SPEAKER_00: Reverend Simon Kande is a national director with Fellowship of Christian Unions.
SPEAKER_00: Focus Kenya, bringing expertise in leadership and Christian engagement.
SPEAKER_00: Their background reflects a strong focus on theological studies and academic research.
SPEAKER_00: At Focus Kenya, Reverend Simon oversees national initiatives and guides organizational strategy.
SPEAKER_00: Their work involves facilitating mutual support and enhancing leadership capabilities within Christian unions across universities and colleges in Kenya.
SPEAKER_00: They contribute to equipping students for effective Christian living through discipleship, leadership development, evangelism, and social transformation.
SPEAKER_00: Prior to this, Reverend Simon was a PhD student at Kenyatta University, advancing knowledge through research.
SPEAKER_00: His academic journey also includes studies at Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology.
SPEAKER_00: Earlier in his career, Reverend Simon served as a training secretary at St.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's University and as a program coordinator.
SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome Reverend Simon Kande.
SPEAKER_01: Let's all stand up, let's stand up as we welcome him.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Hallelujah.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, thank you very much.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_02: We are gathered this evening, our Lord and our Father, thanking you for what you're doing as you build your church.
SPEAKER_02: Thanking you for Africa.
SPEAKER_02: Thanking you for giving us a youthful continent and for making us the epicenter of global Christianity at such a time as this.
SPEAKER_02: Lord, as we explore on what that means, and as we listen from you, speak to us, we commit ourselves to you.
SPEAKER_02: Help us, Father, to arise and do what we must do at such a time as this, so that we can secure the next generation.
SPEAKER_02: And so that the Christian heritage can move forward and move forth with your power.
SPEAKER_02: So we thank you and we give you praise.
SPEAKER_02: In Jesus' name we pray.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
SPEAKER_02: Joy to be here.
SPEAKER_02: Exciting to be here.
SPEAKER_02: I feel at home.
SPEAKER_02: I just came in and discovered I have many more friends than I thought.
SPEAKER_02: I met someone, we were at the university together doing missions those years, about 27, 28 years ago.
SPEAKER_02: Honored also to be here.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much, Pastor Ambrose and Simon and the leadership team.
SPEAKER_02: Pastor Ambrose was our preacher when I was a student at the University of Nairobi.
SPEAKER_02: Just the other day.
SPEAKER_02: For Gen Z, it's just the other day, 1998, 99, just the other day.
SPEAKER_02: And uh he nurtured a generation.
SPEAKER_02: And uh good to see many friends here.
SPEAKER_02: I also have my family with me.
SPEAKER_02: Uh they are part of my family fellowships here.
SPEAKER_02: Uh that's I came with them.
SPEAKER_02: I have my wife, let me just introduce my wife.
SPEAKER_02: Um we are Gen X, towards the end of Gen X, we just missed millennials, just a bit.
SPEAKER_02: But in my family, I have two other generations.
SPEAKER_02: I have one, a Gen Z, the last bones of the Gen Z.
SPEAKER_02: Sifa is somewhere.
SPEAKER_02: Sifa, you want to stand?
SPEAKER_02: Um and I have two Gen Alphas, the first bones of Gen Alphas, Baraka, uh, is among the top of Gen Alphas.
SPEAKER_02: And they are real Gen Alpha, Naemma seated there.
SPEAKER_02: And then you want to stand, Neema?
SPEAKER_02: Otherwise, Gen Alphas, you have to allow them to stand.
SPEAKER_02: They will ask you questions why they didn't stand.
SPEAKER_02: And I have cousins to my and uh relatives.
SPEAKER_02: You want to stand?
SPEAKER_02: Uh cousins too.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_02: We appreciate.
SPEAKER_02: Thank God.
SPEAKER_02: I work with the fellowship of Christian Unions as the introduction.
SPEAKER_02: I wasn't with in the Gen Z world, you're not too sure what is the outcome of what is happening.
SPEAKER_02: So I wasn't too sure the need in where it was going.
SPEAKER_02: And that's how you live in this world.
SPEAKER_02: You just watch and wait something to come out.
SPEAKER_02: Uh I work with the fellowship of Christian Unions.
SPEAKER_02: Fellowship of Christian Unions is the uh is the umbrella body that links and networks, the Christian unions in this country, in the universities and colleges, we are working with 240 Christian unions with a student population of 65,000 Christian students every year.
SPEAKER_02: That's a blessing from God because that mass of student Christian students in this country, and a body we work with called International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, is actually the biggest student movement in the world numerically.
SPEAKER_02: And we thank God for what He's doing in Kenya.
SPEAKER_02: We thank God for the gift of Christian unions in high schools, actually, primary schools, there are the clubs, then high schools, we have CUs and universities and colleges, and many people have been nurtured uh through that you know spectrum from high school to the universities.
SPEAKER_02: I've been with young people for serving with students for 19 years.
SPEAKER_02: At a point, I thought I'm done, and I left.
SPEAKER_02: I went to become a pastor at Narobi Baptist Church after that serving for 13 years.
SPEAKER_02: And during the height of COVID, God called me so clearly to go back to the young people.
SPEAKER_02: I had lots of wrestling within me.
SPEAKER_02: I was asking God, I'm no longer young and all that.
SPEAKER_02: But the call was clear.
SPEAKER_02: Go and equip the youth of Africa for global missions.
SPEAKER_02: That's what I've done since I had to go back to focus, serving as a national director, and I don't I doubt the Lord will let me go for the rest of my life because of some of the things we'll be sharing today.
SPEAKER_02: I've been asked to speak on the mantle switch, the mantle switch, intergenerational transfer.
SPEAKER_02: The mantle switch, intergenerational transfer.
SPEAKER_02: This topic for me is critical because at the height of COVID, when God was calling me back to the students and the young people, one year after that, I meet an old man, a Norwegian who was 84 years of age, 84 years of age.
SPEAKER_02: He had visited Kenya, a professor, a Christian professor.
SPEAKER_02: This man, after that conference, it was in Nakuru.
SPEAKER_02: He tells us some words that have stuck with me.
SPEAKER_02: And he says, I've been a Christian for many years in Norway.
SPEAKER_02: I've seen what God is doing in Africa and in Kenya.
SPEAKER_02: I plead with you.