I was converted to Christ in 2000 from a Roman Catholic background as I listened to a radio broadcast of a sermon by a local preacher in Kenya. After that, my new life in Christ manifested itself fairly strongly. I was unable to continue attending Roman Catholic mass even though I had no categories to articulate what was happening to me, knowing that I needed to attend a Protestant church.
Promptly, I started attending the one that was nearest to our home. It turned out to be a church that preached the prosperity gospel. Not knowing the Bible or theology, I happily made that church my home, which is how I was introduced to prosperity gospel teachings.
A False Foundation
For the next 11 years, I “grew up” in the faith under that brand of theology. As far as I knew, this was what Christianity was. I became acquainted with the American version of the prosperity gospel through the Trinity Broadcasting Network, which a local affiliate Christian broadcaster funneled to our homes.
The prosperity gospel teaches that health and wealth are guaranteed to Christians in this life on account of their faith.
The prosperity gospel teaches that health and wealth are guaranteed to Christians in this life on account of their faith. In this gospel, faith is a force that Christians express through “sowing seed” (financial giving), visualizing, and making positive declarations. This faith, once expressed, works to manifest the reality that the Christian wants, usually a reality of a healthy, wealthy, and pain-free life.
Myriad doctrines underlie this brand of theology, such as Christians are little gods, we have power in our speech to bring things into existence from nothing, and the way to reap a financial harvest is by sowing financial seeds in the ministries/churches of the prosperity preacher.
After high school—four years after my conversion—I spent a year in a school of ministry in Nairobi. However, this school further deepened my roots in this brand of theology. Also, while there, I formally became an evangelist of this teaching to varying degrees.
All my assumptions were influenced by prosperity theology, and the way I read my Bible was warped. For the entire course of my life in college, I operated out of these assumptions and continued to practice and disseminate prosperity theology.
A Solid Foundation
My turning point came in 2011. At that point, I had enrolled in a pastoral internship program at an evangelical church in Nairobi. Throughout my time in that first year, God surrounded me with colleagues who consistently and patiently challenged my assumptions and interpretations of Scripture, even as they trusted that the Lord’s truth would break through my misguided understanding.
For a season, I felt out of place and unsure of myself because I often was unable to answer their challenges to my theology. Eventually, as part of a discipling program, we were required to watch a DVD series in which an American pastor systematically tackled the prosperity gospel and its teachers, helping me realize that I had never actually read the Scriptures in context. I knew many verses by heart and would quote them in abundance to justify my positions.
However, when I read all the verses that I based my views on in their biblical context, I saw that they meant something else entirely. So I yielded. I had been backed into a corner, needing to decide whether to be intellectually honest or stubborn. By God’s grace, I turned my back on the prosperity gospel.
God surrounded me with colleagues who consistently and patiently challenged my assumptions and interpretations of Scripture.
In subsequent months, I would go through a crisis of faith because it became clear to me that my entire Christian life up until that point was based on false teaching. I wondered if I was even truly converted to begin with. Thankfully, I had kind, faithful colleagues who went on holding forth the word of truth to me. God sustained me through those months and, eventually, I reached a point where I felt confident enough to read, understand, and teach God’s Word again.
Four years later, I had the joy of writing and publishing a book confronting prosperity teaching, which God has been faithful to use to help others find the true gospel. I praise God for the faithful wounds of my friends and for his working in my heart to give up a brand of theology that I cherished so dearly for so long.
John Musyimi serves as the lead pastor of North Point Baptist Church in Nairobi, Kenya. He was converted to Christ as a teenager and soon after began preaching and teaching. He went into full-time ministry right after University and has been serving in various pastoral capacities since. He is the author of ‘A Counterfeit Gospel‘ on the prosperity gospel as well as ‘Love Bila Regrets’ on Christian dating. He is married to Mumbi and together they are raising four children; Taji, Tami, Tia, and Tando.
