KIBERA, Kenya (BP) – Matt Beasley, lead pastor of Severns Valley Baptist Church in Elizabethtown, Ky., conducted global missions the two years he and his wife Valerie were International Mission Board church planters in Prague.
“They refer to sharing the Gospel in Prague as plowing concrete,” he said of the architecturally rich Czech Republic capital that enjoys a vibrant economy. “I mean, people are very hardened, and their hearts are very hard against the Gospel.”
In stark contrast to luxurious Prague is Kibera, a poverty-stricken, overcrowded square mile slum in Nairobi, Kenya, with no permanent running water, scant electricity, no indoor bathrooms and no food preparation areas. About 82,000 households share 78 latrines that are emptied into the Ngong River.
Families of four typically live on $26 a month, with many of them working in trades, operating small businesses, or working in neighboring communities in the service industry.
Beasley found hearts ripe for the Gospel and inexplicably full of hope when he went on a mission trip to Kibera in September 2023 with The Bucket Ministry, an international clean water evangelistic outreach to communities with contaminated water supplies.
“You’re romanticizing it if you say that the first thing you experienced was anything other than the smell,” Beasley said of Kibera. “It’s a constant reminder of the dire situation that many of them find themselves in – open and exposed wiring, water lines running through open sewage, the open sewage leaching into the water lines.
“They live in complete, utter, abject poverty,” Beasley said, “but the hope of the Gospel has transformed their outlook on life.”
Christopher Beth, a Southern Baptist whom Beasley pastored at Ridgecrest Baptist Church in Greenville, Texas, hosted the trip to Kibera through The Bucket Ministry he founded in 2012 to provide both clean water and Living Water to communities in need around the world.
In Kibera alone, where The Bucket Ministry completed its work in mid-December, the ministry’s 100 local missionaries shared the Gospel more than a half million times, heard 21,000 professions of faith and baptized 1,400 people over a five-year period, The Bucket Ministry told Baptist Press.
The ministry equips individual households with Sawyer PointOne water filters that last 20 years and are proven to reduce levels of E. coli and total coliform bacteria in drinking water by up to 99 percent. In turn, households agree to keep the filters clean and to allow indigenous ministers into their homes three times in the following months, ensuring the filters are properly maintained and building relationships that facilitate sharing the Gospel.
No one needs to be convinced they need clean water, Beth said, but many simply don’t have access to it. The World Health Organization puts that number at 785 million internationally.
“So when you’re able to deliver a simple solution for clean water, it immediately starts building relational equity with the recipients,” Beth said, “and you get to earn the right to share the Gospel and earn the right to disciple them.”
When Beth encountered Kibera for the first time, he was paralyzed by the scene.
“This is going to be the closest thing that most of us in the Western world would think … hell looks like … except for the fire,” Beth said. “If I could be brutally honest, it terrified me. I did not really think that I could do anything. I mean, I’m just an ordinary person.
“And God kept on bringing me back to this place. And finally, once we committed that we were going to serve this entire area, then He provided the resources. He provided the people, just like He said He would do.”
Many of Beth’s fellow Southern Baptists are among those God provided to help, including not only Severns Valley Baptist Church, but also Cross City Baptist Church in Euless, Texas, where John Meador is lead pastor.
Meador visited Kibera on the same mission trip as Beasley, and several teams from both churches have participated in the outreach there.
Meador is impressed by the ministry’s efficiency in partnering with the Sawyer Products water filter company, its practices of partnering with stateside churches and training Indigenous ministers as local missionaries, and its encouragement of pastors in countries were the ministry serves.
“But the process itself is so impressive to me because everybody needs water, of course,” Meador said. “And people come in and they look at what the water filter is, and they of course are already interested in getting that water filter, but there’s a certain amount of training that has to go on for them to use it well.”
The ministry provides the instruction necessary for households to use the filters, and the indigenous missionaries continue the work long after visiting missionaries are gone.
Residents use the filters on water that runs from the tap when available, or is otherwise purchased from trucks. But Beth said tests show all water available in Kibera is contaminated without the use of filters.
Today, every home in Kibera has a clean water filter. In the five years The Bucket Ministry worked in Kibera on the $4.8 million outreach, its missionaries and volunteers distributed 81,788 water filters attached to buckets, conducted 240,569 follow-up visits, taught 419,514 discipleship lessons and baptized 1,440 new converts among the 400,000 or so residents the ministry counted, according to numbers collected through the ministry’s mission mapping system.
Meador saw living conditions similar to Kibera on the numerous mission trips he took to India during his pastorate at Woodland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, Tenn., but conditions in India were not as dire.
“Well, the, Gospel is what’s needed there,” Meador said of Kibera. “And when people have a lot of need and they’re at a crossroads in their life with need, then when you come to meet that need, they’re really willing to listen to why you’re there. And of course, the reason we’re there is because of Jesus and the Gospel.
“That’s pretty big motivation for all of us.”
Other Southern Baptist congregations supporting the ministry include Flint Baptist Church in Flint, Texas; Central Baptist Church in Crandall, Texas, and Crosspoint Community Church in Rockwall, Texas, among others.
Beth founded The Bucket Ministry after accompanying his daughter on a mission trip to the Brazilian Amazon in 2012.
“I saw things that I wasn’t prepared to see,” Beth said. Residents drank water from the Amazon River as a normal way of life, but because of the high infant mortality from waterborne diseases, delayed naming their children for two years after birth.
“And I saw people that thought that diarrhea was normal, and that’s the way that you had to live,” he said. “And so I came back with this burden on my heart and started searching for solutions.”
He stumbled upon the Sawyer water filter at a Dallas camping supply store, and his own family served as human guinea pigs, filtering and drinking otherwise untreated water from Lake Ray Hubbard for a week, and remaining well.
“The owner of the company (Kurt Avery) is a believer. He’s a kingdom man, and he believes that the filter can end the world water crisis as well as advance the Gospel,” Beth said. “So we have identified this perfect partnership between us and Sawyer, that we use a product that they manufactured for camping and backpacking to reconcile people back to the Father and to deliver them with sustainable clean water over generations.”
In addition to Kibera, The Bucket Ministry has provided clean water and The Living Water to the Kawangware and Athi River slums of Kenya, the Jenta slums of Nigeria, the Namatala slums of Uganda, the Nima slums of Ghana, and in Ciudad Victoria, Mexico.
The Gospel ministry grows where it is planted.
Kibera “churches are telling us that they’re growing,” Beth said. “They need more room in that area now because of all the new believers. So we’re seeing this as a point of revival for Africa, and we’re seeing ripples from that campaign going out further.
“Our team of missionaries answered God’s call to serve their neighbors and because of that, lives have been changed both physically and spiritually. I’m in awe of how God continues to use ordinary people for His rescue mission.”
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