History of KIC

KIC grew out of a small group of Christians that met in the sitting room of Bryan Pill, the director of MAF in 1997.

Bryan had young children that were too restless to sit through the services of other churches in Kampala and were becoming reluctant to go to church. So as a temporary solution, until the children grew up, Bryan and some of the other pilots with young families met in his sitting room in Makindye on Sunday mornings. A few friends and neighbours had the same concerns with their children and joined them. Around August 1998 the Nobles, the Betts, and the Stockleys also found themselves unable to continue with their church and came along. The group was about 8 to 10 families, from UK, Ireland, Netherlands, South Africa and USA all from different churches who just needed a break from their chosen church and wanted to enjoy worship prayer and fellowship again. No-one had any intention of starting a new church.

After a few years, we were too many for the sitting room and we moved into a tent in the garden. Everyone had a role to play. Everyone who joined the church ticked a box to say what they could do: prayer, children work, preaching, hospitality. There were no passengers; this was body ministry with everyone a part of the body. Easy with 20 families.

The Pills left in 2001 and the tent was moved to the Turners. We became concerned about the legality of a group meeting in such large numbers, and also we now owned a tent, chairs, a sound system. We had to legally exist. So we registered as a company with a board consisting of Dr Stockley and 2 others who have now left. The leadership team was led by Leon Nel, and included Stockleys, Nobles, Van Der Ruits. When the Nels left we added the Taylors then Julia Downing. We had no leader: the leadership team was “flat” with each having an area of ministry they were responsible for.

People kept hearing about us and kept coming so just before Christmas in 2001 we moved to Heritage, and officially named ourselves as a church. There was much debate about a name: “swamp side fellowship” and “St Brian’s” being some of the sillier proposals. Legally we were still KIC Ltd, a company that held the assets for the church. We eventually managed to register as an NGO. The board of the company still exists as holding the assets.

After just 3 months in the Heritage library we had grown to over 80 people and moved into the dining room. Nothing changed: everyone was involved, every one did something. Our two midweek home groups of Makindye and Ntinda grew almost monthly as new home groups split off and started up. Every month we had to buy new chairs.

Over the course of a year, we met as a church 3-4 times for long evening prayer meetings specifically asking God to lead us forward on the issue of leadership. Some people wanted a "Pastor" like they had back home. Others feared that appointing a leader would mean affiliating with a particular denomination and that we would loose the vision of "living stones". At one point it seemed that we wouldn't be able to reach consensus. However God led us through this and when John Willison was put forward as a potential full time leader and part of the leadership team there was full consensus. Therefore in 2005 we appointed John Willison as the full time salaried team leader.

Some of the original leaders retired, left the country, stepped down or rested for 3 years and came back, whilst others remained on the leadership for the next few years. More people outside the leadership team took on the important roles such as finances, worship, admin, junior church. The number of Home groups grew. On Sunday no-one knew who was new any more as there were so many we didn’t know. Out of this feeling of being a crowd came the idea of zones: back to the original vision of body ministry, each to all, where there were few enough for us all to know everyone else. The Zones grew to the present total of 5, and the church meets in zones every 6 weeks.

In 2010 the town zone found they had more people in zone from other churches or none, then came from KIC, with the traveling being a significant factor for many. They felt they wanted to meet in zones every week. This led to the town zone meeting as a separate congregation at Ambrosoli school as KIC-B.

Currently KIC is one church with 5 zones and 2 weekly congregations and a vision for the future that other zones will form or divide or meet every week. Our core value remains the same as 10 years ago: we believe in body ministry, each to all, living stones, everyone with a part to play in the kingdom.