Emerging Missions in Kenya

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Emerging Missions in Kenya - Could SIM-Kenya Play a Part?

By Howard Brant


The landscape of emerging missions in Africa varies from place to place. Nigeria sends the most with 5,600 missionaries serving outside their country. Most go to nearby West African countries, but many go into North Africa and some even as far away as Russia or the United States. South Africa would be a right behind the Nigerians – although, so far, most of those who have gone out are from European background. Ghana would be third – led by the Church of Pentecost which has sent over 600 missionaries all over West Africa and beyond. Other countries like Ethiopia and Malawi are coming on line sending their missionaries to Sudan, India, Pakistan, and Mozambique. But what about Kenya? When one looks at demographics you would think that Kenya ought to be one of the largest mission sending nations in Africa. The colonial British left behind a high standard of education and even today most schooling is in English – the international language needed for global missions. The number of high level Bible Schools and theological colleges in Kenya is unparalleled in Africa. The number of Christians per capita is second only to Zambia on the continent. Upwards of 80% of all Kenyans would call themselves Christians. Hundreds of Christian missions and NGO’s work inside and out of Kenya. Many, if not most of these, have senior Kenyan leaders who are well trained and qualified to lead. With all of this, one would expect that the global missionary thrust of Kenyans would be enormous. It is true that quite a number of small indigenous missions are working within Kenya. But it is totally shocking to find that indigenous global mission efforts outside of Kenya are almost non-existent. There are plenty of Kenyans working outside of Kenya in Christian organizations, but almost all of them are funded externally by the organizations with which they serve. It is very hard to find a Kenyan who is supported and sent by local Kenyan church or indigenous mission working outside of Kenya.


Why is that? Is it for lack of vision or calling? Likely not! As one talks with committed Christians in Kenya, you will find that there are quite a number of Kenyans who have felt the call of God upon their lives for foreign mission work. Is it for lack of training? With all the excellent training schools and programs all over Kenya, this cannot be the reason. Is it because Kenya has a poor economy and cannot support such a movement? Count the Mercedes and BMWs outside of Nairobi Chapel, Nairobi Baptist or Valley Road Pentecostal and you will have your answer. One Kenyan pastor tells us that he only needs to mention a needy cause in his church and his parishioners are very quick to respond generously. What then is the problem? Rev. Peter Kinuthia met the Lord through the Assemblies of God and eventually graduated from the East Africa School of Theology. He excelled to the degree that he was asked to teach there as well as at the Africa Center for Great Commission. The call of God on his life for missions was unmistakable. He talked to many pastors and churches in Nairobi and even received some funds from Nairobi Chapel and got temporary support from a well known church in North America. Peter wound up as a missionary to Congo and settled in Bukavu. a city of about 500,000 people which is just across the border of Rwanda and very close to Burundi. This was shortly after the Rwandan civil war and so he started by holding trauma seminars in Swahili. He planted a church in the city. Not too long after that, he began a radio ministry which was aimed at teaching Christians how to live out their faith. In order to keep churches back in Kenya interested in what he was doing, he used to bring teams of Kenyan church leaders to see his ministry. One would think that with all this energy and talent that Peter would be able to find the necessary support to stay in Congo for many years. Not so. Within three years he returned to Kenya in order to find sustainable support. But he could not. He tried every way he knew how but failed. Peter finally decided that the only way to get support from Kenya was to start new mission minded churches which were taught to give to missions from the start. Duncan Olumbe came from a non-Christian, Catholic background but was radically transformed when he came to know the Lord in high school. Duncan went on the University of Nairobi where he studied mechanical engineering. During those years, he became involved in a Christian students association known as the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES).


After graduation he was asked to join the IFES staff for a year and that led to 14 years of leadership in that organization. During that time an Operation Mobilization missionary challenged Duncan and other students to go as missionaries to Northern Sudan. He and 10 others set out but the government found out of their plan and only one of the ten was ever able to get there. The same OM Missionary wanted him to go to Jordan but again financial constraints held him back. He could get not support from the local churches. Duncan did manage to get to the UK and attended the famous school "All Nations" for two years. He returned to Kenya in 1998 with a great vision go out as a foreign missionary but could find no sending church to support him and no sending agency that could send him. Others of his friends wanted to go to China and could not find the financial base that would send them either. So Duncan stayed with IFES and began putting on missions conferences. In AD 2000, 2000 students attended the missions conference and up to 500 signed pledge cards saying that they would be willing to go as cross cultural missionaries. Only 10 of them remain today. IFES held another such consultation in 2004 and again 600 students made decisions to become cross cultural missionaries. None of these were able to raise support in Kenya to go. One of these students even went to the Iranian embassy and learned Arabic – but has not gone on to become a missionary. In an interview with the author, Duncan identified two key factors holding back the Kenyan foreign missionary movement: 1. The Kenyan churches do not seem to be willing to support those who go out of their country and 2. There are few if any indigenous structures in place to send missionaries outside of Kenya. Support Issue: Two salient points affect missionary giving in Kenya. First is that Kenya has been on the receiving end of things for a very long time. Under the British, most of the large churches were built with foreign funds. Training was free if not subsidized. Christian NGO’s have poured money into Kenya. It is expected that if a mission or agency comes to Kenya to do something, they will provide the money. The idea now of giving money to send someone to another country to work as a missionary is counterintuitive. The perception is that if that person is going to work with an outside mission – that mission ought to pay their salary. As most Kenyans who go out of the country come back wealthier than when they left, the expectation is that a missionary who goes far away will make a lot of money and come back with plenty in hand to give out to all their friends. As a result few Kenyans have learned to give money for foreign missionaries.


Many mission agencies would be delighted to have Kenyans working with them –but when perspective missionaries go to their churches for support – they find that all funds have been committed to other causes and there is no discretionary money left for missions. It is just not in the Kenyan Christian culture to give to foreign missionaries. Even Kenyan mission agencies working inside Kenya like Sheepfold find it very difficult to sustain support for their missionaries. On the other hand, Kenyan’s who want to go outside of their country, find it exceedingly hard to ask for money. It makes them feel like "beggars" and is just not done in their society. As a result, few Kenyans have been able to break the support barrier and the Kenyan missions movement remains still borne. We suspect that there are culturally appropriate ways to raise sustained support in Kenya. So far the standard method has been to seek that support from local churches or denominations. These sources have proved insufficient. Someday, God will show one of His servants a mechanism by which this can be done in Kenya. The funds are there and the need is there. It is now only some creative method of taping into those funds that needs to be discovered. A second sub-point under the matter of finance is that by and large Kenya has been relatively peaceful and prosperous. The church has never faced severe persecution. When Christianity first came to Kenya, the British provided political shelter for the church and religious freedom has been sustained. In such an environment, Christians become inward looking and to some extent materialistic. They are willing to pay for what they see – church buildings, and sometimes even radio and TV programs. But to take some of their wealth and send it to reach the lost souls of people in another country – that is just beyond the vision of many Kenyans. So they do not give for missions. Sending Structures: Duncan’s second point is also very important. In order for a country to start sending its own missionaries, they need both internal and external sending structures. That is, they need a "sending church or agency" which will send them from Kenya. They also need a "receiving" agency to receive their missionaries in the countries to which they are sent. While in Kenya, there are many large denominations which have corresponding churches in other countries, the huge need in Kenya is to establish an international, interdenominational mission that could send out Kenyan missionaries. While there are many churches or individual ministries that could become sending agencies, there is no interdenominational Kenyan mission to send Kenyans abroad. And while there has been some effort through groups like Finish the Task to target Kenyan unreached peoples, their vision does not go beyond the borders of Kenya.


It should not be difficult to start such an agency. If a key group of Kenyan Christians could come together and form a Kenyan Evangelical Mission Board, this problem could be easily solved. But given the independence of each group, Kenyans are reluctant to do so. There needs to be some independent person or group that could initiate such an action – with the blessing of the major denominations. If this formed and became established, they could second their missionaries to any agency around the world. Actually Duncan is trying to do that. He is presently the head of Mission Together Africa which is a group of very committed Christians in East Africa (not just Kenya) who have bonded together to think and pray about starting such a ministry. The other side of it is to create or find existing structures which could help Kenyans find their way to other countries and provide the infrastructure to sustain them there? This is a very serious problem which Duncan has tried to address. He contacted groups like Overseas Missionary Fellowship to see if they would be interested in receiving Kenyan missionaries. So far he has found the right connections. We have held some very brief discussions with Duncan on this topic in relation to SIM but these were cut short due to our furlough time. The truth is, however, is that a well established international mission could play a very helpful role for the Kenyan church at this time. SIM is well positioned to send missionaries to Latin America, Asia and works in over 30 African countries. But if you look at a map of SIM sending offices something very interesting pops out. SIM is presently recruiting missionaries from all parts of the world – except East Africa! Latin America has bases in Costa Rica, Ecuador and Brazil. Asia has places in Korea, Singapore (and its 10 satellite offices), North East India and another office will soon open in the center of China. In Africa, SIM has been recruiting from South Africa for many years. A new sending office is being opened in Abidjan for West Africa. East Africa remains the only part of the globe where SIM does not have sending capacity. We are in no way suggesting that all Kenyans should go into global missions through SIM. What we are pointing out is that there is already a felt need in this country for an organization like SIM or AIM to play an important role in helping Kenya become established in other parts of the world. If there were a mechanism for a Kenyan based sending body, to partner with such agencies, a highway would be created for Kenyan missionaries to serve anywhere in the world. Will Kenya have a part to play in the last final days of the missionary harvest? We believe that it should, and that it could. It can if Kenyans can transition between being a "mission field" and become a "harvest force." There is no reason why Kenya cannot become one of the leading mission sending forces in this century. Kenya has been blessed with the Gospel. It is time for Kenyans to rise up and bless other nations with the Gospel with which they have been so blessed.



Howard Brant

SIM

04 February 2009

New Initiatives In Mission: Preparing a highway for all nations to become involved in global mission.

Letter From a Friend

The drought in Kenya is severe and is taking its toll on many. Below is an excerpt from a letter I received from a friend ministering in Kenya. Please pray for rain to come to this area soon!

Stories in the newspaper abound about people starving, families subsisting on wild berries, children missing weeks of school because they are either searching for food or too hungry to attend. The areas that are not starving have felt the impact in rising food prices.

We have heard from many of you and started the work of food delivery to the most desperate areas. Yesterday I went to Oldonyonyokie to deliver water and food with Williams and Charles Wakaba (our Financial Manger). We had hired a truck that holds 13,000 liters of water … and had an agreement with Magadi Soda Co to haul 5 different trips with this truck of their spring water … we arrived about 9:30 AM (we left our compound at 6:30 AM).

We were greeting the large number of people that were gathered to meet us when we got a call from Counselor Jackson. He said the water truck had arrived at 7 AM and was told to wait till 8 AM and then told we could only have one load of water … Counselor Jackson was at the Management Offices trying to get more water released and asked us to come. We rushed to Magadi and spoke with Kantu, which is with the Magadi Management, whom we have dealt with for years. He was gracious as always and explained that they are alarmed as one source of water is not producing … they are a business … they are located at Magadi Lake (salt water sea) and harvest salt. They need water to process their salt. After discussions and understanding that our truck cost us a lot of money 80,000 Kshs ($1,013) they agreed to let us have four tanks … by this time it was almost 11 AM. Now we were in the rush against the clock. We found it necessary to work between the two villages receiving food and water and to stay right on the water truck to continue the work quickly.

The food truck arrived and all were able to receive 5 K packets of Unga (corn meal) in both villages. The people rejoiced and I was decorated with Maasai beaded necklaces … they were very grateful!

The area is so dry and the sun so hot and intense … people were so weaken … many sitting down. The animals you saw made you want to cry. The cows could hardly move … have to helped up by their owners. Kantu said, “if the rains do not come with two weeks all the cows will be dead”. This is the wealth of the Maasai people … they are quite desperate [sic].

Your donations are making a difference. As we left yesterday for Oldonyonyokie our visiting team and Joseph, one of our staff, headed for Machakos … they also were taking food and water. I have not heard their report yet. Also our Field Officers left on Wednesday to investigate and make a strategy on how to best get food to Meru, Namelock and Taita Hills! The distribution logistics are important. We do not send food without a staff member going with us because of possible corruption. The food is better than gold right now.

The intense heat in Oldonyonyokie was so hard and I was only there one day … I arrived home so weak … just from the heat exposure … showered and went to bed. I cried myself to sleep …realizing again … these wonderful Maasai people will never ever even know what a shower feels like. I could see in my mind their smiling faces and the hope in their eyes as they carried their bags of meal back to their home … water on their backs … food in their hands … wish you could have been there with me!