Joe Kayo, recognized by many as the daddy of the Pentecostal-Charismatic motion in East Africa, died on November 2, 2023. He was 86 years previous.
Kayo based church buildings in 4 international locations: Deliverance Church Kenya, Deliverance Church Uganda, Juba Pentecostal Church in South Sudan and Household of God Church buildings in Zimbabwe. On the time of his dying, he was main a Christian household church in Nairobi.
Kayo described his ministry as a spot “the place the facility of God is seen working with tangible manifestations to deliver again the glory of God to the Church in these final days.”
Kayo accepted his non secular calling when African nations had been gaining independence from their European colonizers. His imaginative and prescient of making African-led and funded church buildings that contextualized the Christian religion in African tradition caught fireplace throughout East Africa. It was additionally at odds with many church buildings that traced their roots again to the Western missions and with whom he usually tangled over worship kinds and the presence of the Holy Spirit.
“It is a man that God used to interrupt down the boundaries and rocks that stood in the best way of the charismatic motion and Pentecostalism in East Africa,” stated JB Masinde, bishop of the congregation in Nairobi that Kayo based, in 2019. “He paid the value… this the person has scars a few of you’ll by no means perceive in your life.'
The eldest of six youngsters, Joseph Kayo Nyakango was born in Nyamira District in western Kenya on Might 5, 1937. When he was 12, his mom died and he left faculty early attributable to lack of faculty charges. Determined, Kayo plunged into drug abuse and petty crime. Later in life, he recounted how he had tried unsuccessfully to take his personal life 3 times.
Extra hardships got here with younger maturity. Round 1954, Kayo was imprisoned for eight months after quitting his job at a sugar firm to just accept a brand new one. (As a result of the punishment didn’t appear to suit the offense, some speculated that one thing else was improper.) In 1957, whereas dwelling within the coastal metropolis of Mombasa, he turned severely in poor health and was hospitalized. Based on his ministry's web site, his sisters gave him up and left him on a campaign organized by American televangelist TL Osborne. Whereas there, Kayo devoted his life to Jesus Christ and was miraculously healed.
Quickly after, Kayo skilled the Pentecostal baptism of the Holy Spirit and started to broadly testify of God's energy. Previously a nightclub musician who entertained together with his guitar, Kayo now started utilizing the instrument to steer worship providers in the identical golf equipment, at a time when conventional church buildings nonetheless used organs.
“I like music and I began enjoying guitar in Mombasa earlier than I used to be born once more. I stated, if I can change this factor and play it for God's kingdom, why not? … I discovered it to be very efficient,” he stated later. “The guitar itself shouldn’t be sinful. … It's simply an instrument, similar to a piano … and the songs I sing are utterly written.”
In 1960, Kayo established congregations within the Kenyan coastal cities of Mombasa and Kilifi. He moved again house to Nyamira from Mombasa, however his members of the family who worshiped ancestral spirits condemned his newfound religion and beliefs. The hostile atmosphere prompted Kayo to relocate to Kisumu, a Kenyan metropolis on the shores of Lake Victoria, the place he lived with an American charismatic missionary, Derek Prince.
Within the late Nineteen Sixties, Kayo moved to Kampala, Uganda, the place he stayed for nearly a decade. Together with a number of different Christian leaders, he pioneered the Pentecostal motion there, serving as an itinerant preacher, talking at colleges, schools and universities, and preaching on the streets.
When his conferences started to draw big crowds, the mainline church buildings related to Western denominations felt threatened. At the moment a lot of them had a proper, organized model of worship and talking in tongues was a brand new phenomenon to them. Confronted with this new manifestation of Christianity, accompanied by experiences of miraculous therapeutic and experiences of liberation, many accused Kayo of manipulating folks and stealing sheep.
“Kayo, together with his attribute stubbornness and stubbornness, was not moved by this [these] accusations,” wrote Damaris Seleina Parsitau in her work on the historical past of the Deliverance Church in Kenya. “He believed that God had referred to as him to revive vitality to the Church of Jesus Christ, a church that had grow to be lukewarm, ineffective and irrelevant within the African context.”
Over time, Kayo, who spoke Ekigush, Dho Luo, Swahili and Luganda, acquired invites to talk at conferences, conventions and camps within the international locations he referred to as house, in addition to Tanzania and Rwanda. His data of English, which he had perfected by learning the language as a younger man and practising it with Westerners, enabled him not solely to evangelise in English however to increase his ministry so far as Zambia.
When Kayo ready these talking invites and held open-air conferences, he averted organizing conferences on Sunday mornings in order to not compete immediately with the encompassing congregations. However in 1970, after months of immensely fashionable Monday prayer conferences and Saturday revivals in Nairobi, he and different leaders determined to start out a Sunday service. On November 22 of that yr, 56 folks attended the inaugural Sunday service.
Kayo led the Deliverance Church till 1977 when he resigned and moved to the USA amid accusations of adultery and lack of economic duty. In his absence, the church continued to develop and formalize its buildings and hierarchy.
After spending time within the US, Kayo returned to Kenya and based the Christian Household Fellowship Church. He wrote quite a few books and have become a writer Revival Digest, {a magazine} printed by means of his personal Joe Kayo Ministries. Outdoors of Africa, Kayo served in Canada, South Africa, England, Japan and Hong Kong.
Kayo didn’t hesitate to criticize the prosperity preacher. The FAQ web page on his web site states that “If a preacher teaches that God can not bless you except you give him cash, that’s false.” To a questioner who puzzled why he didn’t encourage folks to put money into the ministries of native pastors, Kayo responded : “If it offended your pastors, then I’ve nothing to apologize for, cash shouldn’t be the gospel.”
In 2004, Kayo reconciled with the management of Deliverance Church. After his dying, the Common Overseer of Liberation Church buildings in Kenya, Bishop Mark Kariuki, carried out his memorial service.
Kayo leaves behind a widow, Rose; three sons, Junior, James and John; and a number of other grandchildren.