As a child in the Kenyan village of Ngomeni, Josiah Katumu set his heart on Christian music stardom.
“I wanted to write songs, like a Kenyan Michael Card,” Katumu recalls from his office at Third Millennium Ministries in Orlando, Florida.
Determined to produce the next “El Shaddai,” Katumu planned to fulfill his contemporary Christian music dreams by earning a degree from Kenyatta University in Nairobi and then studying law so he could navigate the business world. Katumu loved the Lord and wanted to serve him. More than that, he wanted to avoid the poverty and hardship he witnessed his father, Pastor Daniel Katumu, endure.
Young Katumu observed his father’s tireless, unpaid service to Ngomeni’s Africa Evangelical Presbyterian Church, six miles from their home. The family depended on farming and raised goats for food, and Katumu’s father supplemented that work with beekeeping. For a man with only a bicycle for transportation, serving a congregation, preaching every Sunday, and meeting the church’s administrative needs left little time for family bonding.
Moreover, the elder Katumu entered his vocation before he had completed any seminary education, so in the midst of fulfilling his call to shepherd the Ngomeni community, he also committed himself to Bible and theological studies.
“Due to lack of theological training, my dad attended several Bible colleges,” Katumu recalls. Katumu’s father earned his first certificate from a Bible school operating out of a missionary hospital 27 miles from their home. Many Sunday evenings, Katumu would wave goodbye as his father pedaled away for the week to study.
The Katumus knew all too well the importance of building a solid foundation on God’s Word and the dangers of biblical illiteracy. Katumu’s maternal grandfather, Simeon, had planted several churches throughout Kenya without any formal education. Simeon delivered the gospel with great conviction, but with his limited biblical literacy, he could provide little other spiritual nourishment for his churches, his family, or himself.
This ignorance shattered his family. When Simeon’s wife developed cataracts later in life, the church elders, arguing from the Old Testament, insisted he follow the practice of polygamy as other prominent Kenyan leaders did. Their head pastor, the elders claimed, needed a new, young wife. Katumu believes that had they better understood the Old Testament, they might have distinguished the cautionary tales from the exemplary and known the consequences for the polygamous Abraham, Jacob, David, and Solomon. They might have anticipated the catastrophe to come.
Instead, Pastor Simeon capitulated to his elders and married a younger woman who was not a Christian. Her disdain for God extended to animosity toward her elder sister-wife. Like Abraham, Katumu’s grandfather left the women to settle their differences for themselves, and in the end, the new wife murdered Katumu’s grandmother and went to jail.
Now, Pastor Simeon had one wife in the ground, one wife in prison, and a 12-year-old grandson reeling from grief and doubt. How could his grandfather, a man of God, veer so far from the truth? How could a good God allow his grandmother to suffer and die at the hands of such an evil woman?
“I loved my grandmother so much,” Katumu admits, “I didn’t know if I could ever forgive my grandfather for what he let happen to her.”
As Katumu grew into adolescence, he struggled not only to forgive his grandfather but also to reconcile the murder of his grandmother with his faith in Christ. But God remained constant to Katumu, and his faith grew during this period of tragedy and grief. Through Katumu’s determination to fulfill his music dreams, the Lord began equipping him for his own purposes. Katumu cultivated his guitar skills, then set out for Kenyatta, the first stop on his predetermined journey toward music success.
However, as he completed his undergraduate studies, he met a PCA pastor who had come to Kenya to train pastors. The pastor worked for a church in Orlando and coaxed Josiah to change course and head to Reformed Theological Seminary. Knowing firsthand the great expense and sacrifice a seminary education would cost, Katumu hesitated. But he also knew that to write Scripture-inspired lyrics like Michael Card, he needed a stronger theological foundation steeped in Scripture. The day after their conversation, Katumu’s friend said his church would help pay Katumu’s tuition.
“The next week,” Katumu smiles, “I started my first class at RTS Orlando.”
Though he thrived academically and his professors encouraged him to pursue pastoral ministry, Katumu remained committed to returning to Kenya and earning a law degree. With his heart in Kenya and his mind steeped in ancient truths, Katumu remembered his brothers and sisters in Christ who, like his father, had little access to the well of knowledge he now gulped from daily.
He began shipping seminary textbooks home at his own expense, helping equip those eager for a deeper understanding of God’s Word. He called it the Christian Resource Center of Kenya. Meanwhile, he also honed his musical craft as a church worship leader. Four years later, with a master of divinity degree and experience as a fulltime church staff member, Katumu finally admitted what everyone around him already knew.
“As I sat in church one Sunday watching the pastor deliver the sermon, my heart felt like it would burst,” he said.
Finally, he admitted to his wife, “I’m supposed to be a pastor.”
“I know,” she told him.
Now, after 13 years pastoring three different PCA churches in the U.S., Katumu has a ministry in Kenya. As director of partnerships for Thirdmill, Katumu connects with pastors and lay ministers not only in Kenya, but throughout Africa, Europe, the Middle East, North America, the Pacific islands, South America, and Southeast Asia. He equips them with free seminary training and resources.
His grandfather finally repented, and in 2015—just four years before his death—reconciled with Katumu and his family. Grateful for the opportunity and the heart to forgive his grandfather, Katumu wishes his grandfather had had access to Thirdmill’s resources during his ministry.
Still, Katumu rests in God’s sovereignty to provide resources today so that pastors like his dad—who finally earned his MDiv degree four years after his son—can study from home instead of traveling 30 miles by bike. Now, because of the Lord’s faithfulness in Katumu’s life, new generations of believers in the remotest parts of the world can learn to rightly handle the Word of truth.