"It is quite clear that a key factor in the development of the South Sudan region is to enhance people's capacities in every aspect of life.
“It is quite clear that a key factor in the development of the South Sudan region is to enhance people’s capacities in every aspect of life. The role of education is critical in that goal,” asserted Dr. Orville Woolford, education director for the Trans-European region of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He spoke during the opening of a new pastoral training center in Arua, Uganda on Jan. 30. The new facility will serve the Adventist Church in the southern part of Sudan.
The three-hour ceremony incorporated several traditional songs of celebration from a childrens’ orphanage choir, as well as speeches delivered by local government representatives and Adventist church leaders. The Rt. Hon. Tim Lwanga, Member of Parliament for Kyamuswa County in Uganda’s Ssese Islands and that nation’s Minister of State, Ethics and Integrity, represented the president’s office. He officially opened the training center, cutting the ribbon at the main entrance. In his address to the gathered guests, the minister said, “I want to thank our friends, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, for this love that you are showing to us. And why do I say ‘us’? Because this facility is not only for the people of South Sudan. This facility is for humankind.”
Just a 45-minute drive away from the southern Sudanese border, the northern Ugandan town of Arua is a strategic location for the training center. The regional headquarters of the South Sudan church administration, serving the members across this immense territory, is located in the same compound. While there is talk of peace coming to this region, where civil war has raged between the Northern and Southern Sudanese on and off since 1956, Pastor Beat Odermatt, executive director of the church in South Sudan, explains why the training center and administrative offices have been located in Uganda: “There is still [a] very primitive infrastructure in South Sudan. It is quite difficult to function effectively when many roads are impassable during the rainy season. General insecurity still prevails and there are no banks, hospitals, telephones, electricity or potable water supplies. It might be a challenge to invite an international group of professors into that environment and guarantee their well-being while they teach our pastors.”
The new facility is intended to allow pastors to benefit from structured education, which would normally be prohibitively expensive for them abroad. “This program provides the pastors with an accredited BA,” says Michael Porter, president for the Adventist church in the Middle East, which includes the Southern Sudan region. Porter, who was also present for the opening ceremony, describes the unique structure of the course. “It is a six to eight year program which combines short, intensive periods of instruction while still allowing the pastors to continue living and ministering within their districts.”
Odermatt is eager for this training center to reach its capacity of 50 classroom and dormitory students. “We are adding approximately 1,000 members to our congregations every year and we do not have trained pastors. We have about 6,000 members and only one trained Sudanese pastor. Due to the ongoing civil war, formal education usually stops at the elementary school level.”
The training center will also be used for teacher-training events and women’s groups. Plans are in place to set up frequent community activities, which will offer various self-improvement programs to neighbors in Arua. Two of the rooms have been specifically set aside for an Adventist World Radio studio, which will serve as a facility to produce programming in four local languages and incorporate a Bible and health correspondence school.
