It is common for today’s high school graduates to take a “gap year.” An intentional break from formal schooling, before heading off to college or full-time work. John had a gap year. But not by choice. An alcoholic father, desperate mother and hungry siblings forced the inevitable. John left school, traveled to the big city (Nairobi), and began working to support the family. His “gap year” began after 4th grade, at the tender age of 12…and lasted 52 years.
He started by working in an uncle’s kiosk in the slums. He learned to make mandazi (African donuts). With that one skill in hand, he rented a rusted sheet metal enclosure himself. He sold tea and madazi from before sunrise until well after sunset…and slept there as well. With ten other street boys. It was an adventurous gap year…in an Oliver Twist sort of way. The brutal reality of life in the urban slums crushed any kernel of Hope for a better future.
Before this trauma, John used to dream of becoming a pilot. Needless to say, that dream never transpired. He never even learned to read and write. Not even in Kiswahili, let alone English. Illiteracy doomed him to stand at the bottom rung of life’s ladder…leading to nowhere. It’s a common account amongst our Pastors and Ministry Leaders. By the age of young adulthood, most slum dwellers have been pummeled into a fatigue, desperation and Hopelessness that continues until they die. Death would be a relief for most. Yet it is from these that God fashions and forms the Pastors of the Least. Much like the apostles...
“For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men... To the present hour we both hunger and thirst, and we are poorly clothed, and beaten, and homeless. And we labor, working with our own hands. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat. We have been made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things until now.
John is a survivor. Unlike many others, he has lived to tell the tale. Desperation begot street cunning. Hard work brought mere sustenance. Not the usual “gap year” experience sought by today’s comfortably churched youths. John eventually found himself in a church as well. Invited by a slum pastor, John found his way to an overcrowded ramshackle slum church. No worship instruments. No lights. No latrines. No bibles. And yet he found something he had never known. A ray of Hope.
Through the simple preaching of the simple gospel by a simple slum pastor, John became a “new man” in Christ at the age of 21. Never to look back. Every time the church was open, John was there. Absorbing the Word of God as it was spoken…not read. Afterall, John’s pastor was very much like him: uneducated and illiterate. While this might seem untenable and impractical from our viewpoint, it is quite typical amongst the poorest of the poor. Slums do not get educated Pastors coming in from outside the slums. Their Pastors come from within the slums. Millions of people, with hundreds of Pastors…and many illiterates.
And yet the Kingdom of God advances… just as it did in the days of Jesus, and the early Church.
Acts Chapters 3 and 4 recount the salvation of 5,000 souls through the audible presentation of the Gospel…not the reading of it! The spectacle attracted the undesirable attention of the religious elite…culminating in the arrest of Peter and John. At their trial before the scholarly Sanhedrin, Peter spoke with stunning boldness, clarity, purpose and effect. The Sanhedrin were perplexed. Who were these “fools for Christ”?
“And it came to pass, on the next day, that their rulers, elders, and scribes… put Peter and John in the midst, they asked, ‘By what power or by what name have you done this?’ Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, ‘…Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.’ Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were Uneducated and Untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.”
The Apostles Peter and John are accurately described as “uneducated and untrained”. “Uneducated” literally meaning “illiterate”! Just like many Pastors of the Least in the slums. And just like our John…the common young man of the massive urban slums of Africa.
The same Holy Spirit that worked in the Apostles, was working in young John the mandazi baker. He was transformed as marvelously as the fishermen called by Jesus. All by the spoken Word received by willing and eager ears.
Fast forward to the Calling. John became a deacon after several years. Then an assistant pastor. And finally ventured out to begin a church in the Lunga- Lunga slum of Nairobi. Across the path from one of our DSM Bible Teachers, Shadrack Mwonga. Pastor John marveled at what he heard from the lips of Pastor Shadrack.
“I had never heard the Bible explained like that before. It was clear. It was powerful. Everything was something I could understand and use right here and now.”
Pastor Shadrack invited John to visit the Bible School. “But I cannot read or write!” responded John. “You just come! We’ll let God sort that out.” And against all logic, rationale and sense, John came. Timid and intimidated. But he came nonetheless.
John sat in the middle of the front row every week. He would take pictures on his cell phone of the notes on the whiteboard. He would then take them home, and have a church member read the notes to him. And they would write the notes into a notebook as well. Words are quite inadequate to express how humiliating this could be for a Pastor to do…in the midst of other Pastors & Ministry Leaders, and with his own church members. This is a well- regarded man of God, of mature years, publicly acknowledging his illiteracy. Not merely a Pastor, but now a prominent Bishop, with 3 large slum churches. A man who has every reason to hide his gaps and deficiencies.
As the semesters progressed, the miracle manifest. Bishop John began grasping the written Word! He now reads and writes Kiswahili…and takes his notes in English! He will graduate this year with a Diploma in Bible Studies…
“This is the miracle that has transformed our slum. They have watched me and seen what God has done. And it has given Hope. It has made God real to my people. They say, ‘Bishop John, if God did that for you, then I know He can do it for me. He has not forgotten us.’ ”
Bishop John recounts one detail about the day of His salvation. He says God spoke very clearly to him. A personal admonition that cut right to his heart. It took him back to his roots… and pointed the way to his new future. Across a gap of many years…and lost opportunities.
“Son, you wanted to be a pilot, to take people in the sky. Now I’m calling you to take people to Heaven.”
It is quite marvelous and miraculous. One of those living testimonies that gives Hope to us mere mortals, with all our inabilities, inhibitions and imperfections.
God Himself…
tenderly filling in all the gaps.
