Among the least of these

The last 40 miles of road to Kitale, a town in northwest Kenya, is murder on your shocks. More potholes and savage crevices than paved road, one is constantly choosing which side of the road will do less damage to your vehicle. Sue and I took along our interns, Mark and Su Davies from the Vineyard in Cardiff Wales, to this Leadership Seminar. After seven plus hours of adventuresome driving we arrived in the slums of Kitale.

Pastor Edward and Nancy Khaoya planted the Vineyard in the middle of the slums in 2003. As we surveyed the neighborhood it became clear that the church was surrounded by illegal brewing dens, drug dealer hovels, and witches’ lairs. Hell may be an improvement on this neighborhood. Yet many of the people that are part of this Vineyard are those who have escaped this devastating environment.


We spent the weekend studying the leadership of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels. Thirty leaders from six or seven Vineyards participated in the seminar. The expected format in much of Africa is that the teacher lectures and the rest sit quietly, no questions permitted. Instead we gathered the leaders in a circle and had conversations.

All of these leaders are desperately poor.

It would seen that no one cares what the poor think. Jesus did. There is a profound wisdom birthed out of suffering that we can learn from.

Serving the poor quickly alters one’s view of the world and how ministry is done. A few examples . The children you see eating in the photo are the offspring of the alcoholics and drug addicts. They ate from the scrapings and leftovers of the conference, as though they had not eaten in days. Pastor Edward told us of one woman they had been working with who had been “renting” her nine year old daughter out for three dollars a night to support her drinking binges.

During ministry time on Sunday morning, Sue was praying for another lady when suddenly she became violently ill and had to leave the room to recover. We believe the spiritual warfare was severe. During the worship time a young man, heavily intoxicated, gyrated around the room and had to be restrained from dancing around the pulpit. In all of this brokenness, Jesus showed up and touched people.

We drove back to Nairobi, bouncing down the road exhausted, awakened again to the brutal reality that the majority of Vineyards in Kenya face the scenario we had just experienced. We must stand with them for the King has said `I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' Matthew 25.40