Kale Heywat Church
| Kale Heywat Church | |
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| Basic data | |
| Membership: | Evangelical Churches Fellowship of Ethiopia |
| Municipalities : | 7774 parishes |
| Parishioners: | 6.7 million |
| Founding year: | 1937 |
| Internet presence: | www.kolfekaleheywet.org |
Kale Heywat (also: Kale Heywet ) means "words of life". It is a Protestant church in Ethiopia that emerged from the work of the interdenominational SIM ( Sudan Interior Mission , today: Serving in Mission).
The church is close to the Baptists and also emerged from the Mennonite mission. The Sudan Inland Mission (SIM) opened 16 centers between 1927 and 1937. Mainly schools and clinics were built and operated.
When Italy occupied Ethiopia in 1937, all SIM missionaries were expelled from the country. Only about 75 baptized believers remained. After the Italians were expelled by the English in 1943, the returning missionaries found that over 100 new churches had sprung up and thousands of believers were waiting to be baptized.
Persecution by the Orthodox state church and from 1978 by the communists and the Mengistu regime could not prevent the growth of the communities. The destroyed Bible schools have all been rebuilt to this day. In 1995 the Kale Heywat Church had around 3,780 congregations with over 3 million baptized members. A collaboration with Serving in Mission (SIM) still exists today. The goal of the church is to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ and to call people to follow him so that the kingdom of God can expand.