Some of the vehicles used by Maranatha Faith Assemblies.
Local missionaries in Kenya
by Eric Bosire • 29 June 2023
While growing up I used to know that missionaries were supposed to be whites, but to my surprise, I recently learned that Africa is birthing its own missionaries. To come close home, in fact, Kenya has quite a number of missionaries who are spreading the word of God.
The word of God carries the motivation behind the new era of missionaries who want to fulfill what is God’s greatest commission. However, to my understanding it also comes with its fair share of challenges and one major one is the fact that there was a belief that missionaries had lots of money and they used to give people free handouts and tokens.
To bring light to this issue of local missionaries, I visited Migori Bible College and found one of the African missionaries, Dr. Ezekiel Mosati Mwita who is currently the academic Dean of Migori Bible College. He was born and grew up in Kuria District, Kenya. He studied in Migori Bible College, and he went ahead to study at Ugandan University for his bachelor’s degree in theology. Furthermore, he was awarded a doctorate by American University. He teaches at the college and he is a missionary at the same time. He carries out mission work outside and inside Kenya in different ways like it is proposed.
Dr. Mwita said, “Previously our church was called Maranatha Mission of Kenya, but later when we went to the registrar, the registrar said Maranatha Mission of Kenya is an organization and not a church and therefore, we changed the name to Maranatha Faith Assemblies.” From the word go as the name Maranatha Mission suggests, Dr. Mwita insisted that they have been about missions all along. “This place was pioneered by missionaries, everything basically was under the control of missionaries,”
He continued and said that as Maranatha Faith Assemblies and Migori Bible college, they venture into missions. “A mission is the aspect of going to and reaching people with the word of God. Our approach to missions is very different in that, with us we have what we call the local missionaries and international missionaries,” said Dr. Mwita. He quoted the book of Acts 1:8 that says “We shall be empowered and then we shall be witnesses from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the outermost of the world.” According to him, as Maranatha Faith Assemblies, they look at missions with emphasis on church planting and aim to address these four particular areas, spiritual life, the economic aspect, social life, and the education part.
They have maintained a good relationship with the missionaries who went back to their countries. They have maintained the aspect of missionaries locally; they send students to different parts of Kenya as missionaries. "We have missionaries in Eldoret, Kuria, and several parts of Kenya and so it’s no longer the white people only, now the aspect of being missionaries has also been accepted by our African people," Said Dr. Mwita.
Dr. Mwita said that the founders of their mission who are from Sweden have a title called 'operation Caleb' whereby they raise funds and anyone willing to go and pioneer a church in a new area is facilitated, this really helps them in their local mission work.
“Our attitude on missions is not in terms of handouts, but rather on spiritual matters, preaching the gospel, reaching out to people with the gospel. The previous Western missionaries, we have to accept that they had to come up with handouts to be able to be accepted which is Biblical such that in order for people to draw near to you, you have to come up with a method to entice them to listen,” Said Dr. Mwita.
According to Dr. Mwita, they do church planting, this involves putting up churches in various places whereby they go round planting churches. In that way they believe they are doing missions. They also run a children's home, and a handicap center for the deaf and the blind. “We really believe that the gospel must be holistic, you have to serve people both spiritually and physically,” Said Dr. Mwita.
As they go out for missions, they make sure that those who are vulnerable in society are brought to a place where value can be added to them. They have Komotobo children's home, Luala children's home, and the Good samaritan children's home just to mention but a few.
Dr. Mwita also noted, “a good missionary not only goes to the people with the gospel but also with knowledge.” They do have a programme whereby they sponsor students from primary school level to the university level. They help place the students in government schools, colleges and universities. They nurture the career paths of various people once they notice a certain potential in a person or rather a student, they tap into it and help them in actualizing their potential in various fields.
Dr. Mwita said that every church must be self-reliant and on that front they have rolled out an economical strategy for the church. “In future if we are going to do very good missions, we must have funds from within because very soon we are not going to have foreigners coming into the country. When you look at Isaiah chapter 19, you realize the Bible is preparing Africa to be ready to go for missions. Africa must now be ready to take the gospel to Europe and other continents and this will not be possible if we are economically unstable. Therefore, there is a need to establish a way of doing things and be able to set up funds,” said Dr. Mwita.
What they have done is, they have outreaches whereby every year they establish a new church and send students from the Bible college who go and camp for two weeks. In those new churches they ensure the people who are coming are rooted in the teachings of giving so that they see the need to take the gospel to other people.
According to Dr. Mwita, their understanding and grasp of the African cultures, and the terrain enables them to do the missions effectively. As much as he is very grateful to western missionaries, he said that they really experienced culture shocks and language barriers that affected their work.
As I have learned, local missionaries play a key role in reaching out to people. The communities are enthusiastic about it because they feel they are involved in various activities, this, in turn, is making the spread of the word of God reach many because it's becoming so cheap, widely accepted, effective, and efficient, there is generally a sense of belonging because the society feels the missionaries are part and parcel of them.
Next: A cultic massacre in Malindi, Kenya, by Eric Bosire.
The term missionary is generally understood to refer to Christian workers who leave their home to work among people whose culture is different from their own. We will explore in a forthcoming article to what extent this inter-cultural aspect is relevant also to Dr. Mwita’s concept of local missionaries.
Notes:
About the author:
Eric Bosire is a Kenyan Journalist. He is based in Kisii.
About the image:
Photograph taken by Eric Bosire.
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Suggested citation:
Eric Bosire: Local missionaries in Kenya. MissionField News (ISSN 2813-2270)
https://missionfield.news/2023/7_Local
2023-06-29.