What is Revival!

The words mean different things to different people. In Protestant Christian circles it means one thing: Where there is Revival, the God of the Bible was makes His presence so felt and the truths of His word, the Bible, so powerfully understood that people in certain localities behave in extraordinary ways in reaction to them and the lives of many people are dramatically changed.

The first stirrings of Revival in East Africa occurred around the church and medical centre of Gahini, in north Rwanda, a ‘mission station’, as it was called in those days, of a missionary organisation called the Ruanda Mission. a daughter mission of the Church Missionary Society, now named the the Church Mission Society. At the same time, unusual happenings were occurring at Kabale, in south west Uganda, another ‘mission station’ of the Ruanda Mission (CMS). Whether it was to ‘Ruanda’, the country, or to ‘Ruanda’ in the name the ‘Ruanda Mission’, the Revival came to be known as the Ruanda Revival. When Revival reached Kenya, those revived were sometimes referred to as ‘Ruandaites’. It was not until the late 1950’s and the 1960’s that the wide influence of the movement came to be known by the more accurate name, the ‘East African Revival’.

The first major signs of Revival.

The church centres of Gahini, in north Rwanda, and Kabale, in south west Uganda are separated by some 150 kms or 90 miles of hilly country and the geographical frontier between the two countries. Kabale had been established as a missionary centre of the Ruanda Mission in 1921 and Gahini, in 1926. In both of these centres English missionaries of the Ruanda Mission and African medical staff and church teachers worked together in evangelistic medical, educational and church outreach and development.

Towards mid-1935, there were signs of unusual spiritual activity at Kabale and in surrounding Kigezi district. This centred on the staff and students at the Kabale Bible School. At Gahini, Rwanda, remarkable evangelistic zeal had been evident for some time among the hospital, school and church workers, and so it was natural that the leaders at Kabale,Uganda, over the border, should invite a team from Gahini, Rwanda to join them in a hastily arranged and far from carefully planned convention.

The First Kabale Convention September 1935

In September 1935, there assembled at Kabale leaders: Ezekieli Balaba, Lawrence Barham and Simeoni Nsibambi from Uganda, Yusufu Biangwa, Dr Joe Church, Paulo Gahundi, Nicodemu Gatozi, Chrisostome Habyara, Blasio Kigozi, Erasito Kinyogoti, Paulo Muningantama and Misaki Vuningoma from Rwanda.

That convention marked the first major public event at which there were dramatic manifestations of conviction of sin, a sense that unless that sin was dealt with only the destiny of hell remained, a powerful revelation of the power of the ‘blood of Jesus Christ’ to forgive sin, and an almost overwhelming assurance of sins forgiven, a peace relationship with God the Father, and the inner presence of God, the Holy Spirit. It also witnessed the