A WORD OF APPRECIATION
It is a decade since victory church of Christ ministries began. 4th September 2011 will be a time set for thanking God for all that happened during the last 10 years.
It is easy for us to keep working and working without stopping to look back and thank God for all that he has privileged us to do for his kingdom. It is also easy for us to miss thanking God for the gift of one another. As the Bible says we are a part of one another (The body of Christ)
We cannot do without one another .And that is why I want to specially thank all the members of victory church of Christ ministries, partners and friends for the great contribution you have made to this ministry throughout this last ten years, you have really been a special gift to us.
May God greatly bless you.
Pr. George & Rose Oduch
THE POWER OF VISION
Vision is the power of seeing or looking ahead. It is also the ability to grasp the truth that underlies facts. A vision is something especially seen by the mind.
The Bible (AV) gives us some very important aspect of a vision in Pr 29:18: “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he”.
The Message version of the Bible puts the same passage in a much simpler way: “if people can’t see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves. But when they attend to what he reveals, they are most blessed”!
NKJV renders the same passage as thus: “where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but happy is he that keeps the law”.
I find these quotations from these different versions of the Bible very helpful in enabling us look at the different angles of a vision and how it can benefit us and how lack of it can let us suffer many things. Let us look at three reasons why possessing a vision is powerful:
1. Vision preserves life
A vision can be private or corporate. A vision provides some knowledge or insight. Knowledge when applied is wisdom. It preserves life. A vision which is from God will benefit the people around one’s life and the community in which one lives. A vision has the power to show you the way out of difficulty or problem. Without a vision people perish. Lack of vision can cause destruction. That is why God says in Hosea 4:6 that his people perish for lack of knowledge. This knowledge really comes through His guidance. When people are not guided by God, they run wild. They live carelessly. New living bible translation puts it aptly: “when people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild. Whoever obeys the law is joyful” (Pr 19:18).
A vision restrains people from being wild or living irresponsibly. God says in Hosea 4:6 that when his people refuse to heed his word (law) then he will reject them and not bless their children. In the recent riots that took place on London streets in which children as young as 12-13 years broke shops and looted goods, David Cameron, the British prime minister wondered that “something was very wrong with their society”. Did he expect the children to be a blessing when God is being rejected in Britain and the entire western world? Did he expect people to have restraint when September 2011 will see a law coming into force that compels all schools in U.K (including religious ones) to teach children that homosexuality is normal and harmless? No! When the law of God is broken and disregarded, people will not live a happy life, and children cannot be a blessing because they are not blessed.So without a vision or a divine revelation that comes through His word, people are out of order. The motto of Uganda: “for God and my country” gives each Ugandan a direction. This is really our vision.
Every citizen of Uganda who is committed to that motto will work for this nation according to what God desires to see in Uganda. And what would God want to see in any nation? He would want to see its people “... do righteousness and justice...” (Gen 18:19).
A nation can lose its national vision. That happens when a nation ignores godly values that cause people to pursue righteousness. Perhaps the example of what is happening to the U.S.A can be a lesson to every African nation that wants to attain greatness. Researchers R. Jeffrey aptly put it in his book “The signature of God” page 25. This is what he related:
“In 1830 the government of France sent a well respected judge, Alexis de Tocqueville, to study the society, the beliefs, and the prisons of the United States of America to find out why there was so little crime and so few prisons. After several years of study he wrote a celebrated book called “The Democracy of the United States” in 1840. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about the reason for America’s greatness as a nation and the real reason for her low crime rate at that time. ‘ I sought for the greatness of the United States in her commodious harbors, her ample rivers, her fertile fields and boundless forests- and it was not there. I sought for it in her rich mines, her vast world of commerce, her public school system and in her institutions of higher learning- and it was not there. I looked for it in her democratic congress and her matchless Constitution- and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great!”
What a verdict! If America is to recover, then, their churches must come out of compromise and set the pace and champion righteousness again. And the church in the rest of the world needs to pray for them.
In the U.S.A and most of the western nations, homosexuals, abortionists and all kinds of wicked people are the real rulers pulling the strings and setting unjust laws that is designed to fight what is right and good and allow what is evil to dominate. Now American and European
governments want evil such as abortion and homosexuality to be globalized. African head of states and other leaders must take care. If they succumb to the pressure, then they too will put the destinies of their nations into a sinking boat.
Without Godly vision or guidance a nation will decline even if it were already great or on the path of greatness. The former U.S.S.R is a good example. The vision they had advanced them, in science and technology, defense etc. It even took them up to the moon. But because they did not regard what God reveals in His word, their system crumbled after seventy years. I believe with all my heart that the season for greatness for the African continent has come.
African nations must pursue a vision that will ensure that righteousness and justice is the order of things. The church in Africa must not compromise and keep silent, but should be the champion of righteousness and justice.
A God given vision will not only preserve a people, it will bless them.
2. Vision generates faith
Vision will generate faith because it sees beyond the present and beyond what the eyes can see.
A vision sees beyond the obstacle or the problem. It sees beyond facts that are on the ground now. Facts may be very discouraging. But a vision sees beyond it and looks on the great change that God is capable of bringing into one’s life and circumstances. This enables one to hold on and keep going until a breakthrough comes. In my own life, I have seen tough and hopeless situations that could have destroyed me had it not been for the vision that God had given me. Where there is faith there is hope. That is why Hebrews 11:1 says that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see”. And so by faith a vision will always bring about a fulfillment (good report) (Heb 11:2).
3. Vision will reveal purpose
When you have a vision, you have a reason for being. Vision motivates a person to act by going after what has been revealed. Rampant corruption in public places is a sign of loss of national vision. It means people are living for now and for themselves. They are not looking at the future of their children or the coming generation. When you see leaders compromising truth for the sake of money and for pleasing foreign powers, then you know that trouble is on the way.
This is because only God’s purpose will prevail. (Pr 19:21). Any other agenda conceived by men cannot hold on for long.At Victory Church of Christ Ministries our corporate vision is “Reaching Nations for Christ”. This we shall do by “bringing people to Jesus Christ in order to have them delivered, transformed and empowered through the message of the gospel to lead a loving, fruitful and victorious life to the glory of God”.
We have to reach people at every level of our society and influence them to adopt time tested values of the kingdom of God. These values are righteousness, justice, love, honesty, integrity, respect for life etc. And we have to devise plans and means of reaching people in every level of society. When we do that, we shall be fulfilling God’s purpose for this church in particular and His Church in general.
So my prayer is that may the good Lord give you a vision both personal and corporate that will bring about great blessings and fulfillment in your life as you pursue it by faith.
God bless you.
Pastor George Oduch
(Senior pastor vccm)
HOW VCCM STARTED...
Victory Church Of Christ Ministries began as a result of God’s call upon my life following several dreams and visions. I can still recall some of my struggles with God as He tried to convince me to preach the gospel.
One such an occasion was when the Lord asked me to share the gospel with a certain lady and her family near Kololo. I was reluctant. I remember asking the Lord; “How can I do it, I am shy”. One day the lady travelled to Rwanda. Then the Lord spoke clearly to my heart He said, what if that lady dies during her safari? Do you know that you will be responsible if she died without hearing the gospel?” This question had a serious impact on me. I desperately prayed for the Lord to keep her safe and bring her back. I promised the Lord that I would visit the lady and share with her the gospel. When the lady came back from Rwanda, I went boldly to her home and shared with them the love of Christ. She gave her life to God together with her two children. The Lord also instructed me to write down short evangelistic messages whose subject He would give me and have them distributed to people. After initially complaining that I didn’t have money for having the pamphlets printed, I accepted and the Lord gave me the first message to write. That was the beginning of my written evangelistic messages. I remember it was on a Monday. On Friday, an old friend visited me and told me he had just passed by to see me. He was carrying an electronic type writer. As he was leaving he suddenly decided to give me the type writer, wondering whether I would find use for it. That was God. This man did not know that I needed it for beginning my assignment. It served me well for a time. It was after this experience that I began to share the gospel on the streets and lead people to Christ. From that point, I knew there was no turning back for me. I was committed to the preaching of the gospel. Then I had a very clear dream in which I saw myself planting a Church in Luzira, reaching out to the prisons quarters and into jails with the message of the gospel. This dream did not excite me because I was interested in remaining and serving in Rural Evangelical Church Bukoto. That was my local church. I now know that my reluctance was the result of being attached to a number of friends whom I did not want to leave by going away to Luzira.
About this time, I was also looking for a house to rent near the Church but I could not find any. Instead I had a dream that I rented a nice housing unit in Luzira in a location I knew very well. From my knowledge of that area, there were no housing units in that place that looked like the ones I saw in the dream. Then my uncle from Luzira rang me and told me that he had found a house that I would have loved to rent if I saw it. I asked him where the house was and he described the very location I saw in the dream. So when I went there, I found that the housing units I knew were renovated and transformed into nice self contained units of two bedrooms. To cut a long story short, I rented the house moved to Luzira and began ministry there. We began a fellowship in Luzira prison barracks in 1999. When the building we were using was taken over by the prison training school, we had no option but to take the fellowship out of the Prison quarters into my living room. A week before we moved out of the prison training school building, one visiting Christian in her testimony during our last Sunday service at the prison school said that she had a dream that our fellowship moved out into another place. When we where worshiping in my living room, we then remembered that testimony and realized that the description fitted my home. That is how I came to be with a group of eight people in my hands looking to me as their pastor. I thought this responsibility was going to be too much for me to bear. I was challenged and I was not happy with my new position. I complained to God. “Lord, why are you making me a pastor? You called me as an evangelist, why now a pastor? God is good. I heard Him speak back to me softly, ignoring the attitude I showed. He said: “ I want you to build a foundation for the work which I have called you to do by establishing a praying church that will back up evangelistic out-reach to the nations.”
After one month of fellowship from my living room every Friday and Sunday, I had a dream that I found a place in Luzira where we planted the church. In that dream, that building had a mango tree in front and a nursery school behind. Shortly after the dream, one brother who was a property broker came and told me that he had found a place we could rent for church. I went to look at it and told him that the place was not the one I saw in the dream. So I told him to search for another place. The next time he came and took me to look at the place he had found, it was the place I saw in the dream. We prayed for God to give us three months rent. A day after, one brother I had blessed through prayer met me on the way. He was very happy to see me; he pulled out money from his pocket and gave me saying “Pastor let this money help you in ministry”. It was enough to cover the three months rent we needed. Two days after finding where to plant the church, we moved. I will never forget another day when the Lord appeared to me in a vision and spoke saying: “I am sending you to the Nations”. From that time, I realized that the Lord has given me a great privilege of serving him together with His people through VCCM. This is the greatest privilege a man could ever receive. Overtime God has given me visions of various evangelistic missions to our local communities and to other nations. All these have left me in no doubt about my responsibility as an evangelist/pastor and our responsibility as a church. Perhaps one big thing that the Lord did for me that greatly helped me in those difficult years of ministry was to give me a great helper, my wife Rose whom I married one year before VCCM begun.
The Vision the Lord has given us as VCCM is: “Reaching Nations (people) for Christ”. Our mission (purpose) is: To bring people to Jesus Christ and have them delivered, transformed and empowered through the message of the gospel to lead a loving, fruitful and victorious life to the glory of God. That means every member of Victory Church of Christ Ministries must be made into a disciple to reach out and bring others to Christ. The process of making disciples will continue. Prayer and fasting will be an established discipline in the lives of members of VCCM to enable us remain connected with the Lord and empowered. VCCM will allow God to develop to the full, the five-fold ministry in order for the church to be fully equipped for the work of ministry.
To God be the glory!
George Oduch
(Senior Pastor/Ex. Director VCCM)
The Ten Years Journey..
We began Victory Church Of Christ Ministries (VCCM) on the 4th June 2001 with a group of eight people. This was one year after marrying my dear wife Rose. She was truly a perfect helper in this work. Our first three years were spent in intense prayer and fasting. We carried out door to door evangelism and personal witness and through that, many got saved and joined the church. Others responded to our counseling and prayer services and by the end of the third year; the church had grown to about one hundred people. It is also during our third year that we began producing the Victory Witness news letters and gospel tracts for free distribution.
2005 was our fifth year of ministry. We began to reach out through crusades in Kampala area. We supported Port-Bell Pastor’s fellowship crusades financially and through provisions of equipment. We had outreaches to Gulu District and staged crusades there at the time of insurgency. Hundreds of people were saved. In all our outreaches we distributed New Testament bibles and gospel tracts to the people.
To-date we have distributed over 2 million gospel tracts, New Testament Bibles and pamphlets. Most of our first international contacts came through gospel tracts we distributed and which ended up in other countries. This kind of outreach was enhanced from 2005, when we began to use the internet to send out gospel messages and victory witness. In the same year, we began Victory In The Word Radio programme on UBC.
This greatly increased our capacity to reach out nationally and even to the neighboring countries.
Meanwhile our annual deliverance conferences, youth conferences, youth community outreach and weekly Deliverence services continued to increase in its impact as it drew many unconverted people who gave their lives to the Lord.
From 2006-2009, we began to see an increase of over fifty people per year joining the church.
In 2008, we opened Abim Victory Church of Christ branch. Other branches which followed were Kapchorwa, Arua –Bondo, Kotido, Morulem and Pabbo.
In 2009, we began to air Victory In The Word on Family Radio. This also increased our outreach with the gospel into the City and many other Districts.
Through the pamphlets, radio broadcast, letters, we have been able to alert leaders and the general public about the threat of homosexuality and also gave scriptural guidance on many important social issues.
Perhaps one other heart touching ministry that we had to handle due to the burden the Lord laid in our hearts was the children’s ministry.
This ministry supports orphans and vulnerable children. Due to the pressing need, VCCM had to establish a children’s home, taking care of ten children and supporting other twenty who live with guardians.
Through this ministry, we have seen God pick wasted young lives and bless them and put into them hope and a future through education and care. This year one of the children the ministry began with nine years ago called Odwori Emmanuel is graduating with a diploma in IT.
It is our hope that as funds come in, we plan to establish more children’s family homes.
In 2009, we put in place VCCM website. This helped us further to reach out internationally with the gospel. Many churches and individuals in different nations are asking us to partner with them in the ministry of the gospel. We are praying for God to enable us fulfill this cry for the gospel to reach the furthest ends of the earth.
In 2010, we began Victory in the Word program on Lighthouse Television (LTV). This had a tremendous impact, judging from the calls that came from viewers who called for help, appreciation and salvation. Indeed mass media is a very powerful tool for the gospel.
VCCM has been very instrumental in working with other church ministries to support the cause of Christ. We have supported the body of Christ through conferences, donation of P.A equipments, generators and financial contributions that we were obliqued to make in response to need. We have distributed food and clothing to the members of the public in many of our outreaches. We have helped people who were stranded in the city and had them transported to their home villages. We have been involved in prison ministry and hospital ministry, to preach and share with them.
It’s our prayer that God will bless and enable His people to give more for the propagation of the gospel through all these means.
As far as church structure and man power is concerned, 2001-2011 were years of building capacity. We have put in place administrative structures required. And trained leaders and church staff for both ministry and technical work.
Throughout the ten years we have seen the hand of God provide miraculously in the running of the ministry. We have seen His hand follow His word and save lives, heal the sick and deliver many from death. We also proved that God truly blesses and when He does, no one can change it. From the eight people that begun Victory church we now have one thousand three hundred registered members. Thus far has the Lord brought us. (1 Sam 7:12)
The Way Forward
2011-2021 will be crucial years for VCCM. We shall extent our outreach within the city and country and also internationally. Television and Radio will be instrumental in this outreach. Nevertheless the key focus in the ministry will be “Making Disciples”. That is, the empowerment of those who have believed into being people whose focus is to win souls and influence their sphere in society with the values of the kingdom of God. All that will be in fulfillment of the Ministry Vision of “Reaching Nations For Christ” (Matt 28:18-20).
Over the years, God begun showing me in visions the kind of home church we are to build. It was without doubt a mega church. Other people including visiting ministers who had no knowledge of what God had spoken to me, also begun to see and tell us what God had revealed to them about the mega church.
Finally through a dream God, showed me leading Prayer in a 500,000 seater mega church during a Sunday service. It was an awful sight. In fact when I came out of that dream I could not speak about it for some time because it seemed incredible for it to be implemented. I had never thought of a mega church before I received these revelations. My Idea for church was that of a few hundred people. As time went by, I realized that- this is what God wants. A Church from where he will raise up an army of missionaries and soul winners to the nations. This really is his project. I also realize that God is planning ahead for Kampala city and Uganda and we are part of that plan. Of course the first thing that was scaring for me was the magnitude of the resources required for such a project. Truly, it is God who can do this work and with Him all things are possible.
I know that God has given us the privilege to become vessels and witnesses to what He will do in this great mega church project. Every God given vision is bigger than the bearer. That is why I am asking faithful men and women whom God has divinely appointed to join hands with us and support this project to the glory of God. It is comforting to remember that every vision has a provision and so there is no cause to worry but what has to be done is for us to plan for this project and let people know about it. That is why I have been sharing this vision with VCCM members, partners and friends. The journey to the mega church will have two main stages:
1. Mobilisation of funds and Purchase of land: This is expected to be completed by 2013. The land we have found is to cost 1 billion Uganda shillings.
2. Building.
Building is expected to commence by 2014.
God has also made it clear to us that he will cause his people to give freely and willingly for the mega church according to what they can afford just like it happened in the building of the tabnacle by Moses.
We are told in Exodus 25:1-2 that: “… the Lord spoke unto Moses saying speak to the children of Israel that they bring me an offering: of every man that giveth it willingly with his heart ye shall take my offering.”
After this commandment the people obeyed and we are told that: “the children of Israel brought a willing offering to the Lord every man and woman whose heart made them willing to bring for all manner of work which the Lord had commanded to be made by the hand of Moses” (Exodus 35:29).
Exodus 36:5-6 actually tells us that the people brought more than enough until Moses had to make some announcement to stop them. I believe that this is how God will acquire resources for the mega church.
We want to thank all the members of VCCM, partners, friends, church leaders, political leaders and the general public for all the support they gave to enable the ministry reach this far. We want to recognize the contribution of government for creating a conducive environment for input from the religious sector. We want to especially thank Prof. Washington and Prof. Lucia Omondi from Nairobi Kenya who are here to represent our friends. They have been a great support to this ministry. May you take part in this journey by becoming a vessel that God will use in fulfilling this great vision. God bless you abundantly.
George Oduch
(Senior pastor).
