National Convention Saturday, 30th April - Monday, 2nd May 2016 FOCUS National Director’s Message A WORD FROM THE FOCUS NATIONAL DIRECTOR A warm welcome to all the Hesabika Convention delegates! A special welcome to our guests from outside the country. This convention becomes the fourth of FOCUS Kenya’s flagship Conventions. However, Hesabika comes about as a unique convention owing to the need it addresses and the urgency it deserves: FOCUS Kenya has over the years (since 1973) nurtured more than 100,000 Christians from the Christian Unions. These graduates are found in every sector Mr. George Ogalo of the society, majority in very influential positions. While we rejoice at this outcome over the years, the current spread and levels of corruption, the trap of negative ethnicity, the levels of poverty among a majority of Kenyans, and the untamed politics outrightly challenge our theology and practice of Christian faith. They make a mockery of the claim that Kenya is 82% Christian, even when history attests to Christian values playing a major role in social transformation when Christians choose to stand up and be counted. It is out of this reality and our Christian mandate that a significant number of Kenyans are gathered in this convention to focus on national social transformation. I believe that this Convention will begin to validate the many Christians in the market place as a source of light and as a practical voice of God for social transformation. The prevailing notion that the voice of God is confined to the clergy and to Sunday worship needs to be 2 addressed radically so that Christian influence can get into the streets and marketplaces where the individual Christian in the private and public sector operates. We also hope that this Convention will catalyze Christian organizations and Kenyans of goodwill to create synergy in order to mitigate the concerns we have for our nation. This is the essence of the models of transformation and the exhibitions happening in this Convention. At a time when the Christian Unions in Kenya are graduating nearly 10,000 students every year, there is need to prepare and harness this potential force of influence for the greater good of God’s purpose for the nations. We are delighted that in the 2016-2020 Strategic Plan of FOCUS, Integral Missions and Social Transformation is already flagged as a Strategic Priority Area. Hesabika Convention therefore becomes one major strategy to catalyze a movement in which Christians (students and graduates) will begin to claim their God-given responsibility to be the light and salt of their world (Mathew 5:13). The university and college environment by itself requires redemption so that our young people do not succumb to the greed, divisions, and corruption that characterize our society. We trust God that from the biblical reflections, and the models of transformation engaged in this Convention, there shall arise a critical number of Christians who manifest a deep sense of calling and a purpose for their nation. In order to translate the concerns we have into action, we must in the spirit of Christ commit to sacrificial patriotism. It is therefore a great joy to see this convention actualized after much prayer and intense planning. May this Convention inspire and bear the fruits of national impact, for God and his people. And may Christians in this country lead from the front. Once again, Welcome na Tuhesabike! Stand Up. Be Counted! An Initiative of Fellowship of Christian Unions (FOCUS Kenya) National Convention Saturday, 30th April - Monday, 2nd May 2016 Hesabika Planning Committee Chairman’s Message Message from the Chair, HESABIKA Planning Committee There are not many people living in Kenya today who are not concerned about the direction our nation is heading. We watch our TV screens and listen to radios in horror as we hear story after story of bad news especially about impunity, greed, corruption and theft of the country’s resources. Kenya has become a very unequal society of a few billionaires and millions living from hand to mouth. A few of the elite have now made a hobby out of stealing billions Dr. Joshua Wathanga from public resources and routinely getting away with it. But mere analysis and concern and a few couch solutions of how we get out this mess will not change anything. Change, if it will come to Kenya, will not come from out there. To keep hoping that, if only we had issue-based political parties, or less selfless parliamentarians and MCAs or more honest police and lawyers, is pure escapism. When you enter a room and you find it dark, you don’t blame the darkness but you ask, ‘where is the light?’ When you eat tasteless food, you don’t blame the food, but you ask, ‘where is the salt?’ Equally, when you see a society that is in darkness and is morally bankrupt, you don’t blame the society or its politicians, police, or its lawyers; you ask yourself, where are the Christians? 3 Transformation has to start with each one of us, especially those attending this convention, people who claim to be servants of the God who ‘so loved the world that He gave His only Son’! Aren’t there enough of us who have been transformed by Christ and who can be agents of transformation for our land? Sociologists argue about what proportion of the population is required to change a culture and the direction of a nation. Those percentages are usually in the range of 3-5%, but this is miniscule for a nation that prides itself to be 82% Christian with between 7,000-10,000 of Christians graduating from the Christian Unions of its universities and colleges. John Wesley is quoted to have said, ‘Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not whether they be clergymen or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of Hell and set up the kingdom of Heaven upon Earth’. HESABIKA calls upon each one of us, to be counted among the ‘one hundred’ who are prepared to stand up and be counted and be agents of God’s transformation for our beloved land and continent. I thank especially my fellow Planning Committee members for allowing God to use them as they worked even through extreme pressure over the last six months or so since HESABIKA was born. We thank the leadership of FOCUS for giving us the honor to serve the movement, the nation and God in putting together this convention. We are humbled by those who gave financially to support the HESABIKA initiatives for believing in this movement enough to put their money into it. We are grateful for the support and encouragement of many FOCUS Associates, some of whom are church pastors, corporate leaders, politicians and public officials. All these give us hope that this country can be changed, one person at a time, for good and for God. Tuhesabike! Stand Up. Be Counted! An Initiative of Fellowship of Christian Unions (FOCUS Kenya) National Convention Saturday, 30th April - Monday, 2nd May 2016 Contents FOCUS National Director ....................................................................................................2 Hesabika Planning Committee Chairman’s Message ............................................................3 Hesabika Handbook General Information .........................................................................5 List of Sponsors and Exhibitors for Hesabika Convention .................................................6 About FOCUS Kenya ...........................................................................................................9 Plenary Speakers ................................................................................................................13 Workshop Facilitators ........................................................................................................18 Songs ...................................................................................................................................61 Note Pad ..............................................................................................................................66 4 Stand Up. Be Counted! An Initiative of Fellowship of Christian Unions (FOCUS Kenya) National Convention Saturday, 30th April - Monday, 2nd May 2016 Hesabika handbook General Information Background According to the recent Youth Survey done in Kenya, almost half of the country’s youth admire people who have made money regardless of how they did it, while a slightly lower figure do not mind receiving a bribe or paying one to get things done. It appears that in Kenya one does not have to toil hard to become wealthy and that the sole purpose of public office is an opportunity for corruption and national plunder. 52 years, and counting, in our life as a nation, we continue to see accelerating evidence of broken walls in our national ethics and moral decay in society. At the same time, the country is said to be over 80% Christian and our churches are full and seemingly thriving; same for our schools and universities. Christian Unions in Kenyan universities now produce nearly 10,000 graduates every year, and many of these, over the years, have taken responsible positions in every sector of the economy and public life. While FOCUS ministry has had a huge impact and influence in the ministry of the church in Kenya and abroad, and in the lives of individual Christians and their families, the same seems to be missing or hardly noticeable in Kenya’s political and socio-economic realms? Why is corruption continuing unabated when we have Christians in influential positions-private and public arena?