African Pastor Finds His Way to Ministry in America

Plenty of Americans go to Africa to preach Christianity.

Joseph Kiwovele has gone the other way. He is an African who teaches Christianity to Americans.

For 11 years, he has been pastor of Second Baptist Church in Chico.

His calling to be a minister involved surprises, he said, although in one sense it's not surprising since his father was a prominent church leader in his home country of Tanzania.

Kiwovele grew up in what was called a mission station in Tanzania. There were many of these, which were started by Lutheran missionaries from Germany and Sweden, he said. They typically included a church, a school, a medical facility and a settlement where converts to Christianity lived.

"I was born into Christianity," he said. "It was a part of my whole life."

Kiwovele went into agriculture. In 1981 he received a master's degree in agriculture from Chico State University. Then he returned to Tanzania and worked for the government there.

He'd long been interested in Germany because his father had studied there. During the 1980s, he made a trip to visit a friend, another Tanzanian, who was living in Bavaria.

That's where the first surprise occurred. He and his friend, a Roman Catholic, had gone to Mass on Easter evening.

Afterwards, Kiwovele said he found himself telling his friend that there was something he needed to do with his life but that he hadn't found it yet. He added when he came upon it, he'd know it.

When these words came out of his mouth, they shocked him, Kiwovele, said, because he hadn't thought of himself as seeking a purpose in life.

After the trip to Germany, Kiwovele returned home and found one of his sisters was so ill the family had given up hope she would survive.

He said one of his younger brothers, who is a minister, said they must pray intently for her. They did, and she recovered.

Yet another surprise was his own healing, Kiwovele said. For seven years he had suffered from intense bouts of fever and pain.

He was cured after his sister who had been healed prayed for him, he said.

"This experience really was my turning point," Kiwovele said. "I can't explain it. I was prayed for, and the problem I'd had disappeared just like that."

Then, he knew what he was meant to do with his life -- he would serve God as a minister, Kiwovele said.

He moved to Chico and married a woman he'd met while going to school. He began taking extension courses through seminaries in Texas and Florida. He and his wife, Anita, joined Second Baptist Church, where she attended.

In 1997, he was ordained as a deacon of the church, and in 1998, when the minister left, he was chosen to be pastor.

Kiwovele described his theology as "biblical more than anything else."

"I don't care what else you do, the only way you demonstrate that you have Christ within you is to love others," he said. "That is the only testimony the world can understand. That is my central premise."

He said Second Baptist Church is still small but growing. About 60 people attend on a typical Sunday.

"The church has gone through a transformation," he said. "It is no longer simply a black church. Now it is about 65 percent black and 35 percent non-black."

The change just happened, without any intentions that it happen, he said.

"I think the kind of church they are becoming is kind of unique," he said. "Right now they are pretty at home to embrace diverse groups of people."