Kenya | Forming Leaders from Abundant Overflow

When Oscar encountered the love of Jesus personally and learned how to minister from this place of overflow, he knew other church leaders needed this too.

…experiencing God’s love personally and letting ministry flow from that place.

Novo has long had a heart to resource and support churches toward greater fruitfulness and deeper connection with Jesus. Over the last couple of years, our team of Spiritual Formation Missionaries, Imago Christi, has had an incredible opportunity to do that.

Oscar, the leader of a large group of churches in Kenya, got connected with Imago Christi’s leader in 2023 for mentoring and spiritual encouragement. His church network had grown from five churches in 1999 to 280 churches in 2019. 

Imago Christi invited Oscar to attend their online Discovery course, which is all about experiencing God’s love personally and letting ministry flow from that place. Oscar asked if he could bring “a few friends.” The few friends turned out to be 23 Kenyan church leaders! So much personal healing and transformation happened for that initial group that Imago Christi designed a course specifically for their church network later that year.

Small groups of Kenyan church leaders are encouraging each other toward deeper intimacy with Jesus, and these networks of healthy leaders are multiplying. 

Last fall and winter another group of 80 Kenyan church leaders joined Imago Christi weekly for an extended version of the Discovery course and ongoing coaching, with the original Kenyan leaders stepping up to lead their small group discussions. They went on to form “Sacred Circles” where they could continue to lean into rhythms of prayer and spiritual community together, supporting one another’s growth in Christlikeness and experiencing the love of Jesus.

Oscar and this Kenyan church network want to incorporate what they’ve learned from Imago Christi into their development track for ministry leaders, so Imago Christi is helping them develop their own spiritual directors who can minister among their churches and leaders. The church network continues to expand, planting new expressions of church and sending missionaries to other countries—but now they are being equipped to do all of this from a place of overflow as they abide in the love of Jesus and share that love with others!