Twelve years ago the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Rwanda was thriving with some 285,000 members. But then came the Spring of 1994 and more than 800,000 people were murdered during the first 100 days of the Rwanda genocide, including an estimated 10,000 Adventist church members. During the conflict, church affiliation became secondary to tribal designation.

“Today one of the biggest concerns for the church there is unity,” said Pastor Hesron Byilingiro, Seventh-day Adventist church president in Rwanda. “We are trying to bring unity among church members.”

Byilingiro explained, “We have been doing seminars and workshops with our church elders—most of whom work directly with our church members.”

Byilingiro was appointed president of the church in Rwanda last year. He returned to his country of birth in 2003 after spending 15 years in the United States.

Byilingiro, who studied accounting before going back to school to get his masters and doctorate degrees in theology, is focused on building up the structure of the Rwandan church and educating its work force. The church headquarters in Rwanda is now sponsoring 12 people in higher education.

“It’s hard but there are government programs that are working to bring reconciliation in the population using churches,” he said. “It is hard for everyone but our elders are an important part of the work.”

The church in Rwanda has now grown to about 400,000 members. “After some of the problems the people have been through they are realizing that the only hope, only salvation is in Christ. People are realizing that they cannot spend time in useless matters. Many realize the church is a place to come and be saved,” Byilingiro said, commenting on a recent revival in the Rwandan church. 

And those church members who were involved in the genocide? “Those who got caught and proved [to be] involved in this, we visit in prisons,” Byilingiro said. “Even in those situations a person can be converted. What had been done was not right, but their judgment is not ours.”

“There is no way to read the minds of somebody,” Byilingiro said, but he predicts that through dialogue and trying to understand each other the pain of the genocide eventually “will disappear.”