Kenya’s contemporary church lacks confidence and has lost its identity

Politics is throwing forceful curve balls the church is not able to catch, generating no equal and opposing reaction. [iStock]

Something is fundamentally amiss with Kenya’s contemporary church. This gnawing dynamic is not the simplistic moralistic evaluation. No! It is something way more material: identity. 

Glorying in the past, like the blind Samson, the church is a giant on a leash. Even armed with creeds and confessions, the church struggles to articulate what it really believes and even more, how that belief translates into solutions to the questions of the people. 

Empire issues have made the church retreat to its denominational “back-office.”  While Wanjiku waits for the church to be her advocate, the church is itself securing advocates - literally! Self-engineered sins keep swallowing the church’s energy, forcing a regrettable retreat from effective and consistent public duty. 

One would hope that the resurrection power will come to the church’s rescue! But the connection of the contemporary church to this out-from-the-grave power is intermittent and loose. We have a church that claims agency of the greatest power but does no demonstrate it. 

Politics is throwing forceful curve balls the church is not able to catch, generating no equal and opposing reaction.  The church is playing hard ball then switching to soft ball midstream. Hearing not from the Lord, the church is united in pedestrian silence.  Emerging community issues are not on the church’s radar until the sun is high in the sky. By the time a distracted church weaves a salvation plan and arrives at the scene, other actors already brewed and sowed solutions.  The church – the prayer force for the nation – is itself in need of fierce intercession. 

In this questioning age, the church has been bombarded with doubts about the authenticity of its priests; repeatedly challenged about its Western baggage; questioned on oppressive doctrines and traditions that minimise women, children and youth; it is often called out to attain an elusive unity; rattled by intent of the State to regulate it; having to engage the analyses of others since it has no substantive analysis of its own.

This bombardment is taking a toll on the identity of the church. The church lacks confidence and has no significant position of its own. With nothing to be bold about, the confidence of the church is waning. Lack of innovation, weakness in self expression and lack of theological imagination in the face of criticism is animating those who see the church as an assembly of big claims fixed in history and not transplantable across time. 

The possibility of the church moving lower in the trust rankings is real. But many spiritual leaders do not panic about a church being pushed into a corner of limited navigation and tames influence.  After all “The gates of hell will not prevail!” The shallowness in this thinking that hell comes from without which blinds us from the hell within.

Extreme externalisation of hell lives internalized hell to roam free. When church leaders and Christians participate in oppression by propagating it or being bystanders, it is not the gates of hell that will come against the church. No! It is Jesus with a whip!

There is drought of divine drama. Those responsible for miracles that belong to the public place must wake up from their slumber. One of the attractions of the scriptural narrative is divine drama. Way beyond the heroic actions of men, the scriptures normalise jaw-dropping acts from the divine realm as signs accompanying God’s people. 

When people hear of “God with us” this divine drama is part of what they hear and hope for.  But something is amiss. Going by their lofty promises, politicians are the new miracle workers! They will remain so – as happened with Moses and Pharaohs magicians – if the snake of the priest is not big enough to swallow that of the politicians. The priests of Baal have zealously set up their altars. The people are looking up to the God of the church to answer by fire.  But long gone are the priests who took over. The brand we have are masters at taking cover!

Churches conduct many elaborate rituals. But what is their actual impact? In a world that is running on data, some church-based analysis would help. A church member would be right to question: how many people has the Eucharist healed? The answer should not be imagined. It needs to be factual. Paul of Tarsus states a tangible outcome when he cautioned about mocking the Eucharist (Holy Communion) “Some of you have died.”

Without expelling the mystery of the ritual, the ritual needs to point to some identifiable mysterious impacts. Rituals are spiritual formulas. Their conduct is clear. Their fruit must be visible. Can the church demonstrate that the marriages it conducts are happier? While faith is above facts, facts are capable of stirring faith. Faith empty of facts (testimonies) is perceived as fiction’s neighbor. 

“Give me the old time religion!” may be a good line.  But the same old time religion exclaims “I make all things new.”  The old is good not because it resists the new but because it sifts the new into timeless value. 

When God allowed the shedding of leaves, He made it such that the old leaves do not jump back to the tree.  New ones come and the old ones die. Nature is coded to allow the snake to shed its skin in a way that the snake cannot return to it, even if it so wanted.

  African wisdom says that you cannot touch the same river twice – no sooner have you touched the water than new water takes up the space. Jesus spelt the possibility of the speed of the people of the world overtaking the speed of children of light. Light may remain but darkness can dominate. And as it appears, the speed of world has broken the speed of the church.