A widespread revival has been sweeping through many countries of Africa. According to The World Christian Encyclopedia, there were 380 Million Christians in Africa in 2000 and it is estimated that by 2025 there will be 633 million Christians in the continent. Now much discipling of these new Christians must take place.  In the 20th Century, western evangelical groups did a wonderful job of evangelizing Africa, and church-planting organizations followed up their efforts with highly successful numbers of church plants.  However, these successes created a void in leadership positions of these churches. Most of the leadership curriculum that has been used in Africa was written from western perspective (developed world perspective). 

Established February 2013, African Transformational Leadership (ATL) is dedicated to help fill this void in leadership development.  ATL founder and president, Robert Kamau, has written a two-manual curriculum: "Transformational Servant Leadership in the Church and Community" and "Church and Culture." Both manuals are available in English and Swahili.  The first manual equips and empowers pastors with servant leadership skills. The second manual addresses cultural issues such as polygamy, wife inheritance, female genital mutilation, witchcraft, HIV/AIDS, pain and trauma, gender discrimination and others.  This curriculum will help improve the quality and growth of the African church. It will be used to teach Christian leadership skills to enable economically disadvantaged lay pastors to lead their congregations in a Godly way. This curriculum is unique because it is written from an African perspective with a Western training structure—a rarity in Africa.  These lay pastors have never been formally trained and have no opportunity of a bible school or seminary.

Jesus taught us to prepare men who would think as He does, love as He does, see as He does, teach as He did, and serve as He did.  Making disciples involves going, baptizing, and teaching the Word of God and then enabling them to do the same thing in other people’s lives.  Lay pastors and church leaders will be challenged the engage their communities with a comprehensive Biblical worldview. They will be challenged to a deeper level of participation in community life. This is of vital importance for transformational change.  Going and baptizing are both crucial to disciple making, but this is just part of the Great Commission.  Teaching is also a vital activity.  ATL has included in its program a model of training to equip trainers to teach others.

Robert Kamau is a Kenyan-born scholar, a graduate of Reformed Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Ministry candidate at Tennessee Temple University. He is an ordained minister and a respected elder at West End Community Church. Robert spent much of his time in Africa as a trainer before moving to the United States, where he and his family live. Robert understands the real needs of the African church. His vision for African Transformational Leadership (ATL) is to add to the quality and the already dynamic growth of the African Church by providing Christian Biblical leadership skills, to equip economically disadvantaged and untrained pastors to lead their congregations on a godly way.

Prior to founding African Transformational Leadership, Robert worked as a Director of Pastor Training in charge of about 20 countries in Africa with another U.S.-based non-profit bringing the gospel and biblical instruction to African pastors and church leaders.

A WORD FROM ROBERT KAMAU

God called me to be founder and President of ATL. I thank God for putting me in this unique position to be part of God’s story of His bringing transformation to churches of Africa.  I would like thank the body of Christ for prayers and financial support this far. To date we have trained over 200 pastors Kenya. We thank God for including us in the journey of spreading the gospel for the good of others and the glory of God. 

UPDATE

250 copies of manual one were distributed in Kenya in November, 2013. They were well received.  In July/August 2014, 192 pastors and leaders in Kenya were trained using the second manual.  In addition, 49 laymen were equipped to be trainers who can teach the entire curriculum to others in their region