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6

Community on Mission  
in a World Wounded by Poverty
A Call to Solidarity, Vulnerability  
and Liberation

Beatrice W. E. Churu
Beatrice W. E. Churu teaches in Tangaza University College (TUC) in Nairobi, Ke-
nya. Her areas of interest and research are African culture, Spirituality and Family 
Studies, Church and mission, Wellbeing and Religion. She has published in these 
areas over the last 20 years.  She is currently serving as Dean of the School of Arts 
and Social Sciences in TUC.  
Contact: bchuru@tangaza.ac.ke 

Mary N. Getui
Mary N. Getui teaches in the Department of Religious Studies, The Catholic Uni-
versity of Eastern Africa.  Her areas of research interest in which she has published 
widely include religion, culture, gender, education, health peace and reconciliation.  
Contact: mngetui@yahoo.com 



Beatrice W. E. Churu & Mary N. Getui—Community on Mission

7

Abstract 

This paper explores two faces of poverty—the poverty of the 
wretched of the earth, and that of the lords of poverty. Both are 
bereft of dignity and humanity. Illustrations from the African con-
text are given. Christian community on mission in a world chok-
ing on poverty is highlighted as modelled on the Jesus event, the 
humanness of God—a paradox of vulnerability bringing breath 
and life. Ubuntu, the African disposition to choose growth into 
fuller humanity, is proposed to aid a meaningful African Christian 
engagement with the various forms of poverty. Experiences of an 
encounter between the two faces of poverty at St Martin’s Catholic 
Social Apostolate in Nyahururu demonstrate how the Christ expe-
rience of openness to humanness—solidarity and vulnerability—
can turn poverty into liberating grace.

Introduction

This paper discusses the plight of people living in poverty. Though 
there are many kinds of poverty, it places it in two broad catego-
ries. There are those who live the burden of deprivation of essential 
provisions in life. We have called these the “wretched of the earth” 
following a title that Franz Fanon (1963) gave to a book describ-
ing, almost in prophetic terms, destitution all the world over. The 
second category are those who, in the words entitling another 
book, we call “the lords of poverty” (Hancock, 1989). These are the 
persons who control the structures that uphold the poverty of the 
wretched. Controlling the sources and the exchange mechanisms, 
they ensure that they have a windfall, in good and in bad times. 
They too are poor; their poverty is in compassion.

Along with the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George 
Floyd and subsequent global reactions count as the most outstand-
ing shared experiences of the year 2020. Carried out in the view 
of the entire world, the drama of the exercise of brute power over 
the weak raised the question of poverty, powerlessness and exclu-
sion to unprecedented, immediate shared attention. The image of 



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George Floyd is representative of oppressed people everywhere, 
the “wretched of the earth” whose very life’s value is considered 
debatable by some. His executioner may, in a dramatized yet true 
sense, represent the oppressing forces—the lords of poverty. Floyd’s 
dying words, “I cannot breathe,” re-echo today and resound into a 
human history blighted by oppression. Indeed, the cry “I cannot 
breathe” resounds across ages, gender, race and religion, as the 
earth and humanity’s two types of the poor choke under the load 
of exploitation, brutality and ignorance.

After discussing some expressions of the “poverties” in Africa, 
the paper discusses the call of the gospel to mission amidst these 
poverties, taking lessons from the Jesus event, the incarnational 
movement that models solidarity, vulnerability and liberation as 
a core Christian message. For the African Christian community, 
this is proposed as the way to live Ubuntu. Finally, a wonderful 
example of living Ubuntu in a Christian community on mission 
in the face of poverties within a Kenyan setting is highlighted. It 
offers hope for every local reality blighted by various poverties. 

Choking “the wretched of the earth”

The poverty of the deprived has many faces, among them eco-
nomic and financial, social, educational, health, spiritual and 
environmental. 

Economic and Financial Poverty: According to Compassion Inter-
national (2020), economic and financial poverty propels people to 
choose lifestyles that lead them to isolation. This is often the fate of 
the urban poor in most African towns and cities, distanced from 
rural relatives and unable to raise the means to reconnect. This 
isolation is also suffered by the rural poor, especially the elderly. 
Social and relational isolation is a pain-filled kind of poverty. Afri-
can communities highly regard and safeguard relationships. Hori-
zontal relationships of the individual and peers within the family 
and the wider community are important, and can impact verti-
cal relationships all the way to that of the individual and nature/



Beatrice W. E. Churu & Mary N. Getui—Community on Mission

9

cosmos. Accordingly, the social isolation wrought by material im-
poverishment metastasizes into psycho-spiritual pain and poverty.

Social Poverty: Some community members are victims of poverty 
due to age—either too young or too old to fend for themselves. 
Worse still is the abandonment of the elderly in semi- or non-
functional settings while their children seek gainful employment 
in the cities. However, the very lack of employment opportunities 
casts the shadow of poverty across generational divides. Loneliness 
and lack of basic provisions for many aged persons is coupled with 
powerlessness, guilt and cultural deracination for their progeny. 
The elderly lack the breath of joy of watching proudly over their 
grandchildren, the expected normal life trajectory. That the poor 
in Africa are often destitute (Theuri, 2003) remains persistently 
and pervasively true.

Gender differences, innately a gift and resource for collabora-
tion, have also become a divide that fosters choking by exclusion 
and exploitation. Physical and sexual violence across the gender 
divide at home, in the work place, in church and in the public 
arena are a scary reality in contemporary African communities.

Educational Poverty: In most parts of Africa, the poor cannot 
access educational opportunities. Many African youth cannot 
compete nationally and internationally because the quality of edu-
cation provided in formal public schools does not measure up to 
the pace and demands of the global economy; they cannot breathe 
in the economies of exclusion set up against them.

Africa’s cultural mainstay in education was value-rich, rel-
evant to the context, practical, life-long, corrective and accommo-
dating of all segments of the society (Mosha, 2000). Indigenous 
education has, however, been largely neglected in a bid to join 
the national and international educational race. While many Af-
rican countries offer free basic education, the reality is that the 
facilities in public educational institutions are wanting, hence the 
springing up of private schools. Modern education is therefore 
alienating while it is, ideally, aimed at integrating many African 
children into the world of today. Many cannot achieve the goals 



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of twenty-first-century education; yet they lose the rich values of 
indigenous education, especially the identity formation that gave 
them the security of a strong sense of belonging. Most African 
young people cannot breathe, neither in their cultural domicile 
nor in the liberal market economies of today’s world. 

Health Poverty: The wretched of the earth are unable to access 
health care services or ensure preventive health practices. Home 
to tropical diseases such as malaria, Africa is also battling emerg-
ing diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and cancer. Africa is 
the region most ravaged by HIV and AIDS and she has not been 
spared by COVID-19 either. In the indigenous setup, there were 
health experts who treated various ailments (Mbiti, 1969, 1991). 
Colonialism and sometimes misguided Christian missionaries, 
however, dealt a blow to these health institutions, labelling their 
experts as “evil witch doctors,” forbidding Christians from seeking 
their services and effectively side-lining their knowledge. Their 
skills have not been passed to younger generations because of this 
negativity. Meanwhile, western-modelled medical care is choking 
the poor in Africa—financially, psychologically, emotionally and 
even physically.

Spiritual Poverty: Spirituality is understood as that deep connec-
tion with oneself, with others and with the Power(s) regarded as 
central in and to one’s being. African spirituality is predominantly 
rooted in connectedness with family and community, as mediums 
of connection with the ultimate spirit (Mbiti). Kinship is, in ef-
fect, the essence of life and it is especially expressed in ancestral 
relationships (Magesa, 1997). Africans who lack adequate social 
connection are also very likely to experience spiritual insignifi-
cance and death. Across cultures, the touch of others is often a 
mediator for the openness to the spiritual wealth of each person. 
In Africa, the vertical relationships between an individual and his/
her elders, ancestors and the Creator, are considered to be critically 
important. However, the African poor are spiritually traumatized 
through social disconnection brought by active discouragement 



Beatrice W. E. Churu & Mary N. Getui—Community on Mission

11

of ancestral veneration in Christian communities. Without these, 
the markers of vivacious spirituality are absent from African lives. 

Religion could assist towards appropriating spirituality. More 
often than not, however, religions are part of the mechanisms that 
generate spiritual impoverishment in Africa. Like education and 
health services, religion in Africa is highly commercialised and 
is often truncated to manipulate the disadvantaged poor. This is 
the ethos driving the so-called “prosperity gospel,” a materialistic 
business arm of Christianity in Africa. The poor are turned into a 
laughingstock as they part with their meagre resources to pay for 
indignities that accompany the antics of prosperity evangelists. 

Environmental Poverty: The wretched of the earth bear the brunt 
of environmental degradation the world over. In Laudato Si, Pope 
Francis (2015) underscores the association of the fate of the poor 
with that of the exploited earth. In Africa, one of the many ex-
amples is the cumulative reduction of food independence of the 
population, through suppression of natural seeds from subsistence 
farmers, with the aim of expanding markets for multinational com-
panies that endeavour to monopolize seeds (Shiva, 2016; Shiva, 
2013).  Food shortages, drought, floods and diseases, all attributed 
to environmental challenges, are compounded by the abuse of the 
land through the use of fertilizers and unnatural seeds, eventually 
compromising sustainable productivity. The choking of the poor 
along with the choking of the earth advance at high speed.

Choked: the “lords of poverty”

We now turn our attention to the poverty of the “lords of poverty.” 
There is an assumption that a lord cannot be poor. After all, a lord 
is expected to be bedecked with plenty: money; land, houses, ve-
hicles and power. What then does the poverty of the lords entail?

Acquisition and accumulation: Being too engrossed with acquisi-
tion and accumulation of material things, at the expense of shar-
ing these to alleviate the suffering of the poor, is a dire form of 



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12

human poverty. This paradox is a reality in Africa and in global 
economics. The obsession with acquisition regardless of its impact 
on others, perpetuating the poverty of the wretched by creating 
structures that sustain their poverty, is in fact a manifestation of 
inner poverty—wanting in humanness.

The deficit mentality, obstruction and feigned ignorance: The “lord 
of poverty” is one who is in a position to influence decisions to 
address the structures that maintain poverty of the ‘wretched’ but 
deliberately chooses to promote avenues of maintaining the status 
quo, for his/her own benefit. The lords of poverty are those who 
generate obstruction of access to relief for the “wretched”; they 
ignore the plight and pain of the poor and are preoccupied with 
positions, consumption and power. Maintaining situations or so-
cial structures that are unfavourable to the wellbeing of others only 
because it is in one’s favour is an expression of smallness, separ-
ateness and insecurity. It is the inability to associate others’ plight 
with one’s own. It is to participate in a deficit mentality where one 
feels that one can only win at the expense of others. Not only is 
this mentality a poverty induced mind-set, but also poverty-gen-
erating, creating a vicious cycle of destitution and powerlessness. 
These lords of poverty cannot breathe the fresh air of compassion 
towards other human beings. They too are impoverished because 
of their lack of a sense of connection to humanity. 

The lords of poverty are often able to recruit the very “wretch-
ed” whom they exploit, getting them to buy into the notion that 
their situation is acceptable, is their lot and destiny. Kanyandago 
(2005) rightly opined that the woes of societies are wired in the 
people’s imagination, so that even with regime changes, without 
questioning this imagination, such unfortunate situations become 
self-perpetuating, locking the poor into the arena of poverty, and 
compounding their wretchedness. A classic example is the situa-
tion often observed in the cycles of electoral politics in many Afri-
can countries: the lords of poverty—the politicians—purchase the 
votes of the poor whose wretchedness has generated loss of vision 
of a different reality for themselves.



Beatrice W. E. Churu & Mary N. Getui—Community on Mission

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Dehumanised: Inasmuch as they have so much in material posses-
sions, the lords are actually poor. Their approach and attitude to 
the reality of the poor are witness to a dire experience of emptiness 
and fragility. To invest so much in the poverty industry manifests a 
fragility or inadequacy experienced by the lords of poverty at per-
sonal and corporate levels. Their poverty is a bottomless pit which 
can only keep consuming in order to assure themselves of their 
own doubtful importance. Feeling greater than others is essential 
to their sense of worth, leading to a sectionalized humanity, and 
desensitized to the suffering they wreak on others and on creation.

Though the final report of the Millennium Development 
Goals project celebrated significant numbers of people pulled out 
of poverty (United Nations, 2015), achievement was way below 
target. Admirable efforts are made under the banner of Sustainable 
Development Goals, yet the pace towards eradication of poverty 
has been decelerating since 2015, and the world is already off track 
to eradicate poverty by 2030 (United Nations, 2020). With CO-
VID-19, the deceleration is accentuated and poverty is on the rise. 
By June 2020, already 70 million more people had been pushed 
into extreme poverty (United Nations 2020). Is this to confirm that 
the poor will always be with us (Mk 14.7)? What can a Christian 
community’s response be?

Christian Mission as a nozzle of oxygen for a 
choking world

The perspective of mission that this paper adopts is that in which 
the faith community observes God in mission and experiences its 
own meaning in joining God’s mission. Mission is participation 
in the self-giving action of God (Bosch, 1991). This disposition 
underscores a fundamental Christian stance. God breathes into 
human conditions and they become life-giving.

As in the creation story, God’s Spirit enlightens the potentials 
hidden in the darkness wreaked by poverties (Gen. 1.1-2). Pover-
ties raise the opportunity to design a new inclusive world order. 
The lie that poverty accords to the wretched of the earth, making 



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them believe in their own sub-humanity, and the lie that the lords 
of poverty live, making them believe that a dignity for themselves 
can only be at the cost of others, can be turned around by creative 
compassion. The story of Christian redemption is embedded in 
the incarnation, a divine mission of solidarity. Christian commu-
nity is, therefore, invited to embrace this movement of solidarity in 
its mission. In genuine solidarity, the community and its members 
experience liberation from their various poverties and empower-
ment for ongoing mission.

This section uses two sources for reflection on the meaning 
of Christian mission vis-à-vis various poverties in Africa. First is 
the Jesus event, the life of one man imbued with the fullness of 
humanity. Second is an African understanding of Jesus—the one 
who has the fullness of Utu (to use the Kiswahili term)—human-
ity. African Christian community can grow in understanding of 
Jesus’ mission through reflection on the Utu/Ubuntu spirituality 
(Ubuntu has the same meaning as Utu in southern African Bantu 
languages). These two sections will feed into the last part of the 
paper where a case of an African Christian community response 
to both poverties and the liberating power of this human solidarity 
is highlighted. 

The Jesus event—Breath of life for mission in poverty

The incarnation of Jesus is the central event of Christian meaning, 
enlightening all human experiences. Jesus’ approach to human ex-
perience is the invitation to fullness of life (Jn 10.10). The incarna-
tion experience, as lived out by Jesus, is a challenge for both kinds 
of the poor—the wretched of the earth and the lords of poverty. 
Many times, he invites the poor to an active faith that breathes a 
fuller life: lift up your mat and walk (Jn 5.8), stretch out your hand 
(Mt. 12.13); recognising the validity of their aspirations to flour-
ishing, as in the case of Bartimaeus (Mk 10.46-52). In the widow 
with a small offering, Jesus recognises and praises the greatness 
of heart of some of the poor, even when their visible means seem 
small (Lk. 21.2-4). He also invites the lords of poverty of his day to 



Beatrice W. E. Churu & Mary N. Getui—Community on Mission

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put away the crutches of their positions, as in the story of Levi (Lk. 
5.27-32), their preoccupation with appearances and to embrace 
the privilege of solidarity with the poor and the marginalised and 
so breathe in their own humanness (Lk. 19.1). Both Levi and Zac-
chaeus find new joy in following Jesus, while the rich young man 
goes away sad (Mk 10.22), unable to yield to the desire of his own 
yearning for eternal life, and staying a prisoner of his great wealth. 
In calling out every one of these poor people, Jesus demonstrates 
the wisdom that grows ever so slowly in Israel and in our mis-
sion communities, that while humans may be preoccupied with 
appearances, God looks at the heart (1 Sam. 16.7; Jer. 17.10). These 
encounters of various poor people with Jesus also make explicit 
that while a person can be imprisoned by one form of poverty or 
another, lacking the breath of life, once freed, the person breathes 
in solidarity with other human beings. Both types of formerly 
poor, like Zacchaeus and Bartimaeus, once freed of their shackles, 
follow the way of Jesus (Lk. 19.8-9; Mk 10.52).

In his mission, Jesus holds strong convictions and accepts the 
consequences of his choices even when they are unattractive (Mk 
3.6). Rendered vulnerable, he refuses to lean on crutches that com-
promise his congruence: “If you are the son of God . . . Man shall 
not live by bread alone” (Lk. 4.1-4). Unwilling to abuse his power, 
he shows that the measure of the full human person is the willing-
ness to accept the consequences of living his/her convictions. 

Living authentically necessarily brings one face to face with 
his/her own vulnerability. The passion story from Gethsemane 
through to Good Friday highlights how Jesus lived his life in 
authenticity that rendered him vulnerable. Hawkins (2007) has 
signalled how Christian commentaries of the passion have tended 
to downplay the vulnerability of Jesus in Gethsemane. Yet, the 
evangelist Matthew twice mentions how Jesus was in great turmoil 
in Gethsemane (Matt. 26.39), standing in need of the comfort and 
support of his disciples. Jesus’ passion and death throw light on 
the paradigm of his whole life; all given for others, his life was a 
precursor to his death (Rutledge, 2015). His solidarity with and 
liberation of the poor brings him into conflict with the imperial 



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forces of Rome and their collaborators among the Jews (Luke 23.2). 
And his authenticity and vulnerability vis-à-vis all poverties lead 
to a revelation of who is on his side when God raises him (Acts 
2:24). Following the insights of De La Torres, Vellem (2017) inter-
prets the resurrection of Jesus as a continuation of his insurrection 
against oppressive forces. In the New Testament communities, the 
insurrection continues, building on the liberating encounter with 
the Spirit of Jesus.

The cross, foolishness and weakness to the world, is the wis-
dom and strength of God (1 Cor. 1) by which the post-resurrection 
communities disentangle their squabbles, their various poverties, 
and find the meaning of their presence/mission in the world. A 
Christian community, led by the Spirit of Jesus, becomes itself a 
sign of a new counter-cultural economy of love (1 Cor. 12–13). The 
New Testament is a witness of Christian communities, born of the 
death and resurrection of Jesus, which struggle with the menace of 
various poverties as in 1 Corinthians 11, where some members get 
drunk and others go hungry. But, the vulnerability of these early 
Christian communities mediates illumination of community mis-
sion; the Spirit of God is experienced to break through the barriers 
of these poverties and bring new breath, forging new communion.

Muntu—The African understanding of full humanity and 
breath of life 

Contemporary Africa occupies a place in global geo-economics 
and geo-politics that portrays her as the poorest continent. The 
levels of corruption on the continent seem emblematic of her 
people as the gaps between her rich and poor are splashed across 
world screens. Yet Africa suffers historical dehumanisation that 
has choked her ability to reach into the breath of life in her cul-
tures. The poverty of the African people—demonstrated by both 
her wretched of the earth and her lords of poverty—has to be seen 
against the backdrop of extreme cultural deracination that has 
produced a people unable to appreciate the depth of their inner 
wealth and strength. 



Beatrice W. E. Churu & Mary N. Getui—Community on Mission

17

The Church in Africa needs to admit her share of responsibil-
ity, along with other agents, for the disrepute to which the African 
cultural heritage is put by her own people. Many African Chris-
tians are suspicious of their cultural heritage. A recent unpublished 
research study among urban African youth in Nairobi shows that 
they are very suspicious of African cultural practices and regard 
African culture as no longer relevant in the contemporary world. 
Indoctrinated to a point of self-negation and self-hate (Kanyan-
dago, 2014), how can a people who view their past as “worthless” 
and “bereft of God’s sacred action” have the confidence to seek 
God’s ways in the present, and partake of God’s mission? Without 
value for one’s own culture, the people become anthropologically 
impoverished.

Many African Christians do not conceive of African-ness or 
African cultural heritage as of any worth; many others conduct 
their Christian life and their ordinary African cultural lives as 
parallel domains that do not interact (Magesa, 2004). This is a 
natural outflow of the presentation of Christ to Africans almost 
exclusively in non-African symbols. The works of many African 
Christian scholars, such as Ela (1988) and Magesa (2004) decry 
the tragedy that the proclamation of the gospel in Africa has had 
little regard for African sentiments and experience. The exclusion, 
for example, of African symbols from African Christian life and 
worship in favour of Western ones candidly sends the message of 
the inadmissibility of African-ness into Christian life (Ela, 1980, 
1988). Such religiosity that continues to discourage African Chris-
tians from associating African-ness with authentic Christianity is 
part of the fabric of deracination and disintegration. It becomes a 
religiosity of hindrance, rather than aid, to the creation of a new 
and better world (Sobrino, 2008). This alienates African Christians 
in at least two ways: most cannot feel fully at home in a Chris-
tian community, others find convenience in this “distance,” seeing 
that the demands of authentic Christian living are rather removed 
from them. For them, it becomes enough to pay lip service to the 
gospel while placing their leaders on a pedestal. Complacency thus 
becomes well-established; without rocking the status quo either 



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inside the Christian community or in “secular” spaces. Our two 
categories of the poor each ride in their lane. The opportunity is 
missed for religion, in this case Christianity in Africa, to be the 
bearer of mystery (Sobrino, 2008), actively seeking and offering 
liberation from the changing shapes and expressions of poverty. 

How can the incarnation resuscitate an anthropologically 
impoverished community? Kambanda (2016) recognises that the 
way to make sense of the gospel in Africa is through her cultural 
resources. Through these, African Christians can find the wisdom 
to communicate the gospel in ways that reach their own hearts. 
This message is often recognised and quickly ignored. Might we 
have “lords of poverty” even in Christian communities who de-
sire to keep the confidence of the Christ encounter away from the 
“wretched of the earth” by locking it in categories outside of their 
cultural milieu? Conversely, African spirituality can enlighten the 
way to propagate compassion for, solidarity with and liberation 
of the poor. A church of the poor and for the poor must be one 
in which the poor can recognise themselves, as Pope Francis has 
insisted in Evangelii Gaudium; one that speaks in symbols that are 
meaningful to them, as Ela has strongly pleaded, where God’s self-
revelation, the mission of salvation and of liberation are intricately 
bound together (Mayemba, 2015). This becomes the incarnational 
approach to poverty mediated through the African Utu spiritual-
ity, rediscovering and reinterpreting the Muntu (to use a related 
term from isiZulu)—the Christ of African spirituality. 

More efficacious images of the Christ experience can help 
Christian communities read the presence and salvific action of 
God in the poverties of Africa. This is not least because the pre-
dominant images of Christ in Africa continue to be those that ac-
companied the initial missionary enterprise—a conquering Christ 
image from European Christendom, choking everything African, 
good or evil. There is still little in African Christian discourse to af-
firm the possibility of being fully Christian and fully African. This 
absence hampers the solidarity, vulnerability and liberation mis-
sion of Christ in African Christian community. To remedy this, we 
propose that the rampantly cherished notion of the Muntu across 



Beatrice W. E. Churu & Mary N. Getui—Community on Mission

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Africa portrays an anthropological standpoint from which Afri-
can people can appreciate deeply the presence and action of the 
Cosmic Christ, whose footprint far surpasses that of the historical 
Jesus. Muntu, the full stature spiritually initiated African person, is 
responsive to the challenge of life-long maturation.

To be Muntu—fully human in African philosophy—is the 
fullest human accomplishment (Magesa, 1997; Sibanda, 2014). 
The Muntu is the carrier of the Ntu, the Spirit that human-
izes (Jahn, 1961). Interestingly, the greatest manifestation of the 
Muntu is his/her goodness, la joie de vivre, compassion, care and 
relational gifts (Idoniboye-Obu and Whetho, 2013: 230). The 
Incarnate Word possessed by the Spirit brings good news to the 
poor, freedom to captives and recovery of sight to the blind (cf. Lk. 
4.16–20). African Christianity can well use the image of Muntu 
to mediate an efficacious understanding of Christian community 
on mission vis-à-vis poverties of all kinds. The African Christian 
community can make active sense of the action of the Holy Spirit 
(Rom. 8.14–17) in terms of the Muntu—filled with goodness, pos-
sessed by the Ntu; the person and community stop living in fear 
and timidity, as do many African Christians, and become channels 
of breath for others—engaging in mission. As a manifestation of 
the Ntu in the Muntu, the African Christian becomes a vehicle of 
the Cosmic Force (Spirit) to perpetuate life-giving energies of love, 
joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness and self-control (cf. Gal. 
5.22)—building a more reconciled universe across the poverty 
divide. 

The Cosmic Christ present in creation, enfleshed in Muntu 
comes closer to the African poor—both “the wretched” and “the 
lords,” reaching into the realities of their African lives, touching 
their ancestry with blessing and healing, and calling them forth 
to integration. Effectively, the Muntu Christ can generate an elo-
quent image of African Christian maturity and communion—“I 
am because we are; and, since we are, therefore I am” (Mbiti, 1969: 
108–109)—crossing the racial, ethnic, gender, age and class divi-
sions that wound the people. A discourse of Christ as Muntu can 
enlighten and mediate the engagement of solidarity between the 



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various poor, and a liberation that empowers the mission zeal of 
African Christian communities responding to many poverties. 

Both the wretched of the earth and the lords of poverty in 
Africa can together find a path to authentic following of Christ by 
returning to the invitation to live the Ntu spirituality. The encoun-
ters experienced in St Martin’s Catholic Social Apostolate (CSA) 
provide a model of how this togetherness of the different kinds 
of ‘the poor’ can bring wholeness for all. It demonstrates how the 
balm of healing the poverties becomes available in the encounter 
of solidarity which then yields liberation. The Spirit of Jesus here 
shows up in efficacious community, where the African soul, the 
Muntu, is upheld and a new humanity emerges, healed and recre-
ated in encounters of community in mission. 

Vulnerability and Communion in St Martin’s 
Catholic Social Apostolate—Breathing 
together into New Life

St Martin’s Catholic Social Apostolate (CSA) was founded on 
the experience of vulnerability. A priest encountered a mentally 
and physically disabled man, excluded from society in a commu-
nity where such disability is highly stigmatized. He then gathered 
around himself a community that committed to walk with its 
members who lived with disabilities, to integrate them and restore 
to them the dignity that is theirs. While doing this, many individu-
als in the community rediscovered their own higher dignity and 
purpose. They are brought to their own wholeness through the 
privilege of ministering to the disabled and others whose life cir-
cumstances have otherwise put them into the lot of the “wretched 
of the earth.”

Many people have associated with St Martin CSA in an effort 
to reach out to the needy. The surprising yet repeated experience 
of these “helpers” is how, while they themselves were reaching out, 
they were in turn “broken open” to their own poverty and vulner-
ability, and brought to healing. They move from considering them-
selves to be helping the needy, to an understanding of being united 



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with the vulnerable; they become aware of their own wounded-
ness and of their being healed through the loving encounter with 
other vulnerable people. Many reader-friendly and heartwarming 
publications that come out of St Martin CSA bear witness to the 
multiple experiences of mutual edification when an able-bodied/
minded person reaches out to a “disabled” one and discovers his/
her own fragility.

A woman who works in the centre as a health professional 
is on the verge of resigning from her job because she feels treated 
beneath her dignity. She encounters a young boy with serious dis-
abilities and, with his sister, is deserted by his parents. The children 
not only greatly appreciate the visit of this health professional, but 
bear upon her to share the very little food they have obtained from 
a school feeding programme. As she shares in this strong mo-
ment of solidarity, the woman discovers the real meaning of her 
profession—a divine invitation to communion. She decides to stay 
on the job, to give up the higher salaries she might fetch elsewhere, 
to work on her relationship skills with her colleagues to enable her 
to continue participating in this mutually liberating ministry. The 
boy with disability and his sister are agents of a liberating experi-
ence that helps the health worker breathe new life into her career; 
she is a breath of life for them in visiting them and giving them not 
only the healthcare support but also the joy of being remembered 
as valued (L’Arche Kenya and St Martin Communities, 2014).

In another episode, as a young man drives to work every day 
he notices a line of people with mental and physical disabilities, 
“the wretched of the earth,” struggling to their daily place of work. 
He experiences the pull to stop and speak with them but dreads 
the possible dependence on him that he imagines is sure to ensue 
from such an encounter. One day, however, he yields to the tug 
on his heart and dares to stop. From this first meeting, there en-
sues not dependency, but a transformative friendship with these 
people whom he earlier feared to be just a drag on his life. In his 
witness, he wonders who he would be without their friendship in 
which he is loved unconditionally. With them, he does not need to 
perform, to pretend to be or to have anything. He is loved for just 



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22

being there. This liberating friendship with the most unlikely has 
become his “life breath.” Through it, he experiences his true worth 
(L’Arche Kenya and St Martin Communities, 2014). 

In these St Martin’s experiences, the sense of giving and re-
ceiving is mutual and the exchange is deeply humanizing. Each 
person brings their “poverty” along with their gifts. Together, they 
experience solidarity, vulnerability and liberation. How so incar-
national and mission-authentic these experiences are! They indi-
cate the path of mission in the midst of the woundedness that is all 
around the world. Mutual vulnerability opens up the possibility of 
experiencing and sharing in missio Dei, irrespective of which side 
of the poverty divide one may be.

Because of St Martin’s CSA, a new understanding of the 
Church and of mission has emerged in the town of Nyahururu and 
its environs. It may not be the stated or formal ecclesiology, but 
all who have encountered the St Martin’s CSA approach know the 
Church as a living community of love and mercy without borders, 
one on a hope-restoring mission. 

St Martin’s CSA stands out as a Christian community on mis-
sion in today’s world. As an open community, it does not limit 
itself to people who profess the same faith. Christian-inspired 
though it is, the apostolate encourages the local community resid-
ing in the neighborhood of a person in need—the family and the 
neighbors—to partake of the grace of walking together, contribut-
ing to finding solutions. By its openness to touch the various forms 
of vulnerability, increasing the breath of life through solidarity, 
and liberating communities and their members from debilitating 
poverty, they turn poverty into the breath of life.

Conclusion

Vulnerability is certainly the lot of the wretched of the earth, lack-
ing as they do any cushion from the edges of adversity. Whether in 
large-scale enterprises such as whole nations or in small ones such 
as domestic employment, the lords of poverty fight against vulner-
ability. Vulnerability is feared by all. Yet, is it likely that it is precisely 



Beatrice W. E. Churu & Mary N. Getui—Community on Mission

23

through openness to vulnerability that the light slips in and shines 
on the path to healing the world and bringing wholeness to indi-
viduals and communities in the likeness of the experience of the 
incarnated Christ? In her TedTalk entitled “The gift and power of 
emotional courage,” Susan David (2017) touches on the value of 
vulnerability, saying: “Life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragil-
ity.” True, everyone seeks the beauty of life. The problem comes 
from the futile obsession with avoiding life’s fragility. The human 
spirit discerns true beauty in the healing compassion of vulner-
able solidarity, and rejects the façade. In her highly appreciated 
research, Dr Brené Brown (2012) has elaborated how openness to 
vulnerability brings not only pain and shame but also becomes the 
gateway to profound and lasting joy and peace. Vulnerability is key 
to accessing the depths of humanness and building community. 
Genuine community, in turn, is both empowering and liberating 
as it provides the security from which members can reach out in 
solidary that reverberates in liberation. 
The foregoing is patterned in the life, death and resurrection of 
Jesus, the incarnate Christ. It can be understood better in the Af-
rican Christian community through the prism of Muntu. Mission, 
for Christian community, confronted with the detriments of pov-
erty, can hope to address such ills through openness to the same 
path as the Incarnate Word. In faith, Christian community can see 
potential wholeness in the face of poverty through the Spirit, and 
discover the courage to breathe.

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