On an ordinary day in Iganga, something with global roots quietly took hold.
Hundreds of believers, youth leaders, SDA Church elders and members of the wider community packed the Iganga SDA Church for a launch billed as colourful and hopeful.
The Minister for the Presidency, Hon. Babirye Milly Babalanda, was there to preside over it.
The programme she launched, “One Voice27 Mission For All, Hope Starts Here,” is not an Iganga invention.
It is the Ugandan chapter of a worldwide Seventh-day Adventist initiative first unveiled at the Church’s Annual Council in October 2025, where global delegates voted to adopt it as a coordinated push toward September 2027.
That date is not arbitrary either.
It marks what the Church counts as 2,000 years since the baptism of Jesus Christ, an anniversary the global initiative is built entirely around.
In Iganga, that global vision arrived wrapped in a very local, very practical instruction: pick up your phone.
Greetings From State House to a Church Pulpit
Before turning to the mission itself, Minister Babalanda carried out a familiar duty.
Addressing the congregation, she conveyed warm greetings from President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.
She extended the same greetings from the First Lady and Minister of Education and Sports, Maama Janet Kataaha Museveni.
She passed on further greetings from the Permanent Secretary of the Office of the President, Hajji Yunus Kakande, and from the entire staff of the Office of the President.
Speaking in her capacity as Director for SDA Busoga Women Field as well as Minister, she thanked President Museveni for his continuous support of faith-based initiatives.
She credited him with maintaining the peace and stability that allows worship to thrive across the country.
Meeting People Where They Already Are
Turning to the substance of the launch, Minister Babalanda commended the SDA leadership for what she called a timely innovation.
She said the Church had recognised something simple but important: where people actually spend their time today.
“In this generation, most Ugandans hold smartphones, and they dedicate more time to them than TVs, radios and newspapers,” she said.
That observation lines up with the numbers behind Uganda’s mobile landscape.
According to the Uganda Communications Commission, the country currently has more than 19.7 million active mobile internet subscriptions, a figure Minister Babalanda cited directly in her address.
For a country where television and radio still reach large audiences but increasingly compete with data bundles and social apps, that statistic explains why a 100-year-old church movement is now organising itself around smartphones.
“In Your Hand You Hold a Church and a Bible”
Minister Babalanda’s central challenge to the congregation was aimed squarely at the young people in the room.
She urged believers, especially youth, to convert their phones into pulpits for spreading the Word of God.
“I urge you to start using your phones as pulpits. In your hand you hold a church and a bible. Instead of using data bundles online to sin, use data bundles to win souls,” she told the faithful.
The phrase echoed language used by Church leaders at the global launch of the initiative, where one Adventist leader described the device in every person’s hand as, in effect, an evangelism tool.
Minister Babalanda’s version brought that same idea down to earth, framed in terms any Ugandan paying for data bundles would immediately recognise.
The Dark Side of the Same Screen
Having praised the potential of smartphones, Minister Babalanda was equally direct about their dangers.
She decried what she described as the growing misuse of social media among young people.
She cited online dating exploitation as one concern.
She cited the watching of pornographic footage as another.
She pointed to the endless scroll of comedy clips consuming young people’s attention.
She also flagged the spreading of propaganda and false information online as part of the same pattern.
Her call to the congregation was to flip that pattern on its head.
“Let every online post reflect the scripture of Jesus Christ. Your phone is a powerful mission field,” she emphasised.
Freedom of Worship, Exercised Responsibly
Minister Babalanda situated the entire launch within a broader statement about governance.
She stressed that the NRM government under President Museveni values and upholds freedom of worship and freedom of expression.
But she added a condition to that freedom.
She said it must be exercised responsibly, in ways that build morals, unity and patriotism within communities.
That framing has become something of a signature line in her recent engagements with religious congregations, positioning digital and physical freedoms alike as privileges that come with civic responsibility attached.
A Global Theme Meets a National Moment
Minister Babalanda argued that the timing of the mission mattered as much as its method.
She noted that “One Voice27 Mission” arrives at a moment when Uganda needs moral renewal.
She added that social media evangelism carries the power to reach millions of internet users who may never set foot inside a physical church building.
That claim mirrors exactly what Church leaders said when they unveiled OneVoice27 globally, describing a vision in which the first message someone sees upon waking up could be one of hope, delivered straight to the billions of phones now in circulation worldwide.
The global programme’s own materials describe its anchor theme as “All Things New: Hope Starts Here,” aimed at uniting the Church’s communication platforms, its more than 180,000 local congregations, and millions of individual members behind a single Christ-centred message ahead of September 2027.
Iganga’s launch was one small, local expression of that much larger machinery now turning across the worldwide Adventist community.
A Call to Every Parent and Every Faith
Minister Babalanda closed her address by widening the circle of responsibility beyond the SDA Church itself.
She pledged her full support toward the mission.
She called upon all religious denominations, cultural leaders and parents to join hands in protecting the young generation from moral decay on social media.
Her appeal framed the effort not as a single church’s project but as a shared responsibility for safeguarding future generations.
A Grateful Congregation
For the SDA Church leadership in Iganga, the day carried its own local significance.
They thanked the Minister and the Office of the President for honouring their invitation.
They also expressed appreciation for the government’s support of the Church’s mission to win souls in the digital age.
As the crowd dispersed from Iganga SDA Church, many of them carrying the very phones Minister Babalanda had just asked them to repurpose, the local launch quietly folded itself into a much bigger story already unfolding across more than 180,000 Adventist congregations worldwide, all counting down toward the same date in September 2027.
