Ken Onywoki: Friends, Sending Church, Mission Field

Our first overnight was spent just outside of Nairobi in the guest quarters of Ken's friends, Gabriel and Rachel. They were gracious hosts providing us with very comfortable accommodations and a nice breakfast shared with them in their home the next morning. Around the table we enjoyed a wonderful meal and great fellowship with them as we learned of their involvements in their local church, New Life Mission. This church serves as Ken's sending agency in his mission field of pastoring a church in the Kibera slums of Nairobi.

In January, during my first Romans Project trip to Africa, Ken told me that another church in Nairobi had asked him to be their pastor. It would have meant a larger church and more stable salary. Yet he declined the offer, knowing there would be no one to replace him at his church in the slums. He didn't have the heart to leave the church in Kibera without a shepherd.

Yesterday I gained another perspective on Ken and his heart for the lost in the slums of Kibera. He walked us through the slums and to his church before we flew to Eldoret in western Kenya for the conference. It is hard to fully describe the experience of walking to the church in the heart of the slums. There are a number of churches there and as we walked by one of them, he told us that several of his members had been "coaxed" over to it. What was his response to the other church? He thanked them for offering his members a place to worship and leaving him more room in his church building to reach out to other lost souls with the gospel. Ken said that as long as it was a church that preaches Christ, then he's okay with it. "After all," he said, "there's only one Chief Shepherd of the Church, and that is Christ." Ken is content to rejoice that Christ is being preached in the Kibera slums of Nairobi, Kenya and that now their church has more room to grow in an otherwise confining and chaotic mass of humanity.