A Mile Wide

I don’t know how many times I have heard the phrase, “The church in Africa is a mile wide and an inch deep,” but I am starting to realize more and more just how true it is.

It’s not just that pastors and leaders don’t have Bible training or that they are trying to study and preach in a language that is not their mother tongue, although that is a huge issue. (One of our friends said that her pastor recently preached a sermon encouraging women to “hang in there” and remain faithful and obedient when their husbands beat them, without ever addressing the husbands or mentioning that they perhaps shouldn’t be beating their wives in the first place.)

The church in Kenya is shallow, though, even in places where the pastors have had training, good training.

Even in Nairobi, where a HUGE majority of the population claims Christianity, only 16% of people actually attend church, and many of those will tell you that, “I am a Christian, but I am not born again.” Church elders in some places don’t even claim to be “born again.”

They fully understand – or think that they fully understand – the implications of that statement, but it doesn’t seem to bother them. Pastors in every church that I have been to since getting here have started their message with, “Hello. I am Pastor/Bishop/Brother such and such. I am a Christian, and I am born again.”

In America people might tell you, “Oh, yes. I’m a Christian. I believe that there is a God.” Here they tell you. “Yes. I am a Christian, but Jesus Christ is not my personal Savior.”

Part of the reason that there is so little Christian witness in the North Eastern Province is that the Christianity that is in the rest of the country is so weak that it stands no chance against the Islam that is so completely a part of people’s lives.