Sims’ Chapel

Aaron Sims followed the footsteps of fellow Scotsman David Livingstone by becoming a missionary doctor working in Africa. Unlike Livingstone, in 1882 Sims head instead to the Congo under the employ of the Livingstone Inland Mission (LIM). After working at another station in Congo for a small amount of time, the LIM sent Sims to begin a new mission in Léopoldville, itself established only a year before by Henry Morton Stanley. In order to prevent British missionary groups from establishing too much influence in the personal colony he was building, the Belgian King Leopold II mandated that these missions had to stay close to the colony’s own bases.

By 1884 the LIM was unable to support the site, and instead turned it (and the employ of Dr. Sims) over to the American Baptist Missionary Union (ABMU). Eager to replace wooden structures vulnerable to termites with something more permanent, in 1891 Sims worked with local students on brick production allowing construction on the chapel to start by the end of that year. The new chapel could accommodate 50 Congolese church members. Sims worked in Congo for another three decades, dying in 1922.

In the subsequent 135 years since the chapel was built the city has grown and, at independence, was renamed Kinshasa. With the center of the city having move eastward, Sims’ Chapel now finds itself still in the city but in the quieter commune of Ngaliema. Still hosting worshippers, the chapel remains little changed from when it was built and, having survived all these years, has become the oldest permanent structure still standing in the city.