The Center for Transforming Mission’s main objective is to develop communities of incarnational leaders within the Church who are equipped to bear witness to the Kingdom of God among high risk youth and families in vulnerable communities. The Centre for Transforming Mission believes that the Incarnation calls forth and sustains an incarnational people whose mission is to bear witness to the Kingdom of God. Such a mission holds in creative tension the person and work of Jesus with equal force and integrity. It involves the redemption of people as well as personal transformation and systemic change. It is holistic and radically inclusive. It intentionally crosses boundaries: cultural, ethnic, social, economic, even religious. It is particularly concerned for those people and places that have been wrongly labelled the unredeemable least, last and lost.

CTM Kenya affirms the important role leadership plays in communities and especially within the urban church in transforming the city. We are part of global networks and movements that seek to transform the cities relationally. In her efforts to walk with the marginalized communities CTM Kenya recognizes that the most powerful and renewable resource in high-risk communities resides within the communities themselves. This includes relationships between and among individual community members as well as relationships and institutions that sustain the life of the community. Thus the critical need is to recognize, network, and train indigenous leaders to activate these resources in a way that is beneficial and sustainable.

Over the years, the church has found a number of ways to obscure the impact of systems of power and patriarchy within the church. The church asks those who are oppressed to carry the burden of their own oppression, and expects them to do so silently. Through this project, Msingi Trust will challenge that culture of silence and investigate women’s multiple social cultural identities and how those identities intersect or clash in the journey to freedom, self-realization, and the pursuit of leadership within faith communities. We shall challenge the participants to share their stories of change and also share the messages on faith and feminism within their social media platforms and continue to hold such dialogues within their church spaces. This may include holding online meetings and also blogging about the subject and we shall link it to have a direct or indirect contribution to the change we desire.

We will engage women from diverse church and community groups and hope to be able to put faces, names, and context to patriarchy in the church. The interviews will be focused on giving space for women to tell their stories – not through an intermediary or heavily edited lens. While storytelling is not a new strategy for enacting change, it has not been used to tell stories of patriarchy within church spaces. Having women chronicle their struggles for freedom and leadership in church and how it impacts their identity will be our innovation and learning.