new to you friday–life on loan

You may have read my dad’s recent guest posts from his trip to Kenya with CMF. While there he was able to experience many of CMF’s projects including the microenterprise program I describe here.

Then, just two days ago, I received an update on Alice, the lady my brother and sister-in-law and I made a small loan to two years ago. This was our first update and it made my entire month.


“A Great Story of Success,” it began, then went on to share that Alice has faithfully paid back the loan in weekly installments “without pushing” and has started her own tailoring business. She has taken additional loans to expand the business and now employs two other women! Here’s a picture of her hard at work.

“You can change one person’s world, and it’s a blast,” I wrote about giving the initial gift. Seeing results like this is even more fun.

Find out more about CMF’s microenterprise program here.

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It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the poverty and disease in Africa, and to wonder if normal two-name people (that is, the non-Bono and non-Oprah) can make any difference. A variety of complex factors created this crisis, and no one solution can fix everything. But microloans are a good way to start.

Microloans aren’t new, but they’ve gained new attention in recent years. Like so many good ideas, this one is simple: reputable organizations identify potential loan recipients in the developing world and share info about these folks with richer Americans, Europeans, etc. who then loan a few dozen or few hundred dollars. The recipient uses this money to start a small business (like a food market, general store, or transportation business) and eventually repays the loan in full. The rich American can then loan the money to another 2/3 world entrepreneur, theoretically repeating the cycle indefinitely and using the same money to give freedom and dignity to many different people.

Microloans also help prevent the spread of HIV; many recipients are women and the income generated from their small businesses dramatically reduces the likelihood they’ll barter their bodies for food. (One recent study in Botswana and Swaziland reports women who lack sufficient food are 80% more likely to engage in “survival sex.”)

It takes so little money to lower that percentage–for the cost of a nice restaurant meal you can help someone eat well for a long time. And although most of us could easily afford to give that amount outright, the recipients almost always repay the loans in full.

Alice Mbithe is in that category. Despite only receiving a primary school education, she’s successfully run her own small grocery business for years to supplement her husband’s income. As I type, this sweet lady is using the money my brother, sister-in-law and I loaned her to set up a fruit and vegetable stand that will support her family of five, pay hospital bills, and provide medication for her youngest daughter.

We connected with Alice through Christian Missionary Fellowship. Their microenterprise program provides a 27-hour training course for prospective microloan recipients (covering everything from bookkeeping and saving to integrity and faithfulness) and coordinates weekly meetings for accountability and support. Loans range from $8 to $400 and the program already has 190 clients.


I make part of my living writing advertising copy, so I try to avoid the trite. But I have to say it: while no one, even Bono, can change the world alone, you can change one person’s world. And it’s a blast.

into africa: one question after a week in kenya

My dad just got back from his trip to Nairobi with Christian Missionary Fellowship, and writes one last blog post about his journey and the insights he’s still processing. Click here and here to read more about his trip.


Maybe Dick Alexander will ask Mary Kamau the question I posed to her in Nairobi about a week ago.

They’ll share the platform at this summer’s North American Christian Convention when the evening’s theme will be “Beyond Words: Global Impact.”

Dick preaches at LifeSpring Christian Church in Cincinnati, a congregation sponsoring work in one village in the sprawling Mathare Valley slum in Nairobi.

Mary is executive director of Missions of Hope International, an agency working to share Christ’s love among ten such communities jamming 800,000 shanty-dwellers in a 1.5 square mile labyrinth of oppression. Under her leadership an army of schoolteachers, social workers, and community development workers has been unleashed to share the gospel and combat the forces of darkness among people thirsty for hope.

Christian Missionary Fellowship has joined with the multifaceted mission Mary began to create a collaboration called Hope Partnership. This is one of CMF’s works I’ve just returned from visiting in Kenya.

Mary is a native Kenyan who came to the United States for her college education, which led me to my question.

“Many from the Majority World who study in the U.S. end up staying there,” I said to her. “Why did you return to Africa?”

She looked away and seemed to sigh before answering. “I believe I can be more useful here in Nairobi than there in America,” she said.


And even though I’ve flown away from the squalor and the sickness in the slum where she serves, I can’t get away from her answer.

It is something of a cliché, when comfortable Americans encounter abject poverty on the other side of the world, to speak of being overwhelmed by it.

It is also common, however, (perhaps subconsciously) for such mission-trippers to celebrate the “sacrifice” in their visit and then soon settle back, unchanged, into the luxuries of their middle class routines.


Mary’s testimony suggests a better response. Her answer to my question begs the question I must ask myself: “Where can I be used best?”

<> Am I convinced God is getting the greatest good from the opportunities he’s given me?

<> Am I working where I can have the greatest influence for him?

<> Am I spending my money where it will bring the greatest return for his kingdom?

<> How do my hobbies, my leisure time, or my entertainment contribute to my usability by him for others?


Considering such questions need not make us feel guilty. Not everyone can or should serve in Africa—or Haiti, or India, or Eastern Europe. There are many battles for God to be fought in the cities and suburbs—and yes, the slums—of America.

But after seeing some Christians doggedly bringing hope in a place like Kenya I’m convicted to listen for his answer to the question Mary Kamau dealt with many years ago.


“Where can I be used best?”

into africa: day two

Oh, Jesus, what a wonder you are!
Oh, Jesus, what a wonder you are!
I love, love, love you . . .
Oh, Jesus, what a wonder you are!


About 30 young grade schoolers sang the words with gusto and hand motions as we stood in their crowded, hot classroom and took it in.

I had never expected that such a place would offer me such a moment of profound worship.

I had been forewarned that visiting Nairobi slums would be difficult and emotional. But no one had predicted I’d be so struck with what our Lord is doing in one of the world’s unlikeliest of places.

Oh, Jesus, what a wonder you are to inspire dozens of educated, competent leaders to work in a place like this.

Oh, Jesus, what a wonder you are to fill hearts with enough love to share with whole communities trapped in squalor and oppression.

Oh, Jesus, what a wonder you are to inspire creative entrepreneurship that not only helps these people, but empowers them to help themselves.

Oh, Jesus, what a wonder you are that you can redeem life on earth as well as save souls for eternity—and use the church to do both.

The church has made possible Hope Partnership, Christian Missionary Fellowship’s enterprise in the Nairobi slums of the Mathare Valley. The work serves Jesus with a three-pronged approach, each of which needs at least a 1,200-word essay to fully explain. But maybe my little summary will help you worship too.

Schools educate orphans and other children of families in desperate situations.

Community Health Evangelism (CHE) trains volunteers to offer a future to those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and recruit neighbors to address all kinds of basic health and sanitation issues.

Business Development Services provides small loans and skills training to those who will improve their situation by creating a business that can give them an income. (Read more about CMF’s microloan program here.)

As a result, children are being educated; in 10 years the school program has grown from 50 preschoolers in one rented two-bedroom home to an enrollment of 3,750 in 10 schools.

Meanwhile, 350 CHE volunteers have improved health and offered hope in ways too numerous to mention. Six support groups for those testing HIV-positive meet regularly.

And 457 clients are operating their own businesses in the slum, financed by microenterprise loans that now total about $100,000.

This holistic approach is demonstrating the love of Christ, not just talking about it. But preaching and teaching the gospel is also central to the strategy.

School children learn Bible stories and memorize Bible verses.

Adults seek a relationship with God when they are helped by relationships with his servants.

“Sharing Christ is the bottom line,” said Paul, a Business Development Services director.

And today there are five new churches in this slum, where there were none before the work began. And four of them started in the last two years alone!

Oh, Jesus, what a wonder you are!

(This is the second post from my dad during a “vision trip” to Nairobi with Christian Missionary Fellowship. Scroll down a bit to read part one.)

into africa: day one

On Tuesday of this week, my dad flew to Nairobi as part of a team invited by Christian Missionary Fellowship. I’ve heard from others who’ve participated in these trips how emotionally and spiritually exhausting (and fulfilling) they can be, and suggested that dad process the experience by writing his thoughts—and letting me post them on my blog. Here’s the first one.

“It is a hard trip,” Roy Lawson wrote me after spending a week in Kenya.

And, although I love to travel, my acquaintance with work sponsored by Christian Missionary Fellowship in the slums of Nairobi inspired some trepidation as I anticipated this trip.

I’m one of six in Kenya through March 17 led by Doug Priest, CMF’s executive director. He calls it a vision trip and told me how interest in Nairobi’s urban poor has multiplied in U.S. Christian churches and churches of Christ since he began bringing ministers here.


I realize now why the firsthand visit is so valuable. Even though Christian Standard has published more than one article from visitors to this work, words tell only part of the story. I couldn’t begin to grasp the desperate need faced here everyday until I encountered it myself.

CMF prepped us with facts about the slum where they work. It is packed into 1.5 square miles along the Mathare River Valley in the country’s capital city, Nairobi; 800,000 people live there. Their average income is $1.00 per day, and 40% suffer with HIV/AIDS.

And this is only one slum in this city. Keith Ham, serving with CMF here, told us 70% of Nairobi’s 5 million people live in slums like the one we visited today.

“This is the nicest slum home I’ve ever seen,” Doug Priest said of the tin-walled shanty where we sat for a few minutes this morning.

Maybe 12 x 14 feet, it is entered through a low door off a 14-inch alley bordered by similar huts jammed together as far as we could see. Jane, a single mother, lives here with her mother and two children.

A naked electric light bulb hangs from the ceiling. Sometimes power comes to it; sometimes not. A square-foot fiberglass panel on one side of the corrugated metal roof allows daylight to penetrate the dark hole. At nighttime, a government-provided light tower rising several stories above the slum banishes darkness, reduces crime, and sends a welcome shaft into this closet-home where Jane lives.

We sat on throws covering benches and some cast-off chairs. The walls were covered with an assortment of paper and cloth. A panel of see-through curtains, something like might have hung at my grandmother’s window, dangled behind Jane as she spoke to us.

“Welcome to our home,” she said. And the CMF-employed social worker who led our tour through the slum helped Jane explain her business. She cooks a stew and sells it on the street to earn her income.

I listened to her story and smiled at her and tickled the belly of her babbling toddler whose runny nose Jane wiped on the child’s shirt. And I sighed with relief as we finally stood to leave and escape back into the noontime sunshine that penetrated the narrow aisle between Jane’s shanty and those beside it.

This is our privilege, we wealthy visitors whose vision is broadened while our eyesight is blurred by the tears that flow when we try to grasp what we have seen and smelled in the slums.

I sit in the comfortable surroundings of Gracia Gardens, the guest house where we’re staying, and reflect on my opportunity to come and see—and walk out of—the oppressive poverty of these people.

Surely we who are blessed with the means to walk away cannot ignore what we have experienced, as if we could ever forget it.

And there is hope. Christ’s love IS making a difference here. I will try to describe how in my next post.

does the nacc have a future?

Apparently I offended someone with a recent post because I said the NACC was dying.

Maybe (probably) I offended more than one of you, and that’s okay. It’s never the goal of any post, but why would anyone read a blog they always agree with?

(A brief reminder: the opinions in this blog are solely mine, NOT necessarily those of Christian Standard or Standard Publishing.)


I worked on staff at the NACC for five conventions (1998-2002) with two managing directors and two executive directors. Since then I’ve served as a Continuation Committee and Executive Committee member and planned last year’s “conference within a conference” for women. I also write for CS, of course, plus manage our “denomination’s” online directory and news site at CCToday.com.

So, I kinda know this movement, and I really know the NACC. If I offended you with my statement, at least I’m informed enough to make it.


The plain truth is that attendance at, financial support for and interest in the NACC continue to drop off. I could spend this whole post exploring the various reasons why (less institutional loyalty throughout our culture, growth of specialized and niche events, an “uncool” reputation) but I’m more interested in thinking about whether it matters, and what can be done.

Most of my cooler, hipper friends will say it doesn’t matter. I’ve written about this before—because there are so many other events offering amazing resources and access to the preeminent Christian leaders of our time, they ask, why do we need another one?

It’s true; the broader evangelical world offers tons of events, podcasts, videos, books, networks and relationships to help our ministries. Why should we care about this network, about these relationships?


It matters because everyone needs a tribe. I read Andy Stanley and listen to Tim Keller and watch Rob Bell and follow Carlos Whittaker but none of those guys took me aside last month to hear my story and offer encouragement and mentoring. It was someone in “our” churches who has known and worked with me for years, someone who had a history with me.

On a broader scale, the same is true for all of us who affiliate, however loosely, with the Restoration Movement. Without long-term teamwork and relationship, organizations like Christian Missionary Fellowship, Orchard Group, Church Development Fund and our colleges—not to mention many of our individual churches—would be less effective (or non-existent), and the kingdom would be smaller for it.


So connections matter, and for some of us that connection is found in the independent Christian churches. Great. But that happens all year long, and would happen even if the NACC died tomorrow. We really don’t need a convention with big speakers and exhibit halls and Babyland to work together.

Because it’s really not about the event, it’s about the mission.

And that’s what needs to change. Getting together for the sake of getting together isn’t enough.


The convention’s current decline happened not because people don’t attend conferences, but because this conference no longer has a clearly-defined mission.

Is it for leaders or entire families? If leaders, vocational, volunteer or both? It’s “the connecting place” but to what end? Who’s connecting? Why is it valuable? How are the connections different from the other ways people are already working together?

It’s a hard truth and those are tough questions, but they offer hope: if the NACC can identify its unique mission, if it can connect us while celebrating our independence, if it can become indispensable in helping us plant churches and bring the Gospel to Nairobi and educate a new generation of leaders, it will thrive. If it doesn’t, it not only will die, it probably should.


Ben Cachiaras, Senior Pastor at Mountain Christian Church and president of the 2010 convention, gets this and has planned this year’s convention with a focus on going “BEYOND.” Francis Chan, Rick Warren, Gene Appel, Brian Jones, and many others will push us to move out of our comfort zones and think more deeply about evangelism, discipleship, racial and justice issues and our own calling. (You can read more, including a great interview with Ben, on the CS site.)

Say what you will about the NACC, this is as strong a lineup as any conference out there. But it’s just one year.

One of the convention’s systemic problems is the lack of continuity caused by annual changes in executive and board leadership. To reverse the convention’s decline, we need a multi-year leadership team committed to one easily-articulated mission, an overhaul of messaging methods and branding, and the money that (in theory) follows mission to pull it off.


“Keeping up with [Jesus] means leaving certain things behind,” Ben wrote about his 2010 theme. “And those who dare follow him quickly discover Jesus always takes you to new places.” Some people who love the movement need to leave behind their outdated cynicism about the NACC and give this year a chance. But the convention itself must leave behind old glory days to discover a new identity. If it does, the results could be beyond exciting.

In addition to sharing the latest news from our ministries, brainstorming topics and authors for future issues, and generally having a great time being together, the Christian Standard contributing editors also participated in a significant discussion of social justice during their meeting earlier this week.

The hours-long, far-ranging conversation was sparked by a presentation from Doug Priest, Executive Director of Christian Missionary Fellowship and a new member of the team. He pointed out that, demographically speaking, the “average Christian” lives south of the equator. The people in this area are marginalized and powerless, and the churches are poor.

“Since theology arises out of the human context of its adherents,” Doug shared, “and since that context is now the majority world, Christian theology will increasingly focus on the issues of wealth and poverty, injustice and oppression, over-population, pluralism, and the environment as well as evangelism and church planting.”

Our team discussed the evolving evangelical response to such problems: at first, churches focused on social action or evangelism. Slowly they moved to a position of evangelism primary and social action secondary. Today, churches are growing toward a more holistic understanding with evangelism in a place of ultimacy—ultimately, evangelism must happen but involvement in many areas and engagement with a variety of issues can be the entrance point.

Because I’ve sometimes wondered what my afternoon building houses with Habitat for Humanity or my semester tutoring fourth-graders has to do with advancing the kingdom of God, I appreciate this perspective. And because I routinely become irritated with those who equate care for our planet and its poor as being “liberal,” I especially appreciated Doug’s comment that “concerns for peace, environmental action, human rights, liberation, material welfare, health, hunger, HIV/AIDS and host of other problems fall within the scope of mission, if indeed mission is concerned with the bringing of the abundant life for which Jesus came.”

What do you think—are you threatened by Christianity’s center shifting to the southern hemisphere? Are “externally focused” church programs and community service initiatives a way to ultimately share the Gospel and reach unbelievers, or are they nice things without real “results?” What’s the scorecard for ministry effectiveness? And what is the church called to do, here and overseas, for those living in poverty, walking through rivers of sewage, and selling their bodies for food?