When I started my role as country director at World Renew Kenya in 2015, I knew prayer was important. We had devotions every Monday before our work week began, but because it was time bound and rushed, it became routine.
That changed recently. The Kenya team wanted to connect more as a family that works together. We started meeting for an hour one Friday each month to laugh and share a meal. During that time, we felt that we also wanted to connect more at the spiritual level. We agreed to set aside time once a year to prayerfully dedicate all our work to God. We draft our work plan, prayerfully discern, review it, and once we’re happy with it, we step away.
For two days every year, all we do is pray over our work for the coming year. We pray for resources. We thank God for our supporting churches and all our development partners. We thank God for our leadership from this office to our region and to the global level because we started to realize how connected we are—and that the more we pray, the more connected we become. When we began praying in this way, brilliant ideas started to flow.
So we started to pray more. We dedicated more time during our staff meetings for prayer. We spend time each month studying the Bible together and praying before we get into our usual updates. I have seen my colleagues bonding more because of those conversations. Different people will lead. You don’t have to be very good at leading devotions, just willing to share what the Lord has put in your heart.
From there we discovered a need for prayer partners. For the past three years, we have had a box holding the names of everybody in the office. Once a year, each person draws a name and then prays for and with that person for the whole year. At the end of the year, prayer partners exchange Christmas gifts—whatever they can afford. This has translated into a love for one another, because in those sessions people truly share their lives. It’s not about work; it’s about family. It’s about how they are doing. It’s their whole selves.
We’ve seen a change in the past few years as a result. There’s more engagement, more friendship, more cohesion. Prayer has done that for us.
In my heart, I’ve always wanted us to be workplace ministers. Our office is no longer just a workplace, I hear staff say. World Renew has always been a good place to work. You are cared for and loved. But now it’s become a place to flourish.
Worldwide Prayer Each Month
Something I’ve particularly benefited from is joining with colleagues from around the world for monthly prayer. It doesn’t matter if one is a country director, an executive team member, or staff in North America, Asia, or Africa. We come together, and we pray. At that table we are all children of God. We are connected in prayer for things the Lord has put in our hearts.
I love that these monthly prayer sessions have also become a forum to communicate the values we hold: We love and care for one another. We are people who are concerned about justice. I see the vision of World Renew being fulfilled through these actions. It’s not just work; it’s ministry to self and others. We receive Christ’s compassion, and we extend it.
Our monthly worldwide prayer session is a recognition that we are one body. We have different branches and different parts, but we all want to be together, to grow and flourish together. We must listen to the voice of God together. That’s where we are transformed to live out our calling and our vision as an organization.
Church Partnership
World Renew Kenya has an amazing partnership with First Christian Reformed Church in Red Deer, Alta. We have not been able to physically visit one another as much in recent years, but we have not stopped meeting virtually to talk and pray. It reminds me of the early church, with believers gathering to eat and pray together. I once thought First CRC would grow tired of these meetings, but there’s so much value in the times we have together. We talk as friends. We pray together. We are truly brothers and sisters in Christ.
We listen to what our Albertan friends are saying. They listen to what we in Kenya are saying—challenges and updates. And we pray for one another. This has created a bond. It’s a different kind of relationship that has been blessed by God.
Holding Hands in Prayer
Because of the regional conflicts we continue to see in places like Turkana, we joined with Resonate Global Mission, who provides Timothy Leadership Training, and another organization called Way of Peace, which facilitates peacebuilding through repentance, forgiveness, healing, reconciliation, and reconstitution. These three organizations, each focused on its own area of responding to the conflict, also lift up the work in prayer.
We all have been working with people in this region for almost two years now, helping the churches to understand and heal from the conflicts, then provide food security measures, clean water, and skills training.
Gratitude is coming not just from the communities we are working with, but from county government officials. Imagine I’m in World Renew’s Nairobi offices and I get a call from the county governor. County governors here are a big deal. They don’t usually have time for someone like me unless I’m giving them money—and I’m not. But the county governor saw the change happening in the Turkana region—the peace that was being introduced, the repentance from the churches—and he sent for me. I went, wondering, What have we done? But when I met with the governor, he expressed gratitude and wanted to know how to incorporate our methods into county leadership. That’s an incredible answer to prayer!
The Power of Prayer in Communities
We work in a place called Magarini. In that region, people have been experiencing challenging weather conditions. It gets extremely dry, and people struggle to grow enough to eat. These dry spells are somewhat predictable but not easy to deal with, even for the government.
Four or five years ago, this community was in crisis. At the time, we didn’t have any funds for a proper response, but we knew we needed to do something. We told them the truth: “We’re assessing the situation, but we really don’t have the money. So let’s pray.”
We then discussed the situation with our International Disaster Response Team, and they were able to give us a grant. We quickly returned to Magarini and shared with this community that their prayers had been answered. They expressed joy and gratitude, but those prayers also birthed a willingness among community members to contribute.
Community members worked on a road in exchange for food—a shining example of God providing an innovative solution to support and rebuild a community. When the rains came and things were settling, the government decided that it wanted to use the section of the road the community helped rebuild as a starting point for upgrading the entire road. And it all started with prayer.
Today the community knows us as a faith-based agency. We have never said, “Become Christian to get things from us,” but we do say, “This is who we are. This is why we have come. If it weren’t for the fact that we believe Christ has called us to do this, we wouldn’t be here.” That’s how we see ourselves. We are not bishops. We are not pastors. But we are ministers in the workplace—professionals who are also ministers.
