Is the church ready for the election year?

There is a door Kenyans keep knocking on, and it is the wrong one. When citizens need someone to hear their grievance and say it aloud to power, they call the opposition. When they need someone to hear it and simply hold it quietly, they call the Church. Hearing is not the same as speaking. A people who cannot tell the difference will keep mistaking sympathy for prophecy.

This is not politics failing us. It is the Church resigning without submitting a letter.

Nobody fired the pastor from the prophetic office. They simply stopped showing up to it, and called the empty chair humility. An empty chair kept long enough starts to look like a vacancy notice, and someone else will eventually read it that way and take the seat.

There are two ways to vacate a post, and the Church has mastered both. The first is comfort — chaplaincy dressed as ministry, blessing ribbons instead of examining them, mistaking a seat at the high table for a mandate to speak there. The second is subtler and more common now: reaction dressed as courage. A strong statement issued after the scandal breaks feels prophetic. It is not. It is commentary on someone else's script, arriving safely after the danger has passed. Punctual is not the same as prophetic.

Nathan did not book an appointment before telling David, "You are the man." Amos did not wait for Bethel's priest to find it convenient. The prophetic office was never meant to be safe — it was meant to be near enough to power to be heard, and free enough of power's patronage to say the costly thing anyway. The Kenyan Church has kept the proximity and surrendered the freedom. We sit at the table. We have simply stopped saying anything at it worth the seat.

Proximity without freedom is not influence. It is custody. And a Church in custody cannot be surprised when its blessing is requested more often than its correction.

So we outsource. Grievance moves to whoever will still say it out loud, and lately that has mostly been political movements — not because they are righteous, but because they are willing. A coalition built on ambition should never out-prophesy an altar. That it currently does is not a compliment to the coalition. It is a verdict on us.