Learning and leading on the move
Blog from Build Partners.
Editor’s note: from time to time we have featured stories from the ministry of BUILD, which assists churches mostly in East Africa to provide low cost and non-formal but comprehensive bible-based training to pastors in areas of deprivation but often high levels of church growth.
A previous post reported the beginnings of BUILD training among South Sudanese refugees in settlements in northern Uganda. Revd Scopas Bullen-Lado, who oversees a number of churches in one of the settlements, Rhino Camp, is on the BUILD training-of-trainers course, and this post tells his story.
Scopas’ life and ministry has been one of constant movement. He was first displaced from his village in South Sudan in 1988 and ran to the nearby town of Yei. Having fled with others from his village, he continued to act in his role as a community leader. Shortly after he was displaced, he was asked to welcome a Christian preacher who had come “to encourage the displaced.” Scopas was not himself a believer, but as he listened to the word of God being preached he was convicted of his own wrongdoing, and in the early hours of the morning of 24 August 1988 he came to trust God himself.
Scopas’ growing faith served him well when a few years later he was forced to flee again, this time into Uganda in the early 1990s. In exile he grew in faith and leadership and began to encourage others. His gifts were recognised and he received formal training at Bishop Allison College, which had itself been displaced from Sudan to Uganda. Having received some training, Scopas returned to Yei when it had become more peaceful. There he served in a number of positions: leading theological education by extension; acting as diocesan secretary back in Yei for a time; and coordinating the education department.
But within a few years of South Sudan gaining independence Scopas was once more forced by insecurity to move back to Uganda in 2016. Within a fortnight, he had built a church in the refugee settlement using materials given by the UN and the government of Uganda. Not only did Scopus establish a church, he began to visit and encourage other churches in the settlements.
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