I first met Rev. Dr. Célestin Musekura in 2017 in Phoenix. Both of us were plenary speakers for the International Wholistic Missions Conference, and he introduced himself to me after my opening session. Within a few minutes, I could tell that we would be doing ministry together in the future, which is proving to be true. His story is riveting.

Musekura was a pastor in Rwanda before the genocide in 1994. He reminds his Christian audiences that people forget that Rwanda was considered an evangelical success story in the early 1990’s. Statistics indicated that as many as 90% of the country had been baptized Christian, including both Hutu and Tutsi. All of which makes the genocide even more horrific, if that can even be possible, because it means brothers and sisters in Christ slaughtering one another.

In October 1990 the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded their home country of Rwanda, an incident that began the tribal war between the Tutsi minority and the Hutu-led government and its Rwandan Armed Forces. Four years later, in the 100 days between April 1994 – June 1994, the unthinkable happened as nearly one million people were massacred. Another three million fled the country and lived and died in neighboring refugee camps. Even though the genocide was officially brought to a halt by the RPF, revenge killings continued until 1998. On Sunday, December 28, 1997, while Musekura was studying at Dallas Theological Seminary, men in uniform invaded his own village and killed about seventy people, some in their homes and on their farms, others in the church where they had gathered for morning prayer. Among those killed were Musekura’s father, stepbrother, his wife and two children, and a new sister his mother had adopted in the refugee camps in Congo after the first wave of killings in 1994. (*1)

At the conference Musekura shared stories of pastors of one tribe willingly turning over their own parishioners of the other tribe to be slaughtered, sometimes even rounding them up in their own church buildings. Other incidences included Hutu pastors bravely sheltering Tutsi parishioners in their own homes, until their own families were threatened if they didn’t give up those they were sheltering. Many watched their families get slaughtered anyway, even after turning over their friends to be killed.

“How can this happen?” Musekura posed.

How can a country that is 90% Christian experience such a horrific genocide?

Answering his own question, Musekura explained that while 90% of the country had been baptized, very few had been discipled, or trained to follow Jesus.

“We were a country of baptized pagans. We were Hutu or Tutsi first, and Christian second.” (*2)

Musekura founded ALARM, African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries, in 1994 immediately following the genocide, to engage the church of Rwanda in a radical ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation for their sins of commission and omission. (*3) 25 years later, ALARM is making a massive difference in multiple East African countries, having trained more than 150,000 Christian leaders in eight countries, focusing especially on high-impact leaders who can change countries. (*4)

I’ve heard Musekura share his story in the United States several times now. Every time he ends with a warning that he seems uniquely qualified to pronounce.

“In America, you have tribes too, it’s just that they’re called Republican and Democrat instead of Hutu and Tutsi. And your tribes here are at war, too, it’s just that you use words instead of machetes.”

Forgiving As We’ve Been Forgiven, by L. Gregory Jones and Celestin Musekura, 2010, IVP, p. 14-21.
Ibid, p. 19.
Commission refers to things we’ve done that we shouldn’t have. Omission refers to things we should have done but didn’t.
Visit www.ALARM-Inc.org to learn more, and consider supporting this amazing world-changing ministry.

African Insight to Our American Problem