Women carrying water in Kibera
(Photo: © Colin Smith/CMS)
Viewers of the BBC's Comic Relief documentary Famous, Rich and in the Slums have been shocked at the sight of celebrities discovering what daily life is like in Kibera, one of Africa's largest slums, in Nairobi, Kenya.
Also based there is CMS mission partner Colin Smith, who's asking some hard questions about what brings real transformation
How does a church contribute to the transformation of a community?
This is one of the big questions the Centre for Urban Mission has been wrestling with over the years. This January we launched a new three-year programme working in two Nairobi slums. One of the key elements in the programme will be advocacy.
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Pastor Moses' story
Over the years we have worked with churches to enable them to provide ministries which serve their community.
Many have begun small schools or started saving and loan schemes. Some have
ministries reaching out to people living with HIV/AIDS.
Others have started homework clubs that provide a secure place for young people to study in the evenings and through these have started youth ministries which focus on discipleship as well as providing sports activities.
Growing challenges
All of these have been very important ways for the churches to serve Christ and their neighbours and make a positive contribution to the communities around them.
However, vitally important as those ministries are, the challenges continue to grow. Sometimes it seems as if we can contribute to making a slum a better place without changing the reality that it remains a slum. If we ask what it means for the gospel to bring transformation to Kibera we have to ask whether the vision for change means that it remains a slum.
Together with the churches we work with, we are coming to learn that our calling to mission is a calling to a prophetic presence in communities. This can mean addressing some of the ways the city is structured and managed.
In Kibera people pay eight times more for their water than those of us who live in permanent areas of the city. They pay for sanitation services with the cost of their water, but while ours goes into the municipal sewers, residents of Kibera will often have to pay for someone to empty a pit latrine by hand.
There are many similar examples and part of our role is to help people understand their rights as citizens of Nairobi.
Sometimes we can be sure that we are citizens of a heavenly city but not be so good at thinking about what it means to be citizens of this one!
Advocacy, however, is not just about change at the level of government policies. We are also looking at what it means for us to practice justice in our own homes, our churches, our neighbourhood.
How do we build just communities where our life together is a living witness to God’s kingdom where his justice and righteousness reigns?
'Prophetic presence'
In the past few months we have been providing training to churches to help them become a more prophetic presence in their neighbourhood. This week I listened to stories of how that training has been used. I was thrilled by some of the responses.
Pastor Moses
, showing off his Samratian Strategy training certificate, a programnme run by CMS Africa with support from CMS
(Photo: © Joseph Steinberg/CMS)
Pastor Moses in Korogocho slum was troubled by the fact that his neighbourhood had no water supply. Residents had to walk long distances to find water and were paying a high price for it.
Before, he would have been resigned to that – trekking a distance to find water and queuing up for it is part of life in the slums. Some women can spend an hour a day just collecting water.
This time he decided to act.
He called a meeting with the local elders and together they went to the chief’s office. The chief in turn wrote to the water company requesting that they provide a connection to that community.
However, getting permission for a connection is one thing, piping the water to the community is another.
Undeterred, the pastor then wrote to a local water engineering company best known for providing pumps for swimming pools in luxury homes. He asked them to intervene.
Two weeks later he got a reply followed by a visit from the company which then responded by laying piping and providing two water tanks free of change. The only condition they set was that the water should be made available as cheaply as or more cheaply than local water vendors.
Threatened by insecurity
Today the church compound has become the local water supply. It has also run into the problems of managing such projects in an atmosphere of severe insecurity.
The chosen managers of the project have not proved trustworthy, leading to problems with paying the local council for the water supply. We have still got to work with the church to see what has been learnt and how the situation can be redeemed.
Working with churches on advocacy is not without other problems.
Many churches would prefer to “own” a ministry such as a school rather than work with the authorities to help children access free schooling. Churches also have to work more closely with community leaders and with organisations that are not necessarily Christian.
Jesus’ teaching on being a light in the community, being a very visible presence, is one many pastors can relate to. However being salt, something more hidden yet influencing the community from the inside, is more of a challenge.
In May Centre for Urban Ministry will be hosting its third city-wide conference. This year our theme is “Building just communities”. It is a title we “borrowed” from the Organisation of African Instituted Churches who are working closely with us in the planning.
Through locally videoed stories as well as speakers and workshops, we hope to explore together what it means for churches to be in the very heart of communities as living demonstrations of God’s justice (and that is no easy task!) and shaping society around them.
Together we hope to both celebrate what churches are doing and also challenge churches across Nairobi to engage prophetically with the issues of those who live at the margins of the city.
Amidst all the stories we will share, I suspect one will be about getting water to a neighbourhood in Korogocho!
Colin Smith is a CMS mission partner working for transformation in Kibera, where he directs the Centre for Urban Ministry. He is helping to organise a forthcoming city-side conference on "building just communities" in May.