“What do you see?” Bernard Kabaru asks.

He glances first at the faces of his workshop attendees, then over his shoulder, to the wall. A picture of an empty, destroyed house is projected there.

“What do you feel?” Kabaru continues.

The picture changes. Two young women and a child sit in front of a dilapidated tent, obviously a scene from one of the many Internally Displaced People camps that cropped up around Kenya after the country’s peaceful landscape exploded with post-election turmoil just four months ago.

The women aren’t smiling. The child isn’t at school. This isn’t a home.

Kabaru, a representative from African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministry (ALARM), frowns at the picture.

The pastors sitting in a semicircle look at the picture thoughtfully. Emotion draws its expression on their faces. A deep line here, down a forehead. Wrinkles etched outside eyes. A frown traced around a mouth.

“Desperate,” a man says.

“Discouraged,” another one suggests.

Kabaru shifts in his seat to look at his workshop attendees more directly.

“Is this wound in us?” he says, gesturing to the images projected onto the wall.

Heads nod slowly, eyes still looking at the homeless women glowing from the wall. A man drops his chin to his chest.

This scene, and these feelings, aren’t uncommon today in Kenya.

The semicircle of pastors, part of the larger Seminar on Reconciliation put on by Scott Theological College’s Institute for Church Renewal, would be a good place to start to get insight on how Kenyans—specifically Kenyan Christians—are doing in these months after the chaos.

Ministering to those who will minister . . .
Pastor Steve Munyambu struggles with a strange dichotomy.

His home and belongings torched just hours after the election results were announced, he comes to the seminar with mixed feelings.

“I’m not sure whether to minister or to be ministered to,” he says, shrugging his shoulders slightly. He looks at the other pastors standing around him, and they tip their heads in understanding.

Manyambu isn’t the only one here who has been personally affected by the country’s troubles. Churches in America and England chipped in to provide 30 scholarships for other pastors living and ministering in Nairobi’s slums, some of the hardest hit areas during the violence and looting. So, just as these pastors can represent their flocks, they can also shed some light on the thoughts and feelings of their individual sheep.

Kabura’s ALARM workshop on trauma healing was just one of a handful made available to the seminar’s participants. A similar organization, Peacebuilding, Healing and Reconciliation Programme (PHARP) also presented a short program on repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation.

As the pastors were given opportunity to explore and tend to their own wounds through these workshops, they were also equipped to lead their congregations in efforts of reconciliation.

“As a church and observers, we are brought into the situation—and we can be brought into the solution,” Pastor Kariithi Ngari, from Karura Community Chapel, said in his mobilization workshop. He urged the church leaders to be relevant in their preaching and teaching, so the church can address the needs of people outside the church.

“Your people must know more than theory,” Ngari says. “They need to know what they can do.”

Nevermind the Nakumatt thermostat…
And there’s a lot left to do in Kenya to rebuild the relationships and stability this country once enjoyed. Pastors and Christians might find themselves swimming upstream, said Lt. General Lazaro Sumbeiywo.
In his keynote address, Sumbeiywo explored the history behind the tribal conflict in Kenya and warned that the simmering racial distrust that caused the outbreak of violence wouldn’t go away overnight, though some Kenyans would like to brush it under the rug.

“Some Kenyans have the notion that just because Nakumatt (a large supermarket chain) is open, everything is OK,” Sumbeiywo said. He stressed that the cessation of violence isn’t synonymous with peace, and that there are underlying issues that the church needs to address in its people.

And, from what the seminar’s participants said in a sharing time, it seemed as if these pastors were ready to go back to their congregations and begin the long process toward reconciliation.

“I think we failed as Christians, and especially as Christian leadership,” one man shared. “But the only way to healing is to share between people. To say, ‘You’ve done this, and I did this.’ We need national healing.”

“And we can spread out awareness from this nucleus, from this seminar.”

At the moment, there’s a lot that stands in contrast in Kenya.

Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki.

Orange Democratic Movement and Party of National Unity.

And, perhaps most of all, Kikuyu and Luo.

Or, given the day, any of the other lines able to be drawn between Kenya’s many and varied tribes.

There’s the haves, and the have-nots. The settled and the uprooted. The predators and the preyed upon.
Here in this cavernous church overlooking the Rift Valley, the contrasts—though perhaps not always as sharp—continue.

The cold, two-story stone shell of this AIC church in Kijabe, Central Province, gives way to a warmer inside. The windows glow with the late morning sun, casting shadows beneath row upon row of thin, wooden pews, some askew from last Sunday’s crowd.

But this Friday portrays a slightly different scene, as a line forms at the door. These are IDPs—internally displaced people—who have come from all over the Rift Valley, forced from their homes by the post-election turmoil in this country. They’ve come to the AIC for help—food, clothing, and a message from the church.

Soon, the sea of benches is one-third full, mostly with women, their heads covered in brightly colored handkerchiefs, their hands holding plastic bags or woven baskets, or their youngest children. A man with traces of gray hair bows his head, holding his worn cap between his knees.

Above them, a long wooden sign declares Psalm 118:1, “O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good.” Some are asking, why would a good God let such a bad thing come upon our country, upon us?

The people share their stories—stories of despair, of lives turned upside down. My home was burned. My own neighbors suddenly became my enemies. I saw my friends attacked with machetes, arrows or spears. As the testimonies come, the calm of this tucked-away church contrasts more clearly with violence outside its doors. The echoes of clapping and singing are a far cry from the crash of glass, the pop of tear gas cans and crack of guns not so far in these peoples’ pasts.

A woman stands to lead prayer, and the benches creak as some bow their heads. A man closes his eyes and massages his brow. A woman bounces her crying child. Some stare absently away, chin in hand. A grandmother clucks to a baby in her arms. Someone coughs.

And against the soft murmur of the praying woman, there is a bustle of activity in the back of the church, as a handful of volunteers prepares the food distribution for that day. A door slams. Shoes scrape across the floor as a man hurries from here to there.

Near the door of library-turned-storeroom is a yellowing paper sign: “What would Jesus do?” An oasis of congruency—surely, this is what Jesus would do.

The library tables and chalkboards are pushed back against the wall, stacked one on another. A bench usually used for churchgoers perusing books now holds a wall of containers of shortening. On the bookshelves, there are bags of salt. Empty bags and boxes litter the concrete floor; stray beans and fugitive kernels of maize are scattered here and there. Volunteers hurry to pack bags of sugar, rice, beans, tea, carrots and much more—nearly everything donated by the congregation of AIC Kijabe.
There is one final, sometimes painful contrast within these church walls, and it lies within the hearts of the people. All of them have been wronged, all have had hardship, but where there is anger and bitterness in some, there is hope and forgiveness in others.

John Mwangi, a Kikuyu, was working at a tea estate in Kericho when the decree was released: All Kikuyu and Kisii must leave. His own friends looted his house, beating others to the punch because—being close to him—they knew where he lived. They took everything, he says. They’re bad people. They don’t know God. You can’t even talk to them.

John says he’s willing to forgive these people. But will he ever go back?

The question twists his face, and a short exclamation comes out of his mouth.

“I won’t,” he says. “I can’t try.”

He shakes his head. No way.

Meanwhile, Harrison Munyua is ready to shake hands with his Kalenjin friends and customers, though deep lines have been carved between those tribes and his own Kikuyu people in his battered hometown of Eldoret.

Harrison, a radiator repairman, was warned by his Naandi friends to evacuate and escape the bloodshed in the town in western Kenya. He saw people being speared to death, and is thankful for his friends who rose above their tribal differences and helped him dearly.

He believes there are people who love the Lord among the Kalenjins, because if there weren’t, he wouldn’t have been warned to flee by the people he fellowships with at his church. His pastor, a Naandi, wouldn’t have invited him to hide in his house. Kalenjin police officers wouldn’t have helped him get to his wife and children by hiding him under the seat in their vehicle for an hourlong drive, ferrying him through dozens of roadblocks put up by angry mobs.

He hears what others from his area are telling him, about never going back. But he believes forgiveness is everything—and for him it means going back to Eldoret, living among the very people who looted his home and workshop, and trying to show them God’s love in that way. And, moreover, Harrison believes God can and is at work in the Kalenjin community, just as He’s worked in his heart.

A calm hope comes from the eyes of Hannah Wangui, an old mama from Molo, also in Rift Valley and a scene of a lot of recent violence. She sits, hands one on top of the other in the lap of her printed dress. She holds her head, adorned with a white handkerchief, high. A small smile makes her distinct cheekbones even more beautiful. Small winkles gather around her eyes and mouth, as she speaks words of hope and forgiveness.

Yes, she is homeless, a state delivered from the hands of her neighbors in Molo. But transportation and tough roads are the only things keeping her from going back there.
To her, it’s simple. She is receiving food and clothing from the church in Kijabe, but she doesn’t feel she belongs here. She doesn’t mind if she has a house or not—she knows the Lord has her, and she will trust Him to work through her as she goes back to live in Molo. Others around her are calling for revenge but she carries nothing on her heart against these people. She wants only to be a light in the darkness.

True forgiving, Mama Hannah says, means going back. When you don’t go back, she says, you are just saying you forgive them, but you are very far. You haven’t restored the relationship.
When you forgive someone halfheartedly, you haven’t done any forgiving.
Her prayer is that as she shows them God’s love, they will be convicted of the wrong they have done, and they will repent and be led to God. And it’s on that path that people will be brought together—even people of different tribes.

So, there are many contrasts in Kenya at the moment. But it’s the prayer of people like Harrison, and people like Hannah, and people like the volunteers at AIC Kijabe, that eventually the love of Christ will help to blur the lines, to reconcile the tribes and to restore Kenya and her church, for God’s glory.

The ranch owners called the police in two locations to report the threat. The police promised to increase the number of officers patrolling the surrounding area. The ranch owners knew this might not be enough. The ranch workers and guards, along with the ranch manager, organized themselves to patrol through the night. Some of the ranch workers from the Luhya tribe felt their families were also at risk. A Kikuyu domestic worker living in a small house near the main ranch buildings, offered her home to the wives and children who felt afraid.

The Luhya workers patrolled until midnight. Then a group of Maasai from the area, along with some off duty ranch guards appeared with spears and knives ready to guard their church’s guests through the rest of the night. The ranch manager spent the night riding his motorcycle around the farm and touching base with the various patrols.

After Kenya’s elections on December 27, 2007, a fierce dispute erupted between the two political parties. Supporters of the losing party, many of them Luo, attacked members of the president’s Kikuyu tribe who lived in Western Kenya. Other fighting broke out in Eldoret with Kalenjin people turning on Kikuyu farmers in the area. Several slum areas of Nairobi also flared up with clashes between Kikuyu and Luo.

In the town of Limuru, a group of young Luo men worked with a youth project. They organized environmental programs like planting trees. Others coached soccer teams for the youth in Limuru.

As the post-election period became more tense, several Luo people in Limuru town were killed in retaliation for the attacks on Kikuyu people in Western Kenya and Nairobi. Feeling nervous, the young men with the youth project ran away from Limuru. Fearful of entering public transport because Kikuyu youth would stop the vehicles and ask for IDs or ask passengers to speak so they could determine their tribal origins, the Luo hiked through a forest and dropped down the escarpment of the Rift Valley to the ranch. They knew about the ranch because a few years before they had assisted with a tree nursery project and had brought some of the youth from Limuru to help construct the church.

Other non-Kikuyu refugees showed up at the church and Pastor Philip and his church members welcomed the refugees with open arms, housing them in a small building next to the church. Pastor Philip, a Kikuyu himself, and the church members, mostly Maasai, provided food and worked with the ranch manager to obtain further food and supplies from a fund organized by nearby AIM missionaries.

At one point the church housed about 30 people who had come for protection. When the church heard there would be a bus carrying people to western Kenya from Limuru under police escort, they helped arrange for some of the refugees to get on the bus. Later another group of twelve were carried to Kisumu in a vehicle driven by some Catholic Sisters in the area.

At the time of the night threat, only five young men remained in the church center.

At dawn on January 30, 2007, the men who had patrolled through the night were tired but happy. No raiders had come. The five men who had run to the church for refuge were safe.

The future for these five men is uncertain. As they wait through this tense time, they have planted almost 500 trees as part of a reforestation project. One young man spoke proudly of his cousin who coaches the Kenya national seven-a-side rugby team, which had just flown to New Zealand for a tournament. Another young man said his father was the Anglican Bishop of Kisumu. Both men, despite the threats, continue to stand firm in their faith in Jesus Christ. And until the future becomes clear, Pastor Philip and his church on the floor of the Rift Valley continue to provide food and security for those in need.

What Hurts the Most
What perhaps tears at Pastor Steve the most, as he aches for his country, is what was lost in the Christian community and witness.
“I’m saddened by the simple principle that Kenya is being touted as 80% Christian,” he says. “When this happens, is the mayhem being caused by the 20% minority? No.”
Steve recalls confronting a group of men on its way to loot a burned-out church and urging the men to consider the magnitude of what they wanted to do. Among them was a young man Steve had stood next to on the day the man was baptized in the very church he was intent on looting.
“I believe that somewhere along the line, Christians did not live up to their calling,” Steve says. “Because if they did, with an 80% statistical figure, (the chaos and killings in Kenya) would not have happened.”
Those are hard words for the Kenyan church to hear, but ones men like Steve—who has clung to Christ and tried to honor him, even in this chaos—are in a place to say. And this is the pastor’s message for the church, and for the country.
“Don’t let your Christian God down,” he says. “If God is for you, live for him. Otherwise, cross over the line, so that we can know how many are called of God.
“I see this as a purging time for the church, so that the true believers are going to stand firm. And those who have just been Christian by name would be exposed, and the Church will be able now to move faster and farther.”

Hope for the Future
Pastor Steve has not given up on Kenya.
He relies on the Kenyan’s resilient spirit to help them bounce back. He knows they will want to move on.
“People will come back and want to piece their lives back together,” he says. “There will be a time for picking up the pieces. Some of the pieces will never be able to be matched together again.
“But at the end of the day, people will want to forge the way forward.”
And he trusts the gospel and their God will guide them.
“Sometimes, in the church history, God allowed persecution to be an instrument to spread the gospel, not only in terms of area, but in the intensity of the message.
“People became stronger in their faith. They depended on God more than in times before their persecution.”
And that is where Steve, along with many other Christian leaders in the country, is putting his hope for Kenya’s future—in God’s hands.

“I was a very bad man,” Timothy recalls, as we rocket along in a rattling old mini van, a matatu, heading straight for Kibera. “I was a fighter,” he continues, “The man you see before you would be dead if not for Jesus.” He bows his head and invites me to feel a divot on top of his skull. I place my finger into his once shattered cranium, like a doubting Thomas, confirming his story. “I was the biggest sinner in Kibera,” he adds. His tale unfolds into a drama of guns and despair and an old woman with a New Testament who found him on the street. Our matatu shudders to a stop and we alight into the blazing sun of a Kenyan afternoon. And a smell.

Kibera is perhaps one of the largest shanty towns in the world. A place bustling with life. And a place where it is painfully obvious that life is cheap. Today, the streets and footpaths of Kibera bear the marks of a war zone. This is where the violence and destruction first began after Kenya’s disputed election results were announced on December 30th. Row upon row of shops and businesses are razed to the ground. Half a brick wall remains where a butchery once stood–the slogan of a new year painted across its pitiful facade: “Peace Wanted.” At some places there is nothing left to post a slogan on–just a patch of blackened soil, and shattered glass trodden down into the earth.

Pastor Timothy has brought me to this place, his mission field, for a look into his life’s calling. And to see what difference it is making in a country still smoldering with the ethnic division sparked by recent events. He is a man of exuberant energy and uncommon sense, engaging the massive complexity of Kibera’s geography and culture with innovative ways to spread the Word. In his care are four churches, a Bible school and two orphanages, a network of volunteers, and literally thousands of new Christians actively being discipled. The very streets are a ministry for Timothy.

He walks with purpose through the meandering alleyways and I can hardly keep up. At every turn, someone seems to recognize the pastor, calling out to him. One student jogs across the road to intercept, his face all a smile. “Oh, you are alive!” Timothy exclaims. “I didn’t know where you had gone.” The greeting, anywhere else, would seem odd. They embrace and speak in serious tones about the trouble that has befallen this place. Against a backdrop of looted storefronts, they talk about the week’s classes at the Bible school, hoping some of the other missing students will also return.

We stop at a small shop. An elderly woman, one of Timothy’s many “captains,” holds out a wad of completed course booklets. These strategically placed lay-people from the church help distribute and collect Bible study materials for the 7000 slum residents enrolled in his makeshift discipleship classes. Timothy tucks the papers into his shoulder bag. Back at the office, his daughter will mark them and record the new names in a book–a sort of humble version of the Lamb’s Book of Life, I think. A frayed tablet of thin pages and meticulous entries. People who accepted Christ during a Thursday evangelism outing, and who are now working through a 17 lesson course on the Christian faith. If they finish, Timothy will award them with a certificate and a new Bible.

Unfortunately, there are more pressing needs in the slum these days. The riots have had a compounding effect. Shops and stores have been destroyed or deserted, and food is in short supply. I ask Timothy how Christians in his church are responding to the needs around them. He sighs. The situation is one of hungry people pleading for food from other hungry people. What’s a Christian to do? Timothy laments his inability to meet the physical needs. But even so, his church has found creative ways to get food to the worst cases. But options are running out.

“A man does things when he is hungry,” Timothy explains, without going any further. I gather that some of the destruction I see around us is the rest of the explanation. But we both know there is more to this present chaos than a food shortage. “One place is burned. Another place is not burned.” He looks around at random, and the selectivity of the destruction comes into view. We talk about the tribes living side-by-side in Kibera. We talk about the Church, seemingly so prominent here. “Why do we say that we are Christians?” Timothy pauses and holds up the discipleship materials. “People have not been taught to grow as Christians.” In this land of 42 tribes, even the church can be divided.

“When I see the church, I see an invisible Church, of those who call Jesus Lord.” Timothy’s words are filled with meaning and passion. This is his heart, and in the present climate of Kenya’s ethnic divide, this is perhaps his most important message. “We are one tribe in Jesus.” He holds up one finger. “One.” It is a hard lesson. Timothy explains that a new Christian is like Lazarus, newly raised from the dead. He is alive, but wrapped up in all these burial clothes. Tied down. And it takes time to unravel.

Walking from his church compound we meet up with a younger pastor named Mwangi. He was once a student of Timothy’s and now serves with him in ministry. They agree that the time has come for the Church to break free from tribal divisions and lead the way. As the two pastors are standing beside one another, Timothy gives me a picture of what he means. “I am a Luhya. Mwangi, he is a Kikuyu. But we are one.” He moves one step closer to a friend who should be an enemy and puts a hand upon his shoulder. “We are working together.”

“I am the most happiest man in Kibera,” Timothy declares, which puts a smile to my face. Kibera’s “biggest sinner”–now the happiest man. Once a man bent on self-destruction. Now a man spent for the Lord. Timothy is a living, breathing display of a God whose love is relentless. The humble pastor cannot walk these streets without testifying to this. And when he walks with his enemy, shoulder to shoulder in the ministry of reconciliation, people cannot help but notice.

About twelve Kikuyu came to my house in distress, fearful and asking what to do. I prayed with them and counselled them. I gave them refuge overnight in my home, even though we were already overcrowded with my own family. I encouraged them that I had spoken with others around Sangale and it did not look like the Kikuyu were in any danger. They still felt nervous.

I told them they could return to the Kikuyu area of Kenya if that would make them feel safer. While they were away, we would watch over their potato shambas to keep the goats out and prevent our people from digging up their crops. I told them that once the immediate post-election chaos ended, they would be welcome to come back and live among our people again.

We helped raise money for matatu fare and the Kikuyu farmers left. Later others came looking for refuge. We personally helped about 24 men, women and children as they headed across the Rift Valley to the Kikuyu heartland. Altogether about 200 farmers evacuated from the area around Sangale, mostly Kikuyu, but also some Kisii.

Once they had left, I visited many Christian families in our area and encouraged them to guard the abandoned farms. Now, one month after the elections, things are still tense in Kenya. But most of the Kikuyu farmers from Sangale have returned. Though a few potatoes had been stolen from some of the farms, the gardens were mostly intact. Their houses and belongings were kept safe. Nothing was burnt. No one was killed or injured. The Kikuyu farmers are harvesting their potatoes and getting on with life.