Of guns and Kenyan church sermons

        Instead of saying amen after prayers,the pastor will fire a shot in the air.

The recent outrageous request by a section of the clergy to be supplied with firearms for self-defense has got me critically thinking about the church back in my village.

A spiritual turnaround is most likely going to be experienced in the village, if the clergy is given the dreaded metals they are asking for.

A pastor, the most susceptible target of attack as the clergy claim, will not let the rifle escape his grip – even when he visits the toilet for the crucial business.

Come Sunday, the pastor will fi x his bulky Good News Bible on the backseat of his bicycle then place the AK 47 atop the Holy Book. I visualize the man of God cycling through the village greeting passersby, ‘Bwana Asifiwe!” I doubt that any of them would snub the pastor’s greetings.

Pastors in my village are notorious for ambushing members of their congregation on Sunday mornings to remind them they are not supposed to work on the Sabbath day!

Now picture the same pastor calling out his lazy congregation to the service of Christ armed with a deadly assault rifle. I visualise the pastor parking his bicycle against an iron sheet gate, before announcing his arrival by cocking his AK 47.

Getting no response, the pastors will most certainly fi re in the air. A panic stricken congregant will rush to the pastor’s feet and give a thousand reasons why he is late for church.

“Pastor I can see you are armed spiritually and physically too. A few more minutes and we shall set off to the church together,” says the faithful. In the church, the most ideal location for the rifle would most likely be on the pulpit, with the muzzle facing the attentive congregation – an uncoerced command for the congregants to pay attention.

Should the congregation start dozing off during the sermon, the most likely thing the pastor will do is fire a bullet into the air. But with the onset of the rifles in the church in my village, I think there will be great reforms in the accounts section – marked with reduced cases of ‘offering evasion’.

The church ushers who normally collect the offering will be moving from pew to pew with a basket in one hand, and an AK 47 tucked tightly under one armpit. In my village, we have a tendency of converting the church into an auctioneer’s hall when converting farm produce and poultry that are occasionally presented as offering, to cash.

But on several occasions, such an offering has either been returned home, or bought very cheaply. However, with the rifles in place this is certainly bound to change. I have even been thinking that we should stop saying Amen after prayers and instead have the pastor fire a shot in the air to mark the end of prayers.