Popular religion: a study of some lunch hour religious assemblies in Nairobi

Abstract

This study is about Lunch Hour Religious Assemblies commonly found in some public halls, parks and streets of Nairobi. Lunch hour evangelism is organised by some christians who have taken up the responsibility of preaching to the public. This preaching is a positive response and an indication of commitment to the Great Commission of Jesus Christ to His disciples; "Go ye therefore and make disciples of all nations ... "(Matth.28; 19-20 RSV). Although LHRA emerged as early as 1960s, little scholarly work has been done about them. Lack of study and adequate information on these religious assemblies has led to this study. This study had four main objectives namely; to establish the background of some main line churches whose groups were involved in LHRA, to find out reasons why LHRA were preferred, to examine the message preached in LHRA and finally to investigate the problems that lunch hour congregations faced. In conducting this research,the researcher used library source which formed secondary data; a historical theological approach was used in an attempt to understand the background of some LHRA. An extensive field research was also done on this study. In this case stratified random sampling technique was used to select the informants. Data was collected through questionnaires and interviews. This was later analysed through descriptive method. The theological framework for this is based on D.B. Barrets' theory on the rise of African independent Churches. Schism and renewal explained by Barret in his theory is used to explain reasons for the emergence of LHRA in Nairobi. During the study, lunch hour congregations were found to be preferred to morning and evening meetings which took place when city workers hurried to get to work or return to their residential areas. The Bible was found to be commonly used in LHRA. The preachers at the LHRA attracted their listeners through methods such as: using exotic musical and sound systems, writing their message on the ground and manilla paper, putting wall posters and moving to new venues to attract new crowd. The study established various problems which faced lunch hour congregations such as unfavourable weather conditions, external interferences and lack of training for the preachers. The people who were involved in LHRA were found to be predominantly protestants from mainline churches. However, a small group claimed to be nondenominational. It was further established that members in this particular group broke away from various protestant churches due to dissatisfaction in their churches. This defection indicated that mainline churches were not sufficiently addressing their members' needs. The church should therefore be flexible to some canonical laws so as to prevent her members from drifting away. From this study, we can conclude that some LHRA are helping the society to eradicate social evils by preaching salvation. Most of the methods the preachers used to attract their preachers were effective. However, some approaches were characterised by selfishness, obscurantism, travesty and ignorance due to lack of training. It is therefore, recommended that theological colleges should introduce a course on public evangelism so as to help the evangelists in their missionary work.