![\"Ethiopian](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/east-wollega-featured.jpg?fit=780%2C780&ssl=1\")
\nEvangelical churches in Ethiopia were, by 2019, sending their own missionaries instead of only receiving them. The shift has a long memory in Sidama. After Italy invaded in 1935, missionaries of the Sudan Interior Mission, now known as SIM, were killed on the road, and later replacements were killed as well. Sidama congregations answered with an oath to send their own people. Agedachew Anebo said church leaders there still tell that story. The Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church, whose name means Word of Life, now has more than 1,000 Sidama congregations supporting more than 250 missionaries in Ethiopia and beyond.<\/p>\n\n
The numbers behind the movement are large. The World Christian Database counted about 900,000 self-identified evangelicals in 1970, roughly 3 percent of the population, and almost 19 million by 2015, about 19 percent. The two biggest denominations began with Western partners. The Ethiopian Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus, founded in the late 1800s with Swedish Lutheran missionaries, claimed more than 9 million members. Kale Heywet, founded in the 1920s with SIM, claimed more than 7 million. Mekane Yesus had sent 21 missionary families since it formed an international mission society in 2009, working in Eritrea, Somalia, Chad, Mali, parts of the Middle East, and Pakistan. Mission Sunday giving rose from 12,000 birr in 2012 to more than 3 million birr in 2017. Director Wondimu Game said the plan was to send 500 missionaries in the next ten years.<\/p>\n
SIM opened an East Africa sending office in Addis Ababa in 2012. Through it, Kale Heywet had sent 37 families to countries including Sudan, Ghana, Malawi, Zambia, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, with more than 20 families waiting. Joshua Bogunjoko, SIM\u2019s international director, called Addis the fastest-growing of 14 sending offices. Most Kale Heywet cross-cultural workers, more than 1,500, still serve inside Ethiopia, where crossing a language and a region has long been part of church life. Leaders such as Worku Hailemariam said the church had been on the receiving end for generations and that the time to go had come. Money remained the hard part. One missionary came home from Edinburgh after a year because support ran out. The July and August 2019 account is a picture of that turn, written as churches were already paying salaries and buying tickets.<\/p>\n