Daily Meditations from John N N Ng'ang'a: Week of 12 September – 18 September 2011— Is your Career or Profession your God Given Mission?

Day 1

 

Matthew 28:18-20 NIV

“Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.””

 

Introduction

I believe the effectiveness of the church witness would improve if we used our jobs as vehicles for witnessing ….in other words if all Christians were missionaries

 

Who are missionaries?

 

Traditionally, people were sent from countries where there were churches to those areas where there were none. They went there to preach the gospel, to make disciples, to baptize, or to plant churches. They were known as missionaries. Another definition found at says that a missionary is “a person sent from one place to another place to plant a church”

The most common definition of missionary  is “they are people who leave their careers  in order  to go to serve the Lord in church and or a para-church organization away from home.”

 

These are people who move out of their careers to become pastors, or move out to work in Christian students’ ministry offices, or various other church and Para-church organizations whether locally or abroad.

 

When defined this way, very few of the members of any church are in that category. Thus,  if you just appeal for Christians to be involved in   that area  and regard them  as the only people  involved in Christian ministry, what a failure outreach ministry  would be! Our outreach becomes very limited. This is even more limiting in this era when missionaries are unlikely to get work permits to enter many of the un-reached areas of the world.

 

So if we had a mission conference and the emphasis is that we are only calling people to work in the mission field with the understanding of the mission field workers as only people who are employed or sent by the church or Para-church organizations, we may not need such a big conference because not many of us would end up involved in that narrow definition. If we were all on church employment, the question would be who would be the supporters?

 

Day 2

 

Acts 1:8

8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

 

No part-timers in God’s work

 

My assertion is that Christian mission work is not just for those employed by the church on fulltime basis.   As pointed out elsewhere, even those not in church employments must be involved in Christian ministry on “full time” basis. Indeed, there isn’t a single person who is born again and is expected to be part-time in God’s work. What is God’s work anyway? That is one of the matters I want to address in this book. You know you get somebody who tells you, “I am in full time Christian work”, because he has joined the church employment, implying that all the others who do not work in the church are part-timers in God’s work!

 

I daresay, any Christian who is serving God only part-time is disobedient to God and hence he is on his way to hell. Who does he serve the rest of the time? The alternative master is self and the devil. Becoming a Christian means becoming Christ’s fulltime servant for the rest of your life. It is very important for that to be well understood by any servant of the lord. If you are going to serve the Lord part-time, then you might be serving self or the devil the rest of the time which means you are on your way to hell.

 

We need to be able to correct this impression clearly so that nobody has the understanding that some are called to work for the Lord while others are called to support them but use their time whichever way they want.

 

All of us must both give our money and also tell the gospel. Evangelism as given in the great commission involves the whol church giving the whole the message to the whole world

 

This is the message of Acts 1:8:

8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

 

It was addressed to the 120 disciples who waited in the upper room not the 12 apostles, in other words the whole church. All would receive the Holy Spirit and all who receive him would become witnesses whatever their career. There are many people who sense the call to serve God but they choose to work for themselves and only support God’s work with money. They assume one can chose one of the following alternatives:

•      Going to witness

•      Supporting the goers

•      Praying for the goers

•      All 3 above

 

In other words, there are those who give the money while others ‘go’ to do ministry or ‘missionary’ work. That is not what the scripture says! Let me tell you something: not a single dollar has brought a single person to the Lord. Money on its own cannot do ministry. Not a single dollar has ever  brought somebody to the Lord. You can give all your money, but unless somebody talks, nobody will ever know Christ. This is the message of Romans 10:

 

Rom 10:17

17 Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word of Christ.NIV

 

According to God’s word, faith does not come from seeing, although seeing help. It comes by hearing, hearing God’s word. Also it doesn’t come from dollars nor from Kenyan shillings although the money will help. Faith will come from hearing God’s word spoken by one of his servants. If you are his servant you will need to speak his word to others.

 

However I think it is important for us to understand that none of us who is a Christian is expected not to tithe. Even if  you are a pastor and all you have came from others’ tithe, it is very important for you to understand you must in turn tithe. Thus there isn’t any one of us who is not expected to support mission work. In the same way  not a single one of us is not expected to witness to the people around us about the life they can enjoy if they join  the kingdom  of God . Thus all must minister and all must give.

 

Day 3

 

Acts  8

4 Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went.

 

Where you minister depends on where God sends you.

 

Some will minister locally and others will minister abroad, some will witness as church workers and others as factory workers, but all must minister .Some of the money we give will be used locally and some will be used abroad.

 

If you believe that since you are an accountant or veterinary doctor you will raise money in order to support others to witness while you do not witness, that is not scriptural. Every one of us must make a commitment that the Lord would use us for his kingdom wherever He places us.

 

This is the message of this book. We shall seek to show you can serve the lord through your engineering, teaching, or any other job he calls to do. You will serve the Lord as you serve mankind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Day 4

 

MY JOURNEY  SO FAR

SERVING THE LORD FULL TIME YET A PROFESSIONAL

 

I am one of those who, so far, have not worked in the church employment yet I believe I have been serving the Lord full time.

 

This reminds me of my eagerness to serve the lord upon leaving Alliance High School after my A levels in 1973. In both my O and A levels school years, I was an active Christian student leader who also participated in holiday camps organized by various student ministries working in Kenya. From the various Kenya Students Christian Fellowship (KSCF) and Trinity Fellowship (both organizations worked among high school students) camps that I had attended, one thing that was coming out very clearly in my mind is that God wanted to use me in his work, but at no time did I feel that He was saying   I was going to be a pastor or work for Para-church organization. However , I was very clear the Lord would use me somewhere to serve  His kingdom  all my life.

 

My call to serve

 

Upon graduation from Alliance, I attended a conference that was organized by TL Osborn in Kisumu. He actually had a very unique conference, because I don’t think I have seen anything like that since then. He promised that any one of the CU leaders who could pay his way to Kisumu and carry his receipt, he would give him double the money. In other words, he was going to meet our costs both for transport and also for accommodation in Kisumu for a period of about two weeks!

 

During the conference, in the morning, we would be trained on evangelism, in the afternoon we would go to the Kisumu sports ground where he spoke in evangelistic crusades. I saw many miracles of people who for example could not see start seeing. However the main message I heard form that conference coming so immediately after my A level exams, was, “Go out where the sinners are.”

 

It is not sinners who should come to us but us who should go where they are. The church in Kenya, earlier than that, (in my understanding), was having the emphasis of, “Come to church.” We wanted people to come to church to be changed. .But Osborn said, “No. The bible teaches differently. Go out where the sinners are.”

 

In other words, God’s work is not done on Sundays; God’s work is done in the other six days. Sunday is when we bring the fruit of God’s work in the week .He also emphasized that this call was for all believers and not a special few.

Day 5

Ephesians 6:7
Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people

 

 

A missionary student

After that I actually did go to University of Nairobi in June 1974, where I was elected into the CU leadership and became  Prayer Secretary and Bible Study Coordinator in 1974-75 and eventually Christian Union Chairman 1975-76 . I had a busy time serving the Lord as a student .The best people to reach students, I found out  and still  believe  ,are fellow students .Thus when the lord calls you to be  a  student, it is so that you can reach the other students with the good news . However in  addition to working within the  CU to witness to the fellow student , 12 of us joined together and formed an outreach group to reach people outside the university in schools, colleges and open air meetings. We called our selves Sojourners Of Christ or SOC. i also continued to preach in my home disctrictwhile still in the university  with a team that latter came to be known as KSCF-KEAT and still preaches in schools and runs holiday  camps in my home district to date

A missionary banker

By the time in 1977 when I left  the university , I was very clear that my call is to work for the Lord through  my career and so there wasn’t an issue that I was going to become a pastor  in a church. I am called to go where the sinners are and my profession will give access to them .. I was doing a business  degree, and one of the things that really attracted me, was to be a District Cooperative officer to help the poor to organize themselves to raise their economic standards . I knew, most likely the government  would send me  in one of the far flank districts among the unreached people groups because the older officers would likely prefer  to be near Nairobi. So as I applied ,I was clear that would give me an opportunity as I visited cooperative societies, to  affect  any corrupt co-op society leaders  with christian values . That would me my ‘where the sinners are’. But I also applied to a development bank, and I told the Lord, whichever place  I got the appointment  letter from   first, that is the place I believe he was calling me serve him .

I was a little disappointed when the first letter to come, was to the development bank in Nairobi.  I wondered, Nairobi, do they need me? I thought there are too many preachers in Nairobi, but I remembered what I had said to the Lord, that I believed that the first job  He gave me would be where he was calling me to serve Him..Funny enough ,one week later, I got my appointment as a District Cooperative Officer, and you can imagine the struggle because I wanted to go  to the cooperative Officer Job. However  I felt the Lord must have wanted me to go to the development bank for Him to have delayed the letter of the cooperative job .

So I ended up in the Development Bank  to work  as a Large Scale Projects Officer in the bank. Those days the government emphasis  was  industrialization via  import substitution industries. That is basically the job I actually started doing. Within no time I asked my self,’ exactly why am I here?’ Of course I am here to help the country  to develop . But there must be something else for a christian because any non Christian officer can do that. So to be a Christian officer, you must be an officer plus . What is the difference between a Christian bank officer and non- Christian bank officer? A Christian bank officer must be a bank officer plus. What was the plus that God expected of me? That was what I was asking myself.

That is when it came to me that for me to have an influence  within the bank, it will be important for us to pray and strategize together with those who were  already Christians in the bank .  And so in 1978, I finally called in a few people who were born again, and I told them we should start a fellowship that would start strategizing how to reach  the bank with the gospel. Unfortunately for me, when I started the fellowship, only subordinate staff  would attend. In other words nobody who had a degree would really want  to be associated with lunch hour Christian fellowship.

But you know I was really grateful to the Lord when not too long ago , one of the people who got saved through  our fellowship in the bank in 1978 came to my house. I thought he had forgotten  how he got saved ,  but  he told somebody else who happened to be visiting at the same time in my house , ‘John Ng’anga led me to the Lord when we worked together in the Bank in 1978.’he happened  to be a son of one of Kenya’s   national heroes . He served the lord in the bank and as a leader in his church until he retired. I am grateful for the impact of that  fellowship in that  bank .

Day 6

 

Joshua 24:22
Then Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the LORD.” “Yes, we are witnesses,” they replied

 

Missionary oil executive

I continued in that Development bank for a while before  I joined   the then largest multinational Oil company in the country . I did not apply for the job but the lord seemed to arrnge that I move there and I willingly complied .One of the managers actually rang me doing what is called head hunting. This company  as to be expected was led by mix of Africans and Europeans . The question is, in a European atmosphere, exactly how do you become an officer plus? How do you serve the lord with people who may not respect your faith?

It was a little difficult to know how to start. Do you start a fellowship; the management  might throw you out. Now exactly how do you start ? As I was struggling to ask myself, exactly what it meant to serve the Lord in this place and be a testimony, an  idea came to me. I discovered that over lunch hour the Oil Company used to show films about oil exploration. This was part of entertainment during lunch hour. The company  library was quite  big,  and it used to lend the films to  the schools.  I went to the person in charge of the library and who also used to show the films and said ,’if I got a film that is entertaining but it was not about Oil, would you show it on a lunch hour?’ He initially resisted then he later realized that ,’if the idea is to keep the people happy over lunch hour and Ng’anga is pestering me, why don’t I silence Ng’anga by allowing him to bring the Film only once’.

So I went to the National Council of Churches of Kenya -NCCK film library which we used to use in my days in the University, and borrowed some entertaining Christian films with a message, like ‘A Thief In The Night’. In the 70s, this was a  top Christian film. The people were very  happy; they had never seen a movie like that. So whether the librarian wanted or not, he now had to allow me the films due to popular demand . And so now it meant that over a period of time, once in while I would go to the library, take a Christian film, and  bring it for lunch hour show in the company cinema hall. So I started ministering to the company through the film library. After some time, the manager of the department said, ‘this does not look right, you are the one who pays for the film, but  how can the whole multinational require your aid?’ From then onwards, he gave instructions to the librarian, so that  I would be bringing the invoice, and he would  pay. So now, I could bring the films at their cost.

But as this  was going on, one day,  around 83/84 something happened that caused a change to this. We were sharing a secretary with somebody ,with her office between ours. We used to lock my door so that visitors  had to pass through the secretary’s door, but on this particular time I forgot to lock my door.

So a young man  coming to talk to the secretary forgot to move to the right door and opened my door and discovered himself in my office. He said ‘sorry, sorry, sorry’ and I said, ‘no no no, just come in’.  I have a tendency, which  started those days, when you come to my office on Monday, the first question is how was the Sunday service? Obviously, most people, you will be surprised, most people in Nairobi do not attend  Church although they claim to be Christians .  So generally speaking when you ask your work mate this question , they feel harassed. They say ‘next time Ng’anga, next time I will go to church;. But you know of course I have already passed a message, isn’t?

So that is what I asked the young man and the young man instead of being quick, he actually sat and he told me ,’I have actually been wanting to come to your office to see you, but every time I come near your door, the legs become heavy and I do not come  go in. Today  I have come unwillingly’. Remember he was not aware he was entering my office. I told him to  just go ahead and tell me what he had wanted to tell me. That is when he explained that as a young man, a non- Christian, he was already in a terrible mess in terms of relationships. There were several  girls  interested in him and pressuring him. One had come to the house and had refused to move out. Remembering  that one of the managers is born again, he felt he could counsel him. He felt that if he came to Ng’anga’s office it will help him start concentrating in his work rather than the troubles he was in . He could not work properly because of the troubles back at home. I was able to share with him and I told him his solution is to be a Christian, to know the Lord, and that even if I gave him advice, he should realize that one  can know what to do, but you may not have power to do it. I showed him that  ‘if Christ came to your life, I may not even need to advice you; you will be able to sort it out’. I then asked him ,’Would you want to receive the Lord’, and the guy said yes. It is not normal (and in any case  in a multinational, you are not expected to do it,) to pray during office hours. But now this was an emergency. If a young man is totally unable to work, how do you help your employer? Make him know Christ so that he can  to start working.  I had to deal with the emergency. I went over to the secretary and told her not to allow anyone in. I locked my door, and we started praying. The young man received the Lord.

The young man resolved the issue and years later he asked me to be his best man as he married a Christian girl in church. By the time of this writing his children are in high school.

There were others who got saved in a similar way .However, one of the things that I was embarrassed about is that people gave their lives to the Lord in various ways in the company but getting time to follow them up was almost impossible, because I was  very busy. And that is why in 1984 after I discovered that I am not really being able to follow up these people , the idea of a fellowship like the one  we had in the bank came back. I went to a number of people I knew to be Christians and said, ‘couldn’t we start a fellowship that will maintain a testimony in this whole company and act as nourishing ground for young believers?’ I then went to the HR department and told them of the need for a room. In the 80s, stress management was a key word. If you want to manage stress you need a break to monotony? People come to work early in the morning at 7 o’clock. They work, then have lunch hour break. You should give them games like Draught or Chess, something to do different from their normal job, so that by two o’clock, they are fresh and they can work in the afternoon  better. So in discussion with HR staff I said ,’ I want to tell you something else you can do. Open up the cinema room, so that we can also pray. When people pray they are relaxed even in a better way than via  Chess. When they go back to work, they have no stress’. The Lord takes over their stress. How can the HR manager say no if he his interest is for a stress reliever ? Remember it is his business to ensure full productivity, isn’t it? And now you have shown  him how people can become more productive.

So we were finally given permission to meet in the cinema room during the lunch hour. We started meeting in 1984 and I was very happy when I retired towards the end of 2008 when I was telling them ,’I looked back 25 years of the fellowship going on in the cinema room’. Now when you got saved you came to the fellowship as part of your discipleship process. If you are not saved I have a place to refer you to as try to point you to the lord. It became like a center for evangelism in the Company.

Not too long after the fellowship started, I was transferred to Kisumu, near lake Victoria . Of course when in the head office I was  one of the many people. When I went  to Kisumu, I was  the top person in charge of the region and it became a little more difficult to witness .When you are the manager there is a problem because somebody might  want to get saved hoping to impress you for his promotion. You may be thinking people are getting saved but what they are just pretending so that they get  promotion.  Obviously if they knew true Christianity they would know that a serious Christian manager cannot promote you as a reward for spiritual issues since promotion is on work performance.

Yet even bosses must be bosses plus .They must seek to win workmates to the lord .I still remember 1988, with a famous  international German evangelist ,R. Bonke coming to Kisumu. His crusade organiser wanted to find a way of encouraging people in industries to open for their staff to be reached with gospel. I was asked to be in the committee who organized the crusades in Kisumu since  I was staying in Kisumu.The committee  looked for ways of trying to get people in kisumu to be involved in the crusades .The comitte opted  to go to various factories and request form opportunity to share the gospel over lunch hour breaks. Since I was already in charge of a oil depot in Kisumu , I told them I would invite them. But I told them to use somebody else in the management of the place, rather than me to organize the meeting . So that is what we did. So we organized one day for somebody from the preaching  team to speak in the depot over lunch hour and then in addition to that we could do some follow up. Some people in my depot got saved. The question was how to do  the follow up go. So I asked them if they could   back the  idea of a regular follow up fellowship. We told them ,’ those of you who have been blessed by this meeting today, and would like our friend to come following up in future weeks, I am giving you the permission to be meeting over the lunch hour’.

That is how the fellowship in Kisumu was started. That  fellowship is still going although  the company closed their offices. In KPC  today that now handles all fuel storage , whether in  Kisumu or in Eldoret or in Nakuru, there are fellowships that go on right from that history.

After kisumu, I was transferred back  to Nairobi, on promotion to be the distribution  manager looking after all depot in Kenya  including Kisumu. This way I was able to influence the start of fellowships in all company depots from Nairobi, Mombasa, etc. When visiting my depot manager throughout the country  I would also take time to attend these fellowships and encourage their growth as an evangelistic centre

 

 

Day 7

Psalms 137

 

⁴ How can we sing the songs of the LORD 
while in a foreign land?

 

A missionary expatriate

After a few years as distribution manager I was asked to be supply manager for Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, which again gave me a chance to have a Christian witness in the three countries.

However soon after that ,in  2001, I joined  the Eastern Africa regional office with headquarter in  Nairobi to be logistics advisor looking after 10 countries, spanning from Mauritius /Madagascar in the south to Djibouti, Ethiopia, Sudan in the north . I did so reluctantly because  I was already involved in Christian work among students both in high school and universities in Kenya and wondered…what would happen to these ministries? When you are moving around  10 countries, you might be  spending more time in the air than on the ground?  I wasn’t quite keen, but I realized the company was not asking for my permission so I ended up accepting the job in the region.

One day I was in Ethiopia and wondering why, in addition to serving as a petroleum executive, God wanted me there. In my area of specialization there were a lot of challenges in Ethiopia  compared to the other 9 countries. So we had agreed with my boss in the regional office that I would spend more time in Ethiopia than elsewhere and so I discovered myself in Ethiopia more than in other countries. I started asking the Lord, why would I need to be in Ethiopia so much? Remember I am working for the Oil company yes , am an officer of the company, but I must be an officer plus. What is it that you actually want me to do, as I also serve the employer?

And it was then that I discovered that my concept of Ethiopia was totally changed. Ethiopia is the only country in Africa that was never colonized. I know you will tell me about Liberia, but black Americans colonized when  they brought slaves from abroad  to Africa .So Ethiopia is the only country in Africa that has never been colonized except the few years during the second world war when  Italians occupied it. European missionaries left out Ethiopia since it was assumed to be already a Christian country. So as I started going to Ethiopia in 2001, I was given statistics that the Muslims may be as many a 40% which surprised me because I thought it was a Christian Country. The Orthodox Church may have been another 50% so that you are talking about the Evangelicals could not get to 10%, I  was in utter shock, how can this be? I have been praying for nations using Operation World, Ethiopia was never a candidate for my prayers. I prayed for Somali which is almost 100%muslim , I prayed for Tanzania, where I was  told 50% may be Muslims, I prayed for Rwanda with the difficulties there, I prayed for Sudan, but I assumed Ethiopia did not need my prayers. But now going to Ethiopia regularly , I was in shock . I started asking myself, who is going to reach Ethiopia other than Kenyans who are neighbors? And yet  I was asking  what the Lord wanted me to do in Ethiopia? I now knew why.

Ethiopia

With this realization, the old idea of a lunch hour fellowship even in our offices at Addis came back. I identified some Christian staff and discussed with them how we could start the fellowship both as a way of nurturing the faith of the believers and a way of strategizing on how to  be better witnesses to our workmates. Their problem was how they could get permission to do this  but for that I offered to see the Managing Director for them. The fellowship finally started .

 

On one of the visits I bumped into a young Kenyan in Addis town, who had been to the university commission mission conference in kenya and out of the commission, he felt that that the Lord wanted him to evangelize in Ethiopia. So what did he do? He got into the lorry, passed through Moyale on the Kenyan Ethiopia border since he had the call but no money and went to  Addis Ababa.He looked for a church they could partner with .Unfortunately a church promised but when they resale his Kenyan church was not supporting him the broke the relationship. Now that is when I met him,  wondering exactly ,whether to go back to Kenya or  if he stays how to survive. I realized if for nothing else the reason why the Lord had given me the regional job was to be available to encourage the young man.

So I came back to Kenya, tried to get a few of my friends to give a little money that would encourage him not to come back to Kenya but to remain there. From 2002, a few of us have been raising a little money and it has been my job to deliver the few dollars to him as an encouragement. When  I was in the regional office , I was going there at least six to seven time a year. He has had several successes on his mission in the place.

The challenge in raising the funds and of getting work permit made me realize that for Kenyan Christians  to reach the neighboring countries with the gospel another strategy was needed. But as we supported the young man in Ethiopia, I wondered how many other Kenyan  Christians  are already in Addis Ababa, but because they have this dichotomy about being professionals vis a vis serving the lord , they feel they went to Ethiopia just to be expatriates. They were not missionaries and hence feel it is ok not having any  Christian impact in Ethiopia . What if they could learn what the Lord had taught me right from the beginning of my career, that, missionaries are not people who work for the church; missionaries are people who work for the Lord. And so it really doesn’t matter what your job is, God expects you to be involved in witnessing wherever you go , and whatever you are doing.

My employer used to book me in the Hilton hotel and at times I stay for fortnight on each visit. One evening  when coming back to the hotel I was stopped by two people; a man and a woman. They stop me and say Brother Ng’anga, and I wondered ,’who is this stopping me?’. The lady  said, ‘you can’t remember me. I was the secretary to the Christian Union in Kenyatta University’. I had been ministering to the various university Christian unions since 70’s.She went on to say ‘ you might  not remember me.  We are now located in Addis Ababa. We are now settled here’. They invited me to visit them in their house over the weekend . They were newly married and hence they were just two of them in a beautiful big house. Their welcome, our discussions on how they could be expatriate missionaries who did their job and yet impacted the people with gospel set me thinking. We  asked ourselves, why could two people have such a big house my without the loed wanting to use it for ministry? We could use their big house to talk to other Kenyan  Christians  and communicate the message that they are expatriate missionaries to Addis Ababa.

Initially the two people were worried about the whole idea of strangers coming to their house and wondered if not better to  do it in the Hilton. I said ,’we could but it could not have as much  impact as it would have in your house’. They agreed to pray about it. They finally came back and  said yes .However being knew they did not know other krnyans who wre Christians. Do you know by the grace of God, because of my ministry in the Campuses, and most of expatriates are university graduates,within three weeks, I had 14 names in my list. I would  been walking somewhere in Addis Ababa, somebody would say ‘  Ng’anga, you are here?’. I would say ‘ who are you’ and he would say’ I was in Jomo Kenyatta University, or Moi, etc,  and I am now an Expatriate here in Addis Ababa’.  I would take his or her telephone number. I ring them do you so an so is also in Addis?’.Many had not met with each other.  I would then tell them that we needed to start a Kenyan fellowship. My idea was similar to the fellowships I had been starting wherever  I had worked . any Christian Kenyan that I got to meet  had to come into the fellowship  and so finally ,in 2002, I called the first meeting of Kenyan  Christians s in Addis Ababa. By the way there was  already a Kenyan thing were they ate Nyama Choma in the Embassy but that was led by non-Christians ands its aim was just to bring Kenyans together . We were  starting something for Christians to be reminded their call. The basic aim of the fellowship was to tell them they are not jus expatriates to Addis Ababa, they are also missionaries. I told them that we were not going to meet more once a month because you must mix with Ethiopians to be able to touch them.  Like salt we must move out of the salt shaker for us to salt the food. Of course the  excitement was because they had been in Addis Ababa lonely but by calling them together, they now had their own fellowship. I told them  that having Christian holy tables like the ones in some campus is not a Christian thing. Thus I told them ‘ you must go to various Ethiopian churches ,join them and be ministering there but once a month come and encourage one another and report to each other about the kind of evangelism you are doing in Addis Ababa.

Expatriates move out very often and so the membership keeps changing but by the time of writing I am told the once a month fellowship is still going on.

Other countries

One incident I remember is while in a business conference in Johannesburg. We had an evening out  and when we came back to our hotel it was late.one od the managers  who worked in one of the counries I was covring said he wanted to see me if I allowed him to come to my roon. I protested it was rather late bit he insisted it was urgen. Once in my roon he explained that he knew I counseled other and wanted to be counseled also. He explained that they had such bid relations with his boss, whom I knew, that he had bought a gun and was ready to use it on the boss due to the way he tortured him. I now realized that the urgency was real. We spent quite some time as I explained that he needed not to see any human being as holding his destiny. That his destiny was in God’s hands however much the boss hated him. He should not give the boss more credit than he deserved, instead he should put his life under Christ’s care and trust him fully. I then shred my one testimony and the many bosses who had sought to ruin my career and yet time and again I saw God intervene. We finally prayed together and he left for his room.

Yes every task the lord gives you is your perish to serve him .He was helped because he could see that what he was going trough was similar to what I had gone through yet I was not as stressed as he was. He could see the role my trust in God had had in the way I enjoyed my job.

For some reason, my eyes were closed to the need  for Addis type of Kenyan fellowship in the other countries I was covering, and felt like God wanted me to do something only in Addis Ababa.

Tanzania

A  friend of mine went to work in Dar es Salaam and that is when it occurred to me that if you can talk to expatriates in Addis Ababa to become missionaries,  the ones in Dar es Salaam also need the same message .

I told him that if he knew any other Kenyan in that place, we can bring them together and start converting them from just expatriates to expatriate missionaries. He started going to various churches looking for Kenyans and it was my pride in 2004 when they invited me for a seminar of Christian Kenyans  to  talk to  85 born again young men . I was able to spend a whole day with them discussing how their work can be their mission .That Kenyan Christian fellowship went on for many years .

Sudan

Someone  in Fellowship Of Christian Unions( FOCUS) of the universities office in Nairobi used to cover the unreached countries in this region and so I asked him to give me contact whenever I was going to countries he was covering.  Whenever in Sudan he referred me to the FOCUS General Secretary . As soon as I arrived in Khartoum I went to him and said,’ I am available for ministry here whenever I am visiting since after 5pm I just sit in the Hilton. And so I started speaking in Khartoum University in the evenings ,with my flight ticket not paid by my church  but by my employer.     After quite a number of visits I remembered the vision of converting Kenyan  Christians  from just expatriates to missionary expatriates. What reminded me was that I found a young lady, a Kenyan whose husband was working in Khartoum and she herself volunteered in the focus office and that is when I said, how many other wives may be here and having n o spiritual impact ? But they don’t know they can become missionaries. That is when we said, let us get the names together, the people I was getting, the people the sister would get and those general secretary could get, and finally we got together a sizeable group in that sister’s house. That first meeting we held was not really Kenyan, it was anybody who could speak Swahili. And so when we finally met, we realized we could not call it the Kenyan fellowship, we could only call it the East African fellowship.

Uganda

Uganda looks so Christian that it didn’t look like the Kenyans had any mission work . However I discovered that many of the Kenyans there are always complaining how the churches there are not as good as the ones here in Nairobi. If you turned yourself from just an expatriate to a missionary ,all of a sudden, all the complaints would go. And so I challenged the young people, ‘could we start a Kenyan fellowship where this could be accomplished’. They finally invited me in 2006 for us to inaugurate the Kenyan fellowship in Kampala and the fellowship is still going on at the time of this writing.

A missionary in the company board room

 

Just before I retired there was re-organizations that killed the regional office. We later learnt this was precursor to Shell pull out of many African countries. I was then asked to join the Kenya Country Leadership Team .

One wonders  , once you are in the top management team of a multinational  company, will you still play your role as a  missionary? Obviously Christi’s call still continues but only the parish changes. You now deal with top leadership whereas when you used to be a junior worker you hardly could have a witness in the board room due to minimal contact there .You now also  meet senior managers of client organizations that you could not have reached earlier. One of the concerns would have been whether I would continue attending the lunch hour fellowship I had started way back in 1984.But the need for the fellowship of  both nurturing any new believers that were working with us and acting as witness to the rest of the company  was still there. For  the employer, the need to keep workers motivated through the  lunch break that rejuvenates them to be more productive in the afternoon was still there. I therefore become more active now that I was not travelling out of the country except occasionally. We had opened the fellowship  to other organizations that shared the office block. Mentoring opportunities of staff who basically wanted to know to rise up the corporate ladder or assisting stffa under stress ude to the several business processes re-engineering(BPR) exercise that led to redundancy, became opportunities for witnessing, as young professional approached me for advice .

Missionary business consultant

Having reached my retirement age , I retired and registered  a business consultancy which offered expertise in petroleum issues , leadership and organizational development issues and training. Was there opportunity for being a missionary in this new area? God did not allow me to wonder for long. Right from my initial training opportunities I found young professionals wanting to see me separately to mentor them up their career ladder. They wanted to know how I had made it up to the top. Although they may not have been interested in my Christianity(they had met me in an area where they may not have even known of my Christianity), I am honest with them and share that my Christianity had played a made a  major role in my career development. Several of them have so far opted to get born gain as a way for seeking a life of success. It has been my joy to pray with them, disciple them and help them up the career ladder.

 

Conclusion

I have not really done as well as I know God would have wanted me to do . I have failed to take several witnessing opportunities that my professional life has offered .However ,I hope reading my  testimony, you start getting the idea that the opportunities are everywhere, the important thing is your spiritual condition and mental attitude . The trouble is that the devil has given us lies that have brought us to where we think it is the work of the people we support financially to evangelize the world.

Assuming  you know something about farming, if you went to a place and found somebody  has ten sheep and is looking after them very well and  they are very good combination of he and she sheep,  then you went there ten years later and they were still ten, after he  has been looking after them  well , giving them salt, obeying the veterinary instructions, but they have never given birth to any lamb, you would be surprised. You know the normal temptation is to blame the shepherd ,isn’t it? But why blame the shepherd? Have you ever heard, in history , a shepherd who ever gave birth to a lamb? Does it happen? It is the work of the sheep to bear lambs and the work of the shepherd to feed the sheep.

So when you go to your church and there are only 100 people in the church, come three years later they are still 100, do you know what most churches do, fire the pastor, but remember the pastor is a shepherd ,and shepherds don’t bear lambs. It is the work of the sheep to bear lambs, but you know the trouble is, even the pastors themselves blame themselves. They have gotten the idea that the only way church can grow is the pastor preaching better and preaching more. The work of the shepherd pastor is to euip us the sheep to bring  new believers.

Eph 4:11-12 says

11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ,NKJV

Thus the work of the pastor, the apostle, prophet ,etc  according to Paul is to  equip the church members for the work of the ministry.What does that tell you?Pastors are not expected to do the ministry, they are supposed to equip the people to do ministry. Who does ministry?

However most pastors talk about ‘when the Lord called me to the ministry’. What are you actually telling your congregation? You have been called to do mistry but and they have not been called to it. Their work is to pay you and the higher the pay the better. And yours is to wok, so if the church is not growing and they are paying you well then you are the problem. They then  all become  comfortable doing no witnessing , being sheep that don’t bear lambs.

As we read  this  and  have been thinking that our job is to give money to support the minister, and  never saw ourselves as needing to evangelize, and that whatever the career we get into,  whatever location we in , we need to change and realize  that is also our mission field. As you looking for jobs, do you look for Jobs in China realizing that if you are a veterinary officer in China it will help you have a mission field in China. Do you look for jobs in Papua new Guinea realizing that if you become a lawyer in Papua new Guinea it will help you to evangelize in Papua new Guinea?Or do you see yourself as a career person who cannot do mission? Then , would you like to tell the Lord to forgive you  and  ask Him to open new thinking so that the whole of your life would be a life that is going to make a spiritual difference for  many people to  come to know the Lord through you.