Several weeks ago, the Rev. Canon Dr. Alison Barfoot was approached by a rector from the Diocese of South Carolina who wanted to build relationships between his parish and the Church of Uganda. It was the type of meeting — a “divine appointment,” she calls it — that moves her to awe and joy. When people ask how they can pray for her, she requests divine appointments, health and safety.
 
Dr. Barfoot, who completed a Doctor in Ministry from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in 1999, is Assistant for International Relations to the Most Rev. Henry Luke Orombi, Archbishop of the Church of Uganda.
 
Why are these meetings important? While in Herndon, Va., for a missions conference sponsored by the Anglican District of Virginia and Anglican Global Missions Partners on Oct. 24, Dr. Barfoot said, “I’m a matchmaker.” While Americans typically use that term for arranging romantic relationships, Dr. Barfoot’s matchmaking is in the service of a larger goal: She wants to deepen relationships among Anglicans with the Church of Uganda.
 
“The call that God gave to me is to see eastern Africa as a missionary force,” she told conference participants. “A mission force for the unreached — that’s my passion.”
 
It’s a passion that fits well in her work as Director of Mission for Global Mobilization Ministries (www.globalmm.org). The mission organization’s goal is “to empower Africans to evangelize and wholistically disciple unreached people groups.”
 
To reach people who have never heard the gospel, and to help those who have, she strives to connect Anglicans worldwide with the Church of Uganda’s missionary efforts. Such connections are made on both congregation-to-congregation and congregation-to-diocese levels.
 
Early Relationships
 
Building church relationships began with her parish work. After receiving a Master of Divinity from Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in 1986, she served parishes in Gibsonia and Aliquippa, Pa.; Gainesville, Va.; and Overland Park, Kan. She believes that serving such a variety of congregations — from established churches to a newer plant that reverted from church to mission status and then grew rapidly under her leadership — helped her begin to deal with “the complexity of relationships” in church life.
 
Dr. Barfoot’s journey to forging internationally complex relationships began when she undertook a Sharing of Missions Abroad mission to Uganda in 1994. She instantly fell in love with the country and its people.
 
In September 1995, she served as an observer at the Global Conference for Dynamic Evangelism Beyond 2000 (more commonly known as G-CODE or G-CODE 2000) at the Kanuga Conference Center. The conference was organized by the Anglican Communion Office to determine the progress of the communion’s Decade of Evangelism and enable participants to share best evangelism practices. There, she intentionally built relationships with the Ugandans present.
 
One of those Ugandans at the conference was Henry Orombi, then serving as Bishop of the Diocese of Nebbi. She took up his offer to visit the diocese more than once, visiting Uganda every year after that until he was elected Archbishop in 2004. In 2003, she was made a canon of the diocese.
 
When she received the call to serve as associate rector (later co-rector) at Christ Church, Overland Park, in 1997, she informed the parish that if she was hired, she would bring her “international friends” — her Ugandan relationships — with her. She fulfilled that promise by focusing Christ Church’s already fledgling relationship with the Church of Uganda on the Diocese of Nebbi.
 
When Archbishop Orombi asked her to come on board as his only international relations staff member in 2004, she did not hesitate. “I didn’t even have to say ‘I’ll pray about it’ because I had been praying about [serving in Uganda],” she said.
 
In her work as Archbishop Orombi’s assistant, she ensures that he is updated and apprised on international issues, including Anglican Communion events; prepares him for staff briefings and other meetings; and occasionally assists with ecumenical work.
 
Relationships with American Parishes
 
At one time, another plank of Dr. Barfoot’s work involved visiting dozens of former Episcopal Church parishes under the Church of Uganda’s oversight, including Christ Church. (In June 2009, the province released those parishes to the Anglican Church in North America [ACNA].) The connections between those parishes and the Church of Uganda were based on two factors, both of which match Dr. Barfoot’s call: mutual mission and relationships.
 
“We wanted it to be a tangible relationship,” she said. To that end, rectors were required to visit Uganda at least once a year. The results were gratifying, with some rectors reporting that they came to know their Ugandan bishop better than they ever had known their American bishop. The Church of Uganda continues to work at maintaining the relationships with its former American parishes.
 
While most of the Church of Uganda’s American parish relationships are now outside of the Episcopal Church (TEC), a few are in Communion Partner dioceses within TEC. The Church of Uganda has been in broken communion with TEC since November 2003, soon after the consecration of the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire.
 
“Just at a simplistic, practical, logistical level, what it means to be in communion includes interchangeability of clergy,” Dr. Barfoot said. “I trust [what you preach] will be a compatible message with what we preach” and the sacraments have the same validity.
 
There is “instant trust . . . if you tell me you’re an Anglican,” she said. Still, due to the broken communion, relationships with TEC parishes are more complicated. “If we don’t know you … we can’t assume we share [the same faith] in common.”
 
Consequently, parishes looking to forge partnerships with the Church of Uganda need to be willing to spend time in the U.S. and in Uganda laying the groundwork for such relationships. In Uganda, testimonies of how a person came to faith are extremely important, and visitors may well be called to share them.
 
Built on Unity
 
The faith that Ugandans have received — grounded in the gospel, reflective of low-church evangelicalism, and shaped in the Ugandan context — serves as the basis for Ugandans’ understanding of Church unity and catholicity. Most fundamentally, “[u]nity is about the gospel of Jesus Christ … and it is about the authority of the Word of God,” Dr. Barfoot said. “[T]he Word of God has got to be the foundation upon which we build our common life.”
 
Beyond the Scriptures, the elements of the East African revival “are the spiritual tools for waging unity and contending for the faith … in our context,” she said.
 
The Church of Uganda’s concern for the unity of the Anglican Communion has led it to provide timely feedback on the proposed covenant. Dr. Barfoot notes that the province will support the Ridley Cambridge Draft, even though Ugandan theologians believe it is imperfect, as long as section 4 stays intact and is not diluted. Section 4, which largely addresses the handling of disputes within the Anglican Communion, is being examined and potentially revised by a working group of the Joint Standing Committee of the Primates and of the Anglican Consultative Council.
 
Church unity provides a basis for the relationships that Dr. Barfoot seeks to build internationally. One current dream, mentioned near the conclusion of her talk at the October mission conference, is for American congregations to be linked with the Church of Uganda in its efforts to aid the Church of Southern Sudan. Such a “common mission,” she believes, is possible when Anglicans “share a common gospel.”
 
Ralph Webb
 
What Characteristics Mark Ugandan Faith?
 
In describing Ugandan faith, Dr. Alison Barfoot notes four elements dating back to the East African Revival of the early 20th century that continue to have profound influence today:
 
• Repentance
• Confession of sin
• Seeking forgiveness by looking to Christ on the cross
• “Walking in the light”
 
The latter phrase, taken from the revival and 1 John 1:6-7, is still common today and connotes a life of walking in forgiveness. Forgiveness is “the heart and soul of the [faith] that has been forged in Uganda,” Dr. Barfoot said. If you sin — and many sins are difficult to hide in Ugandan society, which is very communal — other Christians will sit down with you in the aim of helping you to repent and once again “[walk] in the light.”
 
Dr. Barfoot adds that the feast day of the Ugandan martyrs is critical for understanding Ugandans’ Christian faith. On June 3, 1886, more than two dozen Roman Catholic and Anglican youth were executed for refusing to renounce their Christian faith.
 
“The martyrs in Uganda preferred death in a firepit to renouncing their faith in Jesus Christ,” Dr. Barfoot said. “Some of them had not been baptized yet … but they knew who was their lord and king.”
 
The martyrs’ faith continues to influence the Church of Uganda. As one example, Dr. Barfoot cites Archbishop Janini Luwum’s opposition to atrocities committed under Ugandan President Idi Amin — a stand for which he was martyred in 1977.
 
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