Four years ago in Tanzania, AGWM global worker Nate Lashway prayed, “God, please do something about our partner countries that need engagement. They need people.” While Nate and his wife, Tammy, worked in the thriving Church in Tanzania, they couldn’t help but ache for their neighboring countries of Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda — countries that were desperately seeking spiritual development but simply didn’t have the needed resources. The Lashways didn’t yet know the important role they would play in Burundi’s Church development.

Now, through AGWM global workers and the national church, God is currently meeting the people of Burundi, Africa, right where they are, by working through ordinary circumstances to accomplish extraordinary miracles.

The Lashways began their global missions careers in Madagascar in 2004. They first served in children’s ministry, then after one term became team leaders, inherited leadership of a Bible school, and worked in other church planting and training efforts. In 2016, they transitioned to Tanzania where they worked as team leader overseers for the Swahili Zone of East Africa.

Though they loved their time in Tanzania, the needs outside their country’s borders continued to weigh in their minds. Nate says, “Tanzania was strong. They had 12,000 churches, seven Bible schools, and more than a million members. … yet other churches in our zone of responsibility had no missionaries and no engagement, no Bible schools or development opportunities at all.”

The need for more missionaries led the Lashways to establish a BaseCamp in Tanzania for the intentional development and training of new global workers in Africa to send to these countries.

“We believe that missionary training happens best in teams, in context,” the Lashways explain. “Context provides the purpose and motivation to learn. The team gives support and scaffolding for new global workers to learn and grow. BaseCamp is designed to give new workers the support and mentoring they need.”

Nate and Tammy were determined to train workers in Tanzania to go to these other nations, but God had another plan. God moved in the Lashways’ hearts to go and be the team to engage Burundi.

The Lashways moved their BaseCamp to Burundi in November 2020 —an unexpected answer to Nate’s earlier prayer. Nate and Tammy now serve as a launch team that helps acclimate new global workers to ministry in African contexts. Together with these new global workers, they are helping build and strengthen the Church in Burundi.

Burundi is a small country (close to the geographical size of Maryland) in central Africa. Like every country, Burundi comes with a unique set of challenges. These include a lack of economic opportunities and unresolved ethnic tensions born from genocides and civil wars. Despite these difficulties, Burundi’s national church is full of passionate and hungry people seeking to build God’s kingdom and better their communities through the gospel. God’s hand is guiding the effort to establish the Church in Burundi, and He repeatedly meets them where they are and provides the resources they need.

This was the case in a church plant in Gitega, Burundi’s political capital. According to Nate, people referred to Gitega as “the place where Protestants go to die” because of its extreme Catholic and Muslim roots. When pastor Jérôme Ndayisaba set out to establish an AG church in Gitega in 2007, all he had was a plot of land with a basic tabernacle structure and several avocado trees.

Miraculously, these avocado trees continually produced enough fruit for Ndayisaba and his family to sell, which made money to buy food for the family and support the church. The same happened with a small vegetable garden on the plot. Even when Ndayisaba and his family had not planted vegetables, more grew in place of what they harvested.

As the government closed nearby churches, Ndayisaba inherited 200 plastic chairs, musical instruments, and a sound system. Nate says, “Those avocado trees produced fruit in season and out, year in and year out for more than three years until, finally, the church was big enough where it could sustain itself, and Ndayisaba had enough tithe money coming in to feed his family. And then, one day, the trees quit producing.” The Lord provided, and that church is now the largest Assemblies of God church in Burundi. Ndayisaba became the general superintendent of the Burundi Assemblies of God in 2016 and has continued to plant churches.

In addition to training and developing new missionaries for effective service, the Lashways partner with and support the national church’s vision for church planting, pastoral training, and leadership development. They work with a Bible school and church planting school to strengthen Burundi church leaders’ spiritual foundation.

One of Superintendent Ndayisaba’s greatest visions was to provide biblical training for his pastors. Even before the Lashways could move to Burundi, they were able to call upon their Tanzanian Bible school relationships in 2017 to help implement a church planting school, based on the Tanzanian model, which includes 12 intensive foundational courses in 12 consecutive weeks. The Tanzania Assemblies of God agreed to help, and this partnership was the beginning of the Burundi Assemblies of God Fellowship Theological School (BAGFTS).

This is when the Lashways took the next step, moving to Burundi in late 2020, to establish a three-year Bible training program.

Nate says, “Little by little, we’re seeing more and more of our pastors getting trained. It’s a wonderful thing.”

In November of 2023, BAGFTS had their first class of 12 graduates. Many were district bishops and leaders, some in their 60s, and all joyfully celebrated their accomplishment.

Nate and Tammy believe that pastors and spiritual leaders play a crucial part in transforming Burundi’s culture. Nate says, “We want to help these pastors and believers see that they can help change the narrative of ethnic distrust and division that is deeply seated in the country by allowing the Holy Spirit to use them to love their neighbors well and to be witnesses of the transforming power of Jesus in their communities. You cannot legislate a change in culture. It must come from the Holy Spirit.”

With the extra foundation of a strong biblical education, pastors are acting as transformational agents in Burundi, and their church planting efforts are paying off. In 2015, Burundi had 37 churches. Now, they have more than 150.

The difference in communities is tangible. After a recent class on compassion in the local church, a new Burundian church planter started asking questions to his church members such as, “What can we do to be more insightful and impactful in compassion?” His team told him of two church members who did not have homes. This church planter and his leadership team shared this with the congregation, and they collected mud bricks, bought sheet metal for roofing, and built houses for the two families.

Reflecting on this, Nate says, “The church was so proud of themselves, and the people were so blessed, and we had nothing to do with it other than giving them the encouragement that local churches can create local solutions in their communities.”

Burundi has three people groups, but the Batwa are the most challenging to reach. The Batwa (or Pygmies) are a small, typically isolated group that live throughout the Congo jungle basin. They often face discrimination and do not easily trust outsiders. However, God had a plan to meet the Batwa where they were.

A few years ago, a Batwa man began attending Pastor Ndayisaba’s church in Gitega. The Batwa man was saved, and his life was transformed. As he grew and was discipled, he began to feel a call on his life to plant churches among his people. The man responded, “I want to go to church planting school. I want to get trained. I’m going to go back and reach my people.”

He attended church planting school, returned to his community, and planted a church. This pastor has now planted two other churches and opened numerous cell groups, reaching more than 250 of his people. Nate comments that again, he and Tammy “have done nothing but offer training,” and it is the eagerness and faithfulness of local pastors that is creating space for the Holy Spirit to move.

He says, “God is reaching the Batwa people through this Batwa pastor, and it’s beautiful.”

Through the partnership between AGWM global workers like Nate and Tammy Lashway and the national church, incredible things are happening in Burundi. Biblical training is giving pastors the foundation they need to create transformation in their culture, bringing the gospel’s light to a place eagerly seeking it. God is meeting the people of Burundi right where they are, working through ordinary circumstances to create an extraordinary ministry.

By Joy Myers