David Mukuba Gitari, first Bishop of the Diocese of Mount Kenya East (1975-1997) and Archbishop of Kenya (1997-2002), died in hospital in Nairobi on 30 September, 2013 aged 76. David Gitari was one of the first post-colonial global African Christian leaders. He was born to Samuel and Jesse Mukuba in 1937. Samuel was the first person to evangelise the area where his fifth child would be bishop decades later. David as a child was too small to be allowed to enrol at school at the age of 6. He was also sent home from teachers training college at the age of 17 because he could not reach the blackboard. He was a leader in the Kenya Students Christian Fellowship and, encouraged by the late Oliver Barclay, trained in theology through IFES at Tyndale Hall, Bristol, in 1965. He became a travelling secretary for the Pan African Fellowship of Evangelical Students in East and Central Africa. In 1971 he became General Secretary of the Bible Society of Kenya. He came to prominence in Kenya in 1975 when he gave a series of six Bible expositions on the State-run Voice of Kenya radio in the five-minute “Lift up your hearts” slot before the 7am news. A leading member of Parliament, JM Kariuki had been found murdered in a thicket in the Ngong Hills. Gitari expounded Genesis 4 on Cain’s murder of Abel.
He was ”˜carpeted’ by VoK and told his sermons had been disturbing. Gitari replied that the gospel of Jesus Christ is very disturbing, especially to sinners. Biblical Exposition Biblical exposition set the pattern for his preaching, proclaiming orthodox Christian faith to the whole of society and the powers that be.
Read it all from the Church of England Newspaper.
A moving and informative account of a life fearlessly given to His service and to the service of others. I hadn’t realised all the people who had served at St Andrew’s Institute thanks to his initiative and encouragement and who now are themselves doing the same for others. Nor had I realised how he in turn had been encouraged by those like the late Oliver Barclay. How often in differing accounts do the same names crop up again and again.
That encouragement is essential for us so that we too may encourage others by expanding their horizons and showing them a larger vision and example. As Sir Isaac Newton put it: ‘if I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants’.