Right now, thousands of churches across the world are at different points in an intentional discipleship experience, over the course of 10 weeks, that God is using to help them understand what it means to follow Christ together at a deeper level than ever before. That 10-week experience is called Rooted, and it continues to spread all over the world. And the origin of that experience is in Nairobi, Kenya.
Mavuno Church in Nairobi, Kenya
Almost 20 years ago, leaders from Mariners Church began a partnership with Pastor Murithi Wanjau and Mavuno Church in Nairobi. What we found in that faith community was a passion to see people encounter God and grow deeper in their relationship with Him and His Church. The passion we saw there ran counter to what we were experiencing in the United States, where we have traditionally relied on theological information as the primary activator for life-change. While information certainly has a place, it should not be the only way the Church invites people to participate in God’s story. Christians in the Western world know a lot of information, but don’t often experience the life transformation promised in Scripture. Something different was happening at Mavuno Church.
During one of our visits there, the people told us about an experience their church family was going through that had been developed by Pastor Murithi. They called it Mizzi, which is Swahili for “roots.” It wasn’t a Bible study, class, or program, and it wasn’t “taught” in the traditional sense. It was a 10-week journey with daily homework that each member of the church went on in community with each other. Groups of men and women would gather each week, and through a study guide and a facilitator, walk through Scripture, discovering and living out God’s purpose for them in their church family and the world.
Mizizi and Transformational Discipleship
The impact of Mizizi on their church was staggering. Thousands of people were discovering for the first time that God loved them specifically and had a beautiful plan for their lives. They learned God has gifted each of them perfectly for His purposes. They learned how to pray and how to unleash the power of His Spirit. They learned about Jesus’ heart for serving the poor, His ability to destroy Satan’s strongholds in their lives, and how He wanted them to steward the material resources He’s given them. And they weren’t only learning these things; they were doing them.
People were reaching their community with the love of Jesus, and their community was changing. Mavuno could hardly keep up with the growth of Mizizi because family members and co-workers who didn’t go to church or have a relationship with Jesus were signing up in droves. They saw their friends and family members’ lives change before their eyes, and they wanted to know why and how it was happening.
We wondered what God might do if we brought Mizizi back home.
So we began working with Pastor Murithi to adapt the Mizizi experience to our culture while keeping the spirit of the original work. As people moved through this experience, it became clear it wasn’t the curriculum that was changing lives—it was God. People came with open hearts, expectant of what God would show them, and He did not disappoint. Relationships were mended, strongholds were broken, and people sensed God’s call to go out and change their communities in ways they never thought they could.
From its beginnings in Kenya, then to southern California, and now to the rest of the world, God continues to use this experience to help people understand what it means to follow Jesus in a whole-hearted fashion. We pray that thousands more churches have the same experience.
