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When you look at the Scriptures, Paul's model of missions is very different from the model of Western missions in the last 100 years. The West has designed a model of missions that only works for the West.

What happened to change Nairobi Chapel from a dwindling group of discouraged whites to a vibrant, international, church-planting fellowship?

They began to pray that God would show them what to do, and they sought new leadership to help them reach the African students around them. That's how I got to come to the Chapel. I was finishing my studies at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology.

Any given Sunday maybe ten, sometimes only four people were there! They probably figured, "He can't do much damage."

Did you have a plan?

I knew nothing about church leadership. My core prayer was, "Lord, give me 30 university students," the number I believed was the critical mass needed to turn the place around. And one of the first students who came along is now an associate pastor with us, and several other students who came are now pastoring congregations we planted.

Last year we divided the main church up into five different congregations. I'm pastoring one of the new church plants that's meeting in a tent on Ngong Road.

Since about 65 percent of Nairobians live in the slums, we made a commitment that for every church we plant to reach out to an educated elite, like us at the Chapel, we would intentionally plant two churches that were unlike us, in the slum areas. So of the churches we have planted, seven or eight are like the Chapel, and the others are in the slums.

Is church leadership different in slum areas than it is in educated areas?

For me, planting churches among the university educated is easy. They are like me. I only need to be myself to be like them. The challenge comes when I cross the social divide of status and wealth. That's been hard.

My hope had been that we could be a multi-economic church, where the poor, the rich, and the middle class were together. But it's not turning out that way. Partly because of the location, partly because we communicate in English, partly because of what the different groups understand. When I deal with university students and the educated elite, I'm using statistical evidence, I'm quoting historic figures and world leaders, I'm citing books and movies.

Well, that doesn't work with the poor. They do not understand statistical references; they do not know who Einstein was; they do not understand a reference to a movie; they've rarely seen a movie. So the language of the educated elite excludes them. What they understand, what persuades them, are real-life stories and parables like Jesus told.

We have tried to develop a multi-economic church, but I've not been able to do that.

So how does the Chapel plant churches in poor areas?

I think of us as a Robin Hood, whose task is to take from the wealthy and give to the poor. So we find leaders who can speak the language of the poor, and we link the poorer churches with a richer, more educated church.

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