Sudanese Ministry

Fridley hosts a Nuer language service on alternating afternoons for our Sudanese attenders. Contact our Sudanese ministry leader, Simon Chuolnyaang.

History of the Covenant Sudanese Population at Fridley

In the summer of 1996,  Fridley Covenant Church organized a bus trip to transport people to a Billy Graham crusade in Minneapolis.   Church members knocked on doors in our neighborhood to let people know that they were welcome to ride our bus if they needed transportation to get to the event.  One of the families living in an apartment building near the church was from Africa.  They didn’t ride our bus to hear Billy Graham, but the next Sunday they came to our Sunday service.  They arrived late,  sat in the back, and spoke no English.  We had no one who could speak with them.  But we welcomed them as best we could, and they came back the next Sunday.  Eventually we discovered that they were refugees from Sudan.  Some of us needed to do some studying to find out exactly where Sudan was and why these people were refugees.

Soon we had other Sudanese families joining them.  They came to Fridley Covenant Church because the word was out that the Covenant Church welcomed the Sudanese.  The first Covenant Church to welcome the Sudanese was in Sioux Falls, SD and word was spreading throughout the Sudanese refugee community that they should try the Covenant Church.  Eventually James Tang was sent by the larger Sudanese community to be the pastor of this small but growing congregation.

Much has happened in the years since then.  The local Sudanese congregation is much smaller than it was a few years ago.  Families have moved to other parts of the state and to other states to find employment and affordable housing.  Pastor James Tang is now a Covenant missionary to Sudan and Ethiopia where the South Sudan Covenant Church numbers over 60,000 members. Fridley Covenant Church helps to support his ministry.  We still try to help the local Sudanese families with tutoring, transportation, friendship and a place to meet and worship.  Sudanese families all over the country consider Fridley Covenant Church their home church.

None of this was planned by anyone in Fridley Covenant Church.  We wouldn’t have known how to even begin to plan it.  It has all been God’s plan and we have tried to not get in His way.

Sudanese women sing about the bible in South Sudan, December 2011