UGANDA: AMECEA To Celebrate Small Christian Communities Golden Jubilee

Sr. Mary Lilly Driciru, MSMMC

The Association of Member Episcopal Conference in Eastern Africa (AMECEA) is celebrating 50 years since the establishment of Small Christian Communities (SCCs) as the ecclesial model of the Church in the region in 1973.

Uganda’s National Pastoral Coordinator, Fr. John Baptist Kaganda, in his opening remarks and keynote at the premises Association of Religious in Uganda (ARU), on April 4, 2023 said, “SCCs Jubilee Prayer will be circulated and recited across the region for the whole period of the Jubilee Year, July 2023 – July 2024.

Fr. Kaganda requests that each diocese set a date and officially inaugurate the year-long celebration of the SCCs in the month of July 2023 or otherwise. “You are all requested to popularize the theme of the celebration throughout the dioceses, translate and recite the golden jubilee prayer in the dioceses and the need for each diocese to evaluate the impact, successes and challenges facing SCCs and send a report to the National Pastoral office to compile a national report,” Fr. Kaganda emphasized.

There is need to promote campaigns for mass recruitment of members into SCCs. Home visits are also recommended for promoting children, youth and men participation in SCCs.

Fr. Kaganda noted that they will use the mass media to promote key characteristics of SCCs and strengthen training and formation of leadership of SCCs focusing on the true spirit and characteristics of SCCs.

In this jubilee year, the region desires that vivid information about a true picture of the SCCs be established; their numbers; their level of participation, the number of times they meet to share the word of God; whether they are represented in the administrative structure in the Parish/Diocese.

“We desire to see the successes of the SCCs in the local Church. We need to know how Church in the neighborhood has profited from SCCs; we also need to know the concrete programs carried out by the SCCs in building the Church.” (From proposed road map of the golden jubilee celebrations).

The AMECEA Secretariat wishes to know the challenges faced by SCCs and the dioceses to propose some activities that can be carried out at the diocesan level to mark the 50 years of SCCs and way forward for better utilization of the SCCs as a strategy of evangelization.

The celebration of the Golden Jubilee dates back to the subsequent AMECEA plenary meetings that confirmed the establishment of SCCs as a way forward for the Church in the AMECEA region so that the Church becomes really local, self-ministering, self-propagating and self-supporting.

According to AMECEA Pastoral Department, the SCCs are the fruits of the Vatican Council II that came in 1962 – 1965 and an awakening of the Church as “family of God.” The theme of the celebration is “Small Christian Communities: 50 years of building the Church as Family of God in the AMECEA region.”

In the evaluation and the effectiveness of SCCs, the celebration is looking back from where they started, and where they are in order to seek and embrace the future with confidence. According to AMECEA, there are movements in the Church but the SCCs are not; rather, they are the Church on the move; a new way of becoming a Church.

The inspiration of the birth of SCCs is drawn from the Biblical text like the “Acts 2:42 – 45 which demonstrates how they remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles to the brotherhood, breaking bread and prayer. Remarkably, there was no poor among SCCs as the whole community of believers was of one mind and heart. This is the foundation of the contemporary SCCs.

Here the assembly of believers from the neighborhood gather in homes, they are a Church at the grassroots, which helps them develop a sense of belonging through caring for one another