John Senyonyi: The East African Revival: A Brief History, Its Beliefs and Practices

Text of the Presentation on the East African Revival by the Rev. Dr. John Senyonyi, Vice-Chancellor of Uganda Christian University, to the Nairobi GAFCON Conference

My childhood was exposed to the East African Revival although the term East African Revival was unknown to us. All we knew was that as conventions were held at our local church, sinners were converted and their lives changed dramatically. They left their life of sin, some unknown to us, and confessed their sins publicly, and began a new life.

Later I drifted away from the church and was captured by youthful sinful habits. The worst of all for me was the sin of filthy speech, obviously rooted in my lustful thoughts. I tried several times to shake off this sin without success. By the time I joined the University of Nairobi to study Mathematics and Chemistry, the habit had taken root beyond my own power to conquer.

On June 18 1976, a university student shared with me about this salvation, which I had known from my childhood, and I accepted Jesus as my Saviour. The change in my speech was immediate, and of course there were other transformations whichf ollowed. To date I marvel how God takes an utterer of obscenities and changes himinto a preacher – no longer speaking unutterable words, but the very Gospel that brings men and women to eternity.

When I returned to Uganda, I sought out the Revival fellowship meeting. While I waswell equipped with scriptures, this fellowship taught me how to walk. One of the resultant challenges I got was to ‘put right’ anything what had gone wrong in my past so that I could walk without a guilty conscience about them. Thus I was convicted to go back to my former secondary school where I had stolen ‘James Bond’ books to make restitution. What was this move of the Holy Spirit then? Keep reading