Kirumba Valley Christian Church

After psyching ourselves up for weeks, we finally made it to the 8 AM English Service at Kirumba Valley Christian Church today with Jen D. We’ve been wanting to visit this church for a long time, but put it off for many reasons, some of them lame ones. 

But the main reason we were hesitant was because friends had warned us that the pastors, in keeping with the regional trend it seems, tend to use most of their time in the pulpit conflating the great but nuanced promises of the Bible with seductive and misleading promises of wealth and health. i.e. “If you come to church often enough and pray hard enough, and work hard enough God will give you a rich and pleasant life. In fact, God wants all his children to be (materially) rich and live pain-free lives.” Every English language bookstore we’ve been to in East Africa carries the works of Joel Osteen and “Rich Dad, Poor Dad.” 

So you can imagine our surprise and delight when we realized that the blind Kenyan guest speaker delivering the teaching today had nothing to say about health and wealth. Instead, he challenged everyone to demonstrate their faith through patience and compassion and service at the workplace, in the community and, I was especially pleased to hear, at home: 

“We all know that African men are--interesting. We sometimes take great pride in being compared to the African lion. We come home, roaring, expecting all the children to scatter, and demand the best portion of the meal our wives have prepared. We do not thank our wives for serving food we like. We do not help with the cooking, or the cleaning or changing the diapers. But if I in my blindness can change a diaper, surely the rest of you men can change it ten times better!” 

His tone was perfect: not patronizing, with humor but authoritative nonetheless. 

And the singing! We wish you could have heard the singing!  Hundreds of men, women and children, singing with all their might, in full harmony, not about a God that promises lives on earth free of suffering and full of riches, but that,

“He knows my name, 

He knows my every thought,

He sees each tear that falls,

And hears me when I call.”