It’s a very rare church where 80–90% of the congregation, including many of its young people, answer positively to the question, “How many of you are interested in becoming a pastor?” But that’s the level of response at Harvest Family Church in Ongata Rongai, Kenya.
Jimmy Macharia planted the church in 2009, and to him this wonderfully high level of aspiration should not be unusual in the church.
“We believe that every ordinary member can rise to the level that they are shepherding 4–12 people,” Macharia asserts. “Everyone is called to be a disciple maker. We teach that, as part of belonging to a church, everyone should aim to be a lay pastor.”
A Culture of Invitation
At the beginning, Macharia—then in his late 20s—and his wife Mercy started with seven people in their house on a Wednesday evening. He asked everyone to bring a friend the next week, and attendance doubled to 14. Soon the burgeoning church moved to a rented location with 20–30 people.
Macharia took Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Church and adapted his church invitation to an African context. Everyone spread it to friends, relatives and others. The church’s launch day drew 300, which bottomed after a few weeks to 67 people. From there they continued to grow.
Two years later, Macharia came across Pastor Dag Heward-Mills, founder of Lighthouse Chapel International, a worldwide denomination based in Ghana.
“This exposed me to a model for what the church should be all about,” Macharia recounts. He also read the Scripture-rich book Many Are Called by Heward-Mills, which was transformational. “That’s when I realized that everyone is called, everyone should be involved in ministry. The church is not just for our happiness, but we have a responsibility of raising up the people of the church as ministers of the gospel.”
According to Macharia, “When Jesus said, ‘I will build my church; and the gates of hell will not prevail’ (Matt. 16:18), it meant that God wants to grow his church. When God gives us the opportunity of raising a church, he’s giving us a place to compel people through evangelism, raise them as disciples and disciple makers, and release them into ministry.”
Like a Family
Macharia observes that evangelistic crusades are widespread in Africa, with much publicity about the numbers of people who profess faith in Jesus. He’s convinced, however, that the most enduring results of evangelism happen when people make their decision to follow Jesus in the context of a local church.
“The church is God’s agenda, a serious base for salvation,” he says. “We retain the vast majority who get saved through a church, usually by being invited by a friend or relative. That is why our small group system has really worked for us and enabled us to multiply.”
Starting with its name, much attention of the church goes to creating a sense of family-like connections to help people grow spiritually.
“Our church is cell based, not just as a place of fellowship, but for disciple making,” Macharia explains. “Across our church body you see many examples of one person shepherding 4–6 people or more.”
He believes the small group system creates a family church: “You see members as brothers and sisters related by faith. That makes people comfortable. We have a mandate to reach out to the lost in our community, friends who do not go to church, helping them make new friends at church, and introducing Christ to them. Then we must grow to the place where we plant churches.”
Three Levels of Belonging
Harvest Family Church emphasizes three levels of belonging. The first is enjoyment.
“When people enjoy their neighbors and the music, wanting to hang out with other church people, they come to see church as a place of peace and fun,” Macharia says. “That brings life! Remember that Paul included joy in his statement that ‘the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit,’ in Romans 14:17.”
The second level is serving, plugging in and giving a response to God.
“We respond to God by serving,” Macharia says. “Exodus 23:25 says that as we serve the Lord, he will bless us.”
This second level is where many future staff show themselves.
“Unfortunately, too many people serve at church to be paid, seeing their work as a stepping stone to move to a better-paying job,” Macharia says. “We do not hire pastors based on their applying for a job. We hire based on going through a system and being trained. Most of our staff are sons and daughters of this ministry.”
The most effective paid staff, according to Macharia, come from “people who feel they have received a calling, and they have been tried and tested by growing a small group from a few to many, and they have multiplied it into many cell groups. They have shepherds under them. They have the heart of the ministry, love the Lord, and are serving.” He believes this life of serving is the pathway to fruitfulness.
The third level of belonging at Harvest Family Church is to aim to be a lay pastor.
“We are a lay-pastor driven movement,” Macharia explains. “We have planted 23 churches so far in our 16 years, with dozens more churches to plant in the coming years.”
The aim to be a pastor translates into encouraging as many people as possible to have 4-12 people, or more, that they are discipling. This involves prayer, visitation, counseling and interacting with them, and reflects the heart of Jesus in Matthew 9:36: “But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were … like sheep having no shepherd.”
“We believe ministry is for everyone who is a believer,” he asserts.
What gives people the courage and confidence to serve as lay pastors? Using examples like Moses who felt unworthy, rejected and not eloquent in speech, Macharia will frequently teach, both at church and through ministry-focused camps, that “serving God is not rocket science. He is looking for a willing and obedient heart, and if you’re willing and obedient, God will use you.”
He also emphasizes that ministry doesn’t mean you have to be in the pulpit. “Your ministry can be in your house,” he says. “I encourage people that God has anointed them for the work of the ministry and is going to use them. I affirm that if you can multiply a cell group in your home, you can plant a church.”
Fruit That Lasts
Thus far, more than 26 home-grown lay pastors are already in a branch church or campus church. The youngest leader is 21 years old, and the oldest is over age 60. Many run businesses. Most have their own jobs but also plant and run churches.
To Macharia, this is what being faithful is all about. He is so concerned by a lack of faithfulness to God’s mandate for his church—from African to American churches—that his latest book, titled Faith-Fulness, addresses this very issue. “Faithfulness means that you are dependable, constant and consistent with your God-given mandate,” he underscores. “Faithfulness yields fruitfulness, and fruit in the kingdom of God is not money, cars, and houses. Instead, it is for us to have thousands of disciples.” To him, John 15’s message of abiding in Jesus, with its nine references to the fruit that will be produced, can be summarized as Jesus saying, “I come looking for fruit—the fruit of new disciples.”
HARVEST FAMILY CHURCH
Ongata Rongai, Kenya
Senior Pastor: Jimmy Macharia
Website: HarvestFamilyChurch.life
Founded: 2009
Denomination: Nondenominational
Attendance: 1,500
Locations: 23