From the Fields of Kenya to 'Going Local' in Kentwood, Mich.

Rev. John Mondi grew up traveling with his extended family and other members of the Pokot tribe across parts of northwestern Kenya.

Rain or shine, they drove their animals — sheep and goats — from place to place in search of grass and water. They generally slept out under the stars and used their animals and what they could forage for food.

When Mondi was in his early teens, however, that changed. His mother, one of his father’s four wives, converted to Christianity and left the nomadic life to settle down in a town that had a freshwater spring, a small church, a school, and three shops.

“My mother told my father that she no longer wanted to live the mobile lifestyle but a settled life near Churo. Despite ridicule and persecution, she stood her ground. She was converted by a missionary from the Africa Inland Mission,” said Mondi, who moved in with his mother, attended school in the local community, and went on from there to attend high school and Bible college.

Today, Mondi is thousands of miles from Kenya and the pastoral life he lived among the forested hills, rivers, and savannah grasslands of his youth. He is now pastor of the African Community Fellowship Christian Reformed Church, a growing congregation in Kentwood, Mich., that is home to scores of immigrants and refugees from across Africa.

“God is raising up another church in this vineyard; God is making ripe another seed,” said Mondi. “God is bringing the members of the global church to this country, and we are opening our arms to them.”

Mondi’s congregation is, in fact, a reflection of a much bigger story. Christianity had grown from 9 million at the turn of the 20th century to nearly 520 million in 2010. The continent of Africa plays a big part in this change.

One out of every four Christians in the world presently is an African, and the Pew Research Center estimates that the number of African Christians will grow to 40 percent by 2030.

“We were seeing this dramatic shift and the creation of a large multicultural movement,” said Joel Carpenter, director of the Nagel Institute for the Study of Global Christianity. No one should be surprised, he added, since this “is part of the nature of Christianity to cross cultural boundaries. . . .”

“And every kind of Christianity in the world is now here in the United States, thanks to immigration,” he said.

In West Michigan alone, according to Bernard Ayoola, a Christian Reformed minister from Nigeria who runs the African Resource Center in Grand Rapids, there are at least three dozen African immigrant congregations or startups.

This growing presence of African Christianity in North America brings important lessons for the church, said Mark Gornik, director of City Seminary of New York and the author of Word Made Global: Stories of African Christianity in New York City.

 “God is a God of movement and surprises,” he said. “African Christians in North America are a gift to the whole body of Christ, helping us see a church larger than we imagined, and a gospel that is perhaps bigger too.”

John Mondi’s story, said Gornik, is one of hope and reflects the larger story of the African diaspora to the U.S.

After leaving the pastoral life of a nomad, Mondi became a Christian during a Sunday school skit. He was playing the apostle Peter in the scene from John 21 in which Christ asks Peter if he loves him. Mondi knew immediately that, like Peter, he loved Jesus.

That began his calling to the ministry, he said, which was underscored later during high school when he met three well-dressed pastors on a road who took him aside and predicted that one day he would be one them.

Later he came to West Michigan, where he earned degrees at Calvin Theological Seminary and Western Theological Seminary, and also at Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, Ind.

While Mondi was finishing his studies at Western, he was called to serve the African Community Fellowship CRC, founded in the mid 1990s by Mwaya Wa Kitavi, now director for eastern and southern Africa for Resonate Global Mission.

Mondi’s rich experience in Africa equipped him for this role. He served the church in the small community where he grew up, but he had also closely observed the pastoral religion of his father’s people. While this latter experience was not a formal religion, it gave him a deep appreciation of God’s creation and for rituals surrounding important times in life.

In his role at the Kentwood church, Mondi brings with him a refreshing view of Christianity that is helping him build his church to the point where it has launched a capital campaign to expand its building.

“In Africa we believe our entire life is religious. We are part of the whole,” he said.

At the heart of Mondi’s story is what it means to become a disciple of Christ and then, in turn, to pour your life and energy into bringing the same message of Christian love and salvation to others.

“We believe that the Great Commission of ‘Go into the world and make disciples’ is in the present tense,” he said in an interview as he sat in the sun-dappled sanctuary of his church one afternoon.

In his church there are people from Kenya, Uganda, Congo, Sudan, Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Ethiopia, and Zimbabwe. Some are refugees who fled war and starvation; others are students; other have green cards who have come here to live and work; and others have been living here for many years.

The church is surrounded by well-to-do subdivisions, large apartment complexes, and industrial parks. Some church members live in the area while others travel from within and around Grand Rapids for the Sunday service.

“We believe we don’t have to go very far to meet people and tell them about Jesus, and what Jesus offers us for our lives,” said Mondi.

Mondi’s church is participating in Go Local, a Resonate Global Mission initiative in which Resonate helps church members better understand the needs of their communities and to venture out to pray in neighborhoods and connect with the people they meet.

“People are willing and excited to share with their neighbors,” Mondi said.

Serving as a pastor has many challenges, Mondi added. A couple of years ago, for example, things at the church seemed to be stalling. They weren’t growing, and Mondi felt discouraged. Then he received a call from a Kenyan immigrant who was not a member of his church but who needed help.

“I decided not to restrict myself to the confines on this church,” he said.

Mondi visited that person, and they talked and prayed. Then other people in the family gathered for prayer. Today this Kenyan family goes to his church.

Twice a year breakfast meetings with church members have also helped bring people together, and the words of Hebrews 11:1: — “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see” — have become a key part of their vision.

“Being an emerging church in the CRC,” said Mondi, “we believe that what is important is not what we have in hand, but being willing to listen to God, who has everything. Even though we have little, we will move forward, and God will give us what we need to do his work.”

On Sundays, 80 to 125 people fill the sanctuary. Mondi often preaches on Scripture verses that have everyday applications to the lives of his listeners, many of whom are newcomers to this country.

As a praise band plays, people sway and dance and clap their hands. The atmosphere is exuberant; Christianity here is an all-out full-court press for God. It is something that fills the worshipers’ souls and hearts and courses through their veins.

Right now, said Mondi, the church is hoping to raise funds needed to expand the church building to make way for the many children who are coming with their parents to worship services.

“The Lord is blessing us with young families, and we want to make room for their children and youth,” he said. “We want the church to provide stability and have people feel that they belong here. . . . Word is spreading, and God is saying he has more for us to do.”