That’s how I ended up at Mavuno Downtown, which held its services in a Chinese restaurant in the  Nairobi city centre. “This is a church where real people with real issues meet a real God,” they said. “And drink real tea,” they often added, to the amusement of many.

Another fit of outrage broke out on the Internet concerning a promotional poster for an upcoming sermon series. The Mavuno group of churches will cover “Different Strokes – The Sex Conversation” in September and the images used in the poster were pretty self-explanatory.

The first week, the topic will be “Self- Service”, covering pornography and masturbation. Prudes on the Internet and elsewhere think this is no territory for a church to venture into.

GAY MEETING

Kenyans are a notoriously religious people, with  80 per cent Christians, according to  people who say clever things around statistics. That is all well and good, as long as you preach a particularly conservative strain of Christianity, shed your clothes and wear only sackcloth when you sin and live like we’re still in  Old Testament times. Kenyans are basically like Pharisees, but with social media.

As soon as you start to deviate from the well-beaten path of death and damnation and how giving more money to the church can save you from all that, you’re blaspheming and are just a few twisted verses short of heresy.

Last month, I stumbled upon a church service while wandering around London’s Piccadilly Circus. St James’ Church is a quaint Anglican church with a large organ and hymns. Even though it was more than half-empty despite being right in the centre of London, the congregation was enthusiastic and friendly.

Before the final prayer, a pastor announced that the church’s monthly lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender meeting would be on after the service. I saved the day’s order sheet to show family and friends back home because they would accuse me of lying.

The Mavuno sermon series will also tackle what the church is calling “À la carte” on same-sex attraction. Even though Kenya has one of the world’s highest searches for gay pornography according to Google data, the sanctimonious critics don’t want a church to tackle that. It is an abomination to even imagine that homosexuality can be a topic in church.

It is best to bury our heads in the sand in the classic ostrich model – if you ignore it, it will go away. I do not claim to be a biblical scholar and I have written here before about my evident lack of theological chops. That said, I believe “Do not judge”, in Matthew 7:1 is a verse some Christians have conveniently chosen to ignore.

As a relatively old member of an offshoot of Mavuno church, I often field criticism for the church not being “Christian enough” or misguided. I am an open admirer of what its modern-day missionaries have achieved with the churches.

GO YE INTO THE WORLD

Instead of preaching to the converted, they deliberately set out to evangelise to a generation that had long abandoned church and gone “into the world”, in Biblespeak.

Over the last decade, they have been walked the tightrope between being “in the world” but not “of the world”, with measurable results.

Thousands of congregants gather every Sunday at three Mavuno-affiliated churches in Nairobi and elsewhere for a reason. It is easy to pontificate from afar without ever stepping into a service because your preconceptions will not be challenged.

Too many people are comfortable with churches that pass off motivational speeches as sermons every Sunday. If a different community tries to reach out more aggressively to a massively under-churched world, they jump at it with their self-righteous outrage and declare how it is ruining Christianity.

The original commission that Jesus left his church “to go out and make disciples of all nations” is lost in the ignorant echo chamber of the present-day commentary machine.

I went to Mavuno Downtown and have never returned to my original church because, like thousands others, I found a community that was relevant to me.