theexpandingshrink

Dear Brothers and Sisters.

This newsletter is an introduction to Happy Church Ministries International. (Happy Church) based in Nakuru, Kenya.  Happy Church is a charter member of Kingdom Life Network (KLN) a newly formed ‘network of networks’  with some 300 churches and ministries  in approximately a dozen nations. KLN headquarters are in Lancaster, PA. The ordination of a new bishop is a milestone in the history of Happy Church. This ordination  provides the opportunity to formally introduce  Happy Church to the larger Christian Community.

 Newsletter from Happy Church International

Happy Church Ministries International is a network of some 100 churches and some 10,000 baptized believers in Kenya under the leadership of Bishop Joseph W. W. Kamau who founded the church in 1983.  As a young man Joseph had medical training as a physician’s assistant. He was also an itinerant evangelist with “Regions Beyond Ministry,”  a group of  Kenyan young men with a passion to take the gospel to all of ‘Kenya and beyond’.  In 1980 Joseph went to Rosedale Bible Institute in Rosedale, Ohio, for Bible training. He followed this with several years study in premedicine at Messiah College near Harrisburg, PA.  Upon graduation Joseph expereinced the clear call of God to leave his pursuit of a medical career and to plant a church in Kenya.

In 1983 Joseph returned to Kenya  where his faithful wife Jane, an RN, was waiting for him to finish his medical training.  She came to share fully in Joseph’s calling to leave medicine and to plant a church.  Joseph and Jane discerned that God was calling them to begin their ministry in Nakuru.  Joseph rented a tent and  held meetings in a square in Nakuru, a city of five hundred thousand, which is a cross roads city of the country. God moved mightily, thousands were saved, many were supernaturally healed of cancers and all manner of diseases. Out of this mighty move of God a new church was born. People commented that the people of this church seemed so happy. Consequently the church became known as the Nakuru Happy Church.  This church began to grow and expand.

In 1988 Joseph returned to the States to renew contact with some old friends. Through these contacts he was encouraged to move in faith and to rent a large theatre as a meeting place for his congregation. God blessed this move with dramatic increase in the size of the congregation- from hundreds to thousands in attendance.  Through these contacts in the States, Joseph and his elders  discerned that God was calling them to associate with the Mennonite Church in Kenya.  This was an act of faith in that Happy Church was charismatic in worship style, multicultural and urban and the Mennonite Church at that time, in the early nineties, was more rural and non charismatic in  worship style and was not as multitribal.  However God moved and both groups were blessed by the union. Joseph was ordained as a bishop  in 1991 by the Mennonite bishop Joshua Okello.

After ten years in the Mennonite Church, the Happy Church leadership discerned that they were to separate their fellowship of churches from the Kenyan Mennonite Churches. This separation was not because of conflict. Rather the Happy Church leaders discerned that more could be accomplished for the Kingdom if the two groups associated fraternally in separate organizations rather than attempting to fully merge their differing households of faith. In other words each group manages its own household and blesses the other in pursuing a somewhat differing agenda.  God directed and overshadowed this transitioning in the relationships between the Happy Church and the Kenyan Mennonite Church so that each has been enriched by the earlier association and they continue to love and bless one another even though they are in different organizations.

Over the years the Nakuru Happy Church has become a movement of the Holy Spirit in Kenya that has impacted the entire ‘country and countries beyond’ with the Gospel of a Resurrected Lord who transforms lives and communities; a Lord who heals bodies and relationships; a Gospel where miracles are expected on a daily basis and a Gospel where God is creating a community of faith, hope, love, prayer and great joy.

The Nakuru Happy Church has now become ‘Happy Church Ministries International.  There are approximately 100 ministers and thousands of members. The Church has a national presence  in that congregations are spread all over Kenya and because of TV programing by Bishop Kamau and other leaders in the network of churches.  Happy Church has a number of regional overseers who work under the leadership of Bishop Kamau.

In 2009 Bishop Kamau participated in the formation of a global ‘network of networks’ of Christian ministries. This global network is called Kingdom Life Network of Christian Ministries (KLN). The network includes three hundred congregations and thousands of believers in India, Cambodia, and the United State. There are eight networks of churches and ministries in KLN. Each network manages its own household but the networks work together to promote church planting and leadership development. The leaders of the network are in covenant relationship with one another and they share counsel, vision and resources with one another for the advancement of the Kingdom.  A number of the networks in the States had their roots in the Mennonite/Anabaptist tradition but have also been impacted by charismatic experiences and theology.

Recently Bishop Kamau and his leaders discerned that God was leading them to proceed in ordaining more bishops to share in the ministry of overseeing and serving the churches.The decision was made to ordain three bishops in the year 2011. Rev. Boniface Runji was ordained on April 23, 2011 in Eldoret, Kenya.  On September 10, 2011, Reverend Evanson Macharia will be ordained in the town where he pastors, Thompson Falls. In December 17, 2011,  Reverend James Karanja will be ordained in the town where he pastors, Molo, Kenya.

Happy Church Ministires International is poised by faith to in the next ten years change the culture of ‘Kenya and beyond’ through the mighty gospel of Jesus Christ which heals our diseases, transforms our characters and relationships and invades the earth with the culture and will of Heaven.