c. 2008 Religion News Service

NAIROBI, Kenya _ Before he became a pastor, Duncan Miano would not have predicted this recent Sunday-morning drive to church.

His wife should be long gone, he says, because about 12 years ago he was cheating on her. The children in the back seat shouldn’t even exist because he was sterile. In fact, he himself should be dead because he was HIV-positive.

Yet today, “all of these demons are gone,” he says with a whooping laugh and an expression of constant amazement. “If I would not have come to Neno, I would be lost. But I am now free of HIV.”

Miano says this as he points toward a building that looks more like a massive, rusting shack than the “Jesus Big Miracle Crusade” advertised out front. Every Sunday, the booming Neno Evangelism Centre attracts some 15,000 brightly dressed Kenyans.

They come for miracles and entertainment, and to see James Maina Nga’ng’a, the brusque ex-convict-turned-preacher known as “the Apostle,” drive out demons and heal ailments ranging from cancer to poverty to nocturnal encounters with flying witches.

Nga’ng’a’s controversial brand of Pentecostalism, with its promise of prosperity and good health, has spiked in popularity throughout the continent in recent years. It’s one that incorporates a traditional African perspective _ witches, demons, curses. It is a results-driven approach to faith that appeals to many African Christians for the potential for instant gratification.

Yet it also is raising eyebrows among local Catholic and mainline Protestant groups losing congregants to Pentecostal preachers like Nga’ng’a (pronounced Nyan-guh). They worry that Nga’ng’a and others like him may not be healing people at all, and instead are simply piling problems on a weary nation for personal gain.

“I think the worry is about false sense of healing,” said Todd Johnson, director of the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary just outside Boston. “There is a fear that those who are supposedly healed would then pass along disease, that these people think they’re healed when they’re really not.”

Yet that’s not what is heard in approaching Nga’ng’a’s crowded church. Miano _ one of the deputy ministers at Neno _ hurries into the corrugated-iron megachurch and is immediately engulfed by a sea of congregants dancing among thousands of plastic chairs. He cries out and greets visitors who have traveled from as far away as the Congo, South Africa and Argentina.

“What God can do …,” Nga’ng’a screams into the microphone before pointing it toward the crowd, “No man can do!” they cry.

With that, Nga’ng’a and his guitar launch into another rock ballad that sends old women flailing and a squadron of youth _ all wearing T-shirts imprinted with Nga’ng’a’s face _ into a choreographed dance.

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Esther Njonjo shakes her hips near the stage. She arrived at Neno several years ago with asthma so crippling that she was told to stop working. But after her first encounter with Nga’ng’a, she threw away her inhaler _ completely cured, she says _ and has been coming back ever since.

“I have never seen somebody else in another ministry getting healed,” she said. “But here, no matter how we are, we are being healed completely.”

Cancer, joblessness, HIV, adultery and any other problem plaguing the citizens of Nairobi _ these are all ornery demons, Nga’ng’a says, and ones that can be easily beaten away by “the man of God.”

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It is assumed by most worshippers here that there are likely several witches and several hundred demons somewhere in the crowd. And so, several hours into the service, Nga’ng’a begins a song that sends the possessed wailing and thrashing to the front of the hall.

Nga’ng’a delights in the most vexing of dilemmas, such as one torturing a Ugandan woman who came to Neno recently. At night, he said, the woman claimed that a demon forced her to travel to three different countries in east Africa, to “breast-feed 900 babies in each country. So per day she breast-feeds 2,700 babies and the activity takes place in the deep sea.”

On this Sunday, Nga’ng’a is particularly discomforted by a man in a tan vest who says he is tormented every night by nine cats and three rats who rape him when the moon comes out. Nga’ng’a slaps the man three times, then spits in his mouth.

“Ahh-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka!” he yells to the devil. “No, no. Not today! Free! Free! Free! In the name of Jesus!” The man in the tan vest screams, then emerges from his stupor, laughing and shaking Nga’ng’a’s hand. Applause and ululation erupt throughout the church.

It’s the type of response that leads Nga’ng’a to easily laugh off his critics.

“Could a trickster get away with all this?” he asks, pointing to the thousands of plastic chairs and the need for an even larger facility. “The people can see with their own eyes.”

Nga’ng’a seems at home in the spotlight, but his swagger, raspy bark and scar-pocked face suggest a darker past. He found Jesus while serving his final years in prison _ 21 years, 21 different jails. Not long after, Jesus appeared in Nga’ng’a’s shop in the coastal city of Mombasa, showed him his bleeding hands and instructed Nga’ng’a to become a minister, he says.

He now tells the crowd at Neno that he is nothing more than a common man chosen by God to heal them. “You see that I am very close to you,” he tells them. “I am not learned.”

This former street vendor now wears expensive suits and consults regularly with Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki. They know he flies frequently to visit influential preachers in America’s biggest cities, and they see something in him for their future.

“There’s a sense that they personally can conquer poverty if they join this church,” Johnson said. “Prosperity ministry in Africa is much like in the United States, except in the U.S., they’re hoping for a Lexus. In Nairobi they’re hoping not to suffer.”

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Jonathan Bonk, executive director of the Overseas Studies Ministry Center in New Haven, Conn., says such charismatic Pentecostalism _ particularly the strand emerging from a traditional African perspective _ continues to grow at a fevered pace in Africa.

“As long as poverty’s growing, Pentecostalism is going to grow. It’s about hope, really. The possibility of being healed, of being rich, of having a more secure situation and when all of this is couched in biblical language, it gives it an air of authenticity,” Bonk said.

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After Nga’ng’a moves his flock outside the church and into a grassy amphitheater for a crusade, Miano _ the pastor who says he was healed of HIV _ loads his children back into the car and drives towards his spacious compound in the suburbs. He is particularly hopeful today: he recently received word that he and his family had been granted green cards to enter the United States.

“Who would have thought,” he says, laughing a the miracle and shock of it all, that “an African like me would live in America? God is good!”

KRE/CM END KANE1,200 words, with optional trims to 1,000

Photos from Nga’ng’a’s church and of Nga’ng’a are available via https://religionnews.com.