civil war in Khartoum, though there is a strong wish to reopen them as soon as possible. It was clear that the SRC has had no consistent partners in helping them develop their pastors. Their desire to reach Muslims and their gracious, loving heart for Christ, not to mention theological alignment, make the SRC a strong potential partner for World Witness and moves us ever closer to North Africa.