Mid-month news March 2024

By Jim Harries, jimoharries@gmail.com +254721804282

Fellowships in the Nairobi slums

I participated in a number of fellowships in the Nairobi slums at the end of last month, while staying at the Coptic mission in the city. We would aim to leave at around five, often in practice at half past, but either way at the peak of rush hour. Hence our driver took us the back-ways, while displaying ‘aggressive Nairobi driving’! On one occasion we took 1.5 hours, the other almost 2.5 hours, to get to a point about 10km away.

Due to rain, as soon as we stepped out of the minibus, there was mud to be avoided, and puddles to be leaped over. The home was just 100 feet from the road, walking carefully to avoid obstacles like hanging clothes, low rooves, children playing. Half of the space of the one-room house seemed to be taken up by the large bed – on which I thought presumably the whole family slept. In due course, about nine of the 15 or more ladies who attended the fellowship and bible study were perched on the bed. Others sat around the room or just outside the door, a few children scattered between them. We three men occupied three of the chairs. A short Coptic liturgy was followed by reading of and discussion of a chapter of the book of Jonah. The ladies first contributed, then us visitors. (I had not prepared as I didn’t know what was coming, but my friends were better prepared.) Various profound insights were shared.

Some of the slums we visited were located between modern high-rise buildings. It seems Kenyans connected to, and often living, abroad, tended to rent the quality accommodation found at the high level, leaving locals looking for labouring jobs with the improvised tin shacks around them. Certainly a place of contrasts!

A closing prayer and another short liturgy drew our hour’s study and discussion to an end. Tea followed – half a cup each of black tea (Coptic Christians fast about 180 days per year. This was one of those days, on which milk was not permitted.) and plenty of mandazi (drop scones) to go around. Setting back out into the dark with lights on our phones shining the way, it only took 20 minutes to get back to the mission.

Sunday Service in Nairobi

On Sunday, I attended a branch of my home church and not a Coptic church. We were squeezed between 3 or four other churches. All competed to be as noisy as possible. To me, that was a disturbance. I am not sure it was to my colleagues. The drums beating on one side, people crying on another, and those singing in the church next to them, could be interpreted to mean that our location was heavily ‘cleansed’. (All these actions were designed to chase away sins and devils.) While I was given the teaching slot, our bishop was the main preacher. ‘Death is your heart’ he told us, repeatedly.

I realised here more than ever how much some African people, especially women, loved to be exorcized of demons. This was the, you might say in English, emotional therapy par excellence that they could receive on a Sunday. One after another came forward, or was told to come forward if they appeared reticent, moments later to be writhing on the floor, often with other women sitting on them on them to stop them kicking (that could hurt others, and reveal their thighs to the men present). This continued, it seems for about 1 ½  hours. “You might say life is not interesting at home, but it is certainly exciting in church,’ our bishop commented at the end of the service.

Vulnerable Mission and the Gaza War

Some readers will know that I have long put a lot of effort into promoting vulnerable mission (vulnerablemission.org). Ongoing developments arising directly and indirectly from the war in Gaza, seem to me to clearly highlight the vital importance of our work. Many in the UK are evidently shocked by ways in which today’s strong UK Muslim population is expressing a rampant hatred for Jews in enormous weekly demonstrations that put UKs capital into gridlock. The writing has been on the wall, there have been many warnings, that have largely gone unheeded. Many have preferred to take Muslims as simply peace-loving citizens, resulting in a widespread condemnation of ‘Islamophobia’ in the UK, rooted in a misleading notion that Islam is simply another ‘religion’ alongside Christianity. Discerning people’s nature requires living and working with them in their own languages, without buying them into compliance, we say in the AVM (Alliance for Vulnerable Mission).

This is something that the UK, and the West in general, have been ignoring at their peril. While our overt advocating for vulnerable mission has rarely been specifically with respect to the Muslim world, parallels would quickly stare you in the face should you look at our work. Lack of effort to comprehend the actualities of Islamic belief has, to many, put the very foundations of European and Western ways of life in grave danger.

Videos

Please find some time to look at some of the videos that I have posted that consider topical issues in the light of insights one can acquire as a long-term missionary to Africa. Here is my you tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ0F_QsAWI0KmvUWEeuaBRg  This recent video, on contemporary Islam, is not yet public: https://youtu.be/395BhY_mjwo