How preachers fleece their poor flock

The Government is receiving more than 60 new applications a month from people wanting to start new churches.

Pentecostal and charismatic churches are the fastest growing, with 44,000 recognised by the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya (EAK).

KACC is studying 120 complaints with a view to prosecution.

Starting a church is the latest way to make easy money, according to worried government officials.

Ruthless church leaders tell vulnerable worshippers to give them lots of money for God’s work for them to be rewarded with riches, an expert explained.

He said religion had become more a lucrative business enterprise than a calling.

Self-styled pastors and bishops were lining their own pockets by fleecing their flocks, another expert said.

So successful is the ploy that the Government is receiving more than 60 new applications a month from people wanting to start new churches.

And with two new requests coming in every day to join the 7,000 pending applications, officials are urgently seeking ways to block what they see as just schemes to make money.

They are asking mainstream religious leaders to help them curb the proliferation of splinter groups.

More than 10,000 denominations have already been registered, and they have built more than 50,000 churches in towns and in the countryside.

Fastest growing

The 7,000 applications still pending in the Registrar of Societies office are those which have failed to meet the minimum requirements.

Pentecostal and charismatic churches are the fastest growing, with 44,000 recognised by the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya (EAK).

“We are just a segment of the whole church fraternity. Churches are coming up at an alarming rate,” said the Rev Wellington Mutiso, the EAK’s general-secretary.

Dr Mutiso said many Kenyans were turning to the new churches in search of a livelihood, while leaders of the new churches were in it mainly for the money.

Already, the anti-corruption authority is studying 120 complaints with a view to prosecution.

One official in the registrar’s office commented: “We are seeking to demand proof of training in theology from the new applicants because most of them are not qualified to head churches or even teach the Gospel.”