The Committee and the Uncommitted: Material Assistance to Members in Need at a Pentecostal Church in Western Kenya

Abstract:In Kenya today, Christian churches serve as a central pillar of socioeconomic support to people in their hour of need. Drawing on ethnographic research at a small Pentecostal church in Kisumu, western Kenya, we present four modes of such material support. This classification lets us examine the provision of church assistance as a subtle balancing act, in which leaders and so-called supermembers seek to bind lay members into greater commitment by projecting institutional dependability while carefully avoiding excessive demands. Rejecting the caricature of the self-enriching charismatic leader and focusing on the intertwinement of religious commitment and class, we offer a fresh examination of churches' mechanisms of welfare assistance beyond a simple vertical/horizontal (or institutional/congregational) binarism.


Introduction
It is widely acknowledged that part of religious organizations' mandate in promoting charitable activities involves providing material assistance to their members in their hour of need (Leutloff-Grandits, Peleikis, and Thelen 2009, 1-2).Such assistance is often perceived as part of a pact between members and institutions, whereby the former regard such support as a right and demand it, while the latter see themselves as committed to empowering their congregants.Whether or not such assistance is actually transformative (Deacon 2012), it can offer invaluable supplementary social security or replace nonfunctioning state mechanisms.At the same time, from an institutional perspective, such assistance cannot be dissociated from the strategic interests of consolidating commitment: by showing their care for members and their material welfare, religious institutions seek to deepen africaTodAy 69(1 & 2) intimacies and reinforce trust, thereby cultivating exclusivist-or at least privileged-ties.Furthermore, such promise of material assistance, like promises of church roles, may not only satisfy bonds with current members, but also appeal to prospective ones (Gez and Droz 2017).This we can see, for example, in debates on the work of religious faith-based development organizations, where the promise of access to material benefits has at times been criticized as a missionary device (Bornstein 2005;Clarke and Jennings 2008;Freeman 2012a). 2 On an everyday level, material provision can be an instrument for tilting the balance of commitment among undecided or irregular members-especially in contexts of high religious turnover, as in Christian urban Kenya (Gez 2018).
In this article, we build on prior observations regarding widespread religious mobility and socioeconomic disparity in Pentecostal urban Kenya to explore the dynamics of church-based material assistance.Recognizing that religious institutions are hierarchical structures, where various factions may pursue disparate objectives (Thelen, Leutloff-Grandits, and Peleikis 2009, 7), we propose to go beyond a simplistic language of horizontal versus vertical relations.Inspired by studies that document the interconnectedness of social classes in Africa regarding material assistance (James 2015;Kroeker 2018;Neubert 2019), we expand these observations to the case of church congregations, a central pillar of socioeconomic support.By following the church's mechanisms of provision-who decides about assistance, who is likely to receive it, and how it is facilitated-we can articulate fundamental questions related to class, solidarity, and the distribution of wealth within the church.Recognizing the importance that Pentecostal churches have in their members' socioeconomic lives (Freeman 2012b) and their key role in Kenya today, familiarity with welfare dynamics within the microcosmos of the church may help us understand such practices in society more broadly.Such unpacking of a church's effects on its members' socioeconomic well-being is not limited to formal teachings and theologies, but should be attentive to church structures, hierarchies, and other institutional factors, including competition and strategies for retaining members.Above all, we propose that within a highly competitive religious environment, more attention should be paid to the interplay between socioeconomic support and the institutional drive for commitment by members.
Illustrating this point is our emphasis on the central role played by the church committee, whose members come from a disproportionately high socioeconomic status.Following the term brought forth by Naomi Haynes in her work on Pentecostalism in the Zambian Copperbelt, we recognize committee members as supermembers.As Haynes explains, supermembers are a particular subset of Pentecostal laity who are financially prosperous and appear to be particularly devout.She suggests that they receive high visibility, as their very presence bestows honor on the leadership and an aspirational horizon for the congregation: "During Sunday services or prayer meetings they sit at the front of the church, smartly dressed and carrying large Bibles" (2017,137).These prominent figures offer high financial contributions, show commitment and dependability, and thus make up the africaTodAy 69(1 & 2) backbone of the church structure.Though not formal leaders, they tend to occupy key positions in the church.Following these observations, and seeking to avoid the moralizing-and at times apologetic-colors that often paint discussions on Pentecostal church leaders in Kenya and in general, we propose an analytical perspective drawn from institutional structure and de facto practice, cognizant of both the sacrifices that the church's committee members make and the advantages they gain by their gatekeeping role.
This article is built around a study of a small Pentecostal church in the city of Kisumu, western Kenya, which we shall call the Church of Everlasting Glory (CEG). 3Research at CEG was conducted over a period of three months in 2014, during which we engaged in participant-observation at the church's Sunday services and on special occasions and spoke informally with members and leaders inside and outside the church.We conducted five formal, semistructured interviews with church committee members focused on the structure of the church's modes of provision and assistance. 4 While the Pentecostal movement is highly diverse in denominational sizes, missions, ideological leanings, and leadership structures, its "many tongues" (Yong 2010) nonetheless share important characteristics, such as the emphasis on pneumatic Christianity, where God's immediate and miraculous presence is contrasted with the supposed dryness and coldness of historical missionary Christianity (Asamoah-Gyadu 2013).Indeed, as our reliance on Haynes's work in Zambia illustrates, the dynamics of Pentecostal church structure share similarities that traverse national borders, and many of our observations resonate beyond Kenya and across global Pentecostalism's transnational networks (Anderson et al. 2010).Following Gez's (2018) presentation of normative Kenyan Pentecostalism, we regard CEG's teachings and structure as falling well within this category.Our discussion of the church lends itself to generalization-with caveats that we attend to in the conclusion-at least on the national Kenyan level.To support this argument, we set the discussion on CEG within a wider national context and include secondary illustrations from other cases that fell within the purview of our research.This wider research context included fourteen months of accumulated fieldwork focused on religious identities in Nairobi and Kisumu (2011-14) and three months of fieldwork in Kisumu focused on churches' social-support mechanisms in 2017. 5During the latter fieldwork, we focused on Christ Is the Answer Ministries (CITAM), a megachurch, whose Kisumu branch neighbors CEG.By setting the case of CEG within its wider context and comparing it with CITAM, we gesture toward the relevance and limitations of our conclusions beyond the specificity of our case study.

Kenyan Pentecostalism and the Provision of Socioeconomic Support
In Kenya, where between 80 and 85 percent of the people identify themselves as Christian, 6 churches have a long history of involvement in providing africaTodAy 69(1 & 2) material services.In colonial times, religious institutions were at the forefront of provision, especially on matters related to health and education-a role they still maintain, despite the nationalization of many such services (Droz and Maupeu 2013).Often enjoying sponsorship by overseas partners, churches may offer student scholarships, contribute toward hospital bills, or assist in covering funeral costs.In large churches, such activities are coordinated by designated offices.Thus, at CITAM, we find a so-called benevolence office, responsible for supporting members in need.It centralizes much of the church's formal assistance, as it is there that members apply for financial support and counseling with senior pastors.It has a designated budget, and at times of personal hardship, members may book appointments with the kiti (Swahili: chair, colloquially used for the benevolence office presided by the chair of the church) to discuss the source of the problem and make the case for being allocated support.These activities are primarily aimed at (prospective) members, but wealthy and socially conscious churches may combine their support to members with outreach activities.Thus, at St. Andrew's Presbyterian church in Nairobi-a wealthy and historic middleclass church-the welfare office, as it is known, processes requests for assistance from extremely vulnerable individuals among the urban poor and assists them as a charitable activity.As the church's social worker explained to us, "birds of the same feather flock together."As she explained, outside applicants for support from the welfare office would not feel comfortable within St. Andrew's middle-class congregation and are therefore unlikely to seek membership.
Whether directed at members or nonmembers, such support is particularly significant in light of Kenya's high poverty rates and the limitations of its formal social-security apparatus.Kenya's national welfare programs concentrate on two target groups: on the one hand, the extremely poor and vulnerable, and on the other hand, the formally employed taxpayers (Künzler 2016).Left out is most of the population and above all its middle segment, who suffer from underemployment and limited income (Kroeker 2018;Neubert 2019).The un-and underemployed, as well as a large number of small-scale, self-employed citizens, cannot afford the monthly contributions needed for health coverage or pension funds, and, whenever facing an extraordinary economic challenge, they rely instead on solidarity-based models of support to collect funds for out-of-pocket payments for themselves and their families.In doing so, Kenyans tend to rely on two solidarity networks above all else: kinship and religious community.This is illustrated by a questionnaire that we administered among forty-two members at CITAM in Kisumu, in which respondents named either their family network (54 percent) or religious community (37 percent) as their primary source of material assistance, and a total of 91 percent have put these two networks first and above all else.Our questionnaire noted that among the few people who mentioned reliance on support by governmental programs, all have been enjoying stable employment. 7In terms of specifications to the type of life challenge that would provoke such requests for assistance, the questionnaire identified africaTodAy 69(1 & 2) primary preoccupation with the coverage of health and funeral costs, school fees, and support for small investments.
Such material reliance on the church has long been observed, especially in times of political, economic, and social crisis (Jones 2009;Piot 2010).Indeed, while converging with other global trends, the phenomenal rise of the neo-Pentecostal movement in the Global South since the 1980s is commonly explained in terms of response to crises, which in the case of Kenya included structural-adjustment programs and economic recession, an increasingly despotic one-party rule, and an HIV/AIDS pandemic overwhelming an ill-equipped health system (Burchardt 2015;Dilger 2007;Mhando et al. 2018).While religion in general is associated with both otherworldly consolations and concrete impact on sociopolitical action (Bodewes 2014), the neo-Pentecostal movement is particularly notable in fusing the two.Scholars observe that Pentecostals tend to frame the dramas of contemporary socioeconomic changes-with emphasis on economic-in a relevant mythopoetic language, which energizes and induces a capitalist/neoliberal turn, and as such provides "a positive resource for modern economic development" (Berger 2009, 71).The movement's pragmatic messaging offers an "economically advantageous redemption" (Bialecki, Haynes, andRobbins 2008, 1149), in which "salvation became increasingly this-worldly" (R. Marshall 2009, 79).The movement brought about an unapologetic emphasis on material prosperity, known as the prosperity gospel or health-and-wealth gospel, which condones God's material blessing to his true followers.Such teachings, however, are themselves quite varied and are not universally endorsed (Hasu 2012;Heuser 2015).At CEG, for example, one routinely hears that "the prosperity gospel has gone too far" and has been distorted to benefit greedy self-appointed men-and women-of God.
This response to crisis also has a more mundane, personal face.In a city like Kisumu, which attracts many migrants from the countryside seeking employment and a better future, church affiliation can compare to the value of carrying an esteemed family name or graduating from a recognized school, as religious networks-similarly to familial or professional ones-offer "long arms," which can open doors and reach out to assist their members (Birzle 2017, 58).Particularly along the transition from the village to the city, religious identification can become a pronounced marker of identity, which takes over receding family networks (Burchardt 2015;Rohregger 2009).Such role filling is not unexpected, as the idea of the church serving as a surrogate family is a common trope (Bonsu and Belk 2010;Sharma 2012).For marginalized migrants in particular, religious affiliation can help build resilience through the expansion of social networks in an alien environment, empowering members both materially and spiritually in direct and indirect ways (Gooren 2011).Contemporary Kenyan Pentecostalism combines a language of individual empowerment that resonates with the population's entrepreneurial spirit of self-reliance with an emphasis on collective solidarity and social transformation (Waweru 2010).By having in their midst members who hold lucrative and influential positions, churches increase africaTodAy 69(1 & 2) their coreligionists' opportunities to benefit from contacts infused by religious solidarity and-at least in theory-similarly achieve socioeconomic ascension.At the same time, on an institutional level, the advancement of individual members increases the church's influence, wealth, and name recognition.Not without reason, CEG's recently appointed assistant pastor, Henry, explained to us that, "for a church to be strong, you must have members who are also financially strong." 8 It is against the backdrop of religion's centrality in contributing toward material support that we may think about another key tendency within Kenyan Christianity: a propensity for religious mobility.The country's current religious climate is marked by vibrancy and high turnover, especially in urban areas.Since the explosion of the neo-Pentecostal movement in Kenya in the 1980s and the legal liberalization of the religious market in the 1990s, the number of the country's denominations has skyrocketed (Gifford 2009): by 2010, Kenya had about ten thousand registered churches (Gathogo 2011, 2).Quantitative studies, such as the Nairobi Urban Integration Research Project (Bocquier et al. 2009;Wafula 2003), reinforce qualitative findings (Gez 2018;Gez et al. 2021) and agree that urban Kenyans tend to be religiously mobile.Overall, Kenya's religious ethos tends to condone such mobilityat least within certain boundaries or "territories" (Gez and Droz 2019) by emphasizing one's "freedom of worship": a common legalistic formulation used to explain religious dynamism and agency more broadly.Religious institutions, on their part, support such mobility and, save rare and widely criticized instances, keep the church's gates wide open for congregants to join in and-with some reluctance-opt out.The result is a wide range of mobile practices, which may be synchronic-partaking in multiple religious circles around the same time, for social, spiritual, or practical reasons-or diachronic-corresponding to what some scholars have termed "conversion careers" (Gooren 2010;Richardson 1978).
This point lends itself to questioning the motivation behind such mobility.While the Kenyan middle class has, in recent years, been showing remarkable signs of growth (Kroeker, O'Kane, and Scharrer 2018;Ncube, Lufumpa, and Kayizzi-Mugerwa 2011), the Pentecostal movement is largely associated with the urban poor and lower-middle class (Parsitau and Mwaura 2010).Unsurprisingly, therefore, it is along these lines of practical and material aspirations that explanations for Pentecostal participation and mobility are often given.While reasons for religious mobility certainly vary between individuals and circumstances, it has been suggested that precariousness resulting from limited financial resources, such as we find in Kenya's tough urban landscape, fosters a pragmatic outlook on religion, notably through emphasis on healing and success (Deacon 2015).Thus, for example, hyperbolic promises of miracles and financial breakthroughs, highly common within Kenya's Pentecostal circles, would be attractive to listeners; but after a while, once their failure to materialize becomes apparent, such promises "probably [offer] a partial reason for the frequent migration between these Pentecostal churches" (Gifford 2009, 125).Outside of Kenya, many scholars africaTodAy 69(1 & 2) similarly adopt explicative frameworks oriented around practical considerations, be they concrete and specific, regarding healing and financial breakthroughs (Kirsch 2004;Premawardhana 2018;Wijsen 2007), or more abstract, associated with reshaping one's life away from the insecurities associated with poverty (Daswani 2015;N. Haynes 2017;Smilde 2007).Responding to the challenge of high turnover and seeking to avoid dropout, churches try to bind their members through various means: some encourage marriage within the congregation; they may even go as far as alienating their followers from their families and other key networks.Yet another practice aimed at drawing members in involves appealing to their responsibility by integrating them into the leadership circle, thus keeping them from visiting other denominations (Gez and Droz 2017).To these we add the promise of access to members-only benefits and above all the offering of support in an hour of need.As Hansjörg Dilger (2007) notes regarding healing practices, struggling Pentecostals who have been cared for by their church tend to reciprocate and become more committed in turn.

Introducing the Church of Everlasting Glory
CEG resides in an unassuming iron-sheet structure, first inaugurated in 2005 and boasting up to one hundred members.Plastic chairs offer seating for forty to fifty people, but even that number is aspirational, as the hall is seldom full. 9Just across the road, an imposing landmark edifice throws its shadow, hosting a hall with seating for three thousand people, a primary school, and a range of administrative buildings: it is the main Kisumu branch of CITAM, one of Kenya's best-known Pentecostal churches.Hundreds of private cars pass the megachurch's security point, while across the road, the majority of CEG's congregants come on foot.The glaring difference between these churches in part owes to a particular geography: the churches are located on the seam between the affluent Milimani neighborhood and the nearby slums of Nyalenda.Every Sunday morning, CEG's thinly decorated hall is filled with jubilations, with special emphasis on inspirational singing accompanied by the sound of a single synthesizer.The singing is complemented by two sermons, delivered in Swahili or English-or, most commonly, a mixture of both.As the sounds of the singing leave the hall, they intertwine with CITAM's sophisticated musical production from across the road in a discordant medley.
Considering the stark material differences between CEG and CITAM, it is noteworthy that many of CEG's members attended CITAM before joining the humbler alternative.Steve and Robert, lower-class members at CEG, felt both attracted to and intimidated by CITAM.Steve recounted having been on his way to attend CITAM for the first time when God miraculously revealed CEG to him and led him there instead.Robert did attend CITAM but was soon disappointed, feeling it was insufficiently accommodating toward the urban poor (Waweru 2010).Another interviewee, James, africaTodAy 69(1 & 2) accused CITAM's guards of functioning as bouncers, barring people who do not fit the church's target group.It is always difficult to rely on ex post facto descriptions of religious-and other biographical-self-narratives (Stromberg 1993;Wuthnow 2011), but among our interlocutors at CEG who had formerly attended CITAM, a recurring theme was the supposed contrast between the warmth and coziness they felt at their present church and their sense of alienation at CITAM.Grace, for example, arrived at Kisumu from Nairobi in the early 2010s and attended CITAM before discovering CEG.At the megachurch, she "felt lost . . .because, you know, there is nobody you can sit down and talk to after church." 10 She added that because CITAM's congregation was huge, nobody would notice if she had been absent and would check in on her, whereas at CEG, somebody would surely make contact to see that she was well.Indeed, she proposed that a main advantage of CEG was its sense of community, which made her feel supported as well as being "impactful." 11Importantly, comparison of the churches revolved around social and socioeconomic differences, rather than substantive distinctions: actual teachings in both churches are largely comparable, with both sharing a progressive Pentecostal tone (Miller and Yamamori 2007;Waweru 2010).Both churches shun the excesses of the prosperity gospel, both teach an inspirational message of empowerment and hope that considers the wider betterment of society, both revolve around a community rather than the charisma of individual leaders, both accept female leadership, and both keep trance states and miraculous healing in check (Gitau 2018).
CEG, though small, follows a strikingly elaborate institutional structure, echoing that of CITAM and of many other Kenyan Pentecostal churches, small and large. 12As in other Pentecostal churches, CEG's ten or so ministries can be classified under gender/age (women, men, youth), education (Sunday school, discipleship), and service (instruments, praise and worship, ushering), as well as a ministry for intercession and one for church development.Despite this clearcut language, the church's allocation of roles is fairly fluid; to an external observer's eyes, it may appear chaotic (Balswick and Layne 1973).As Grace explained, "what is formal is that we know who is the pastor, but the other roles, you just find people who are shifting."CEG's ministries are subsumed under the church committee, which includes three deans or elders (terms used interchangeably), a pastor (who also serves as treasurer and secretary), an assistant pastor, a representative of the youth ministry, and an interpreter, for whom there is no special department.Overall, the church committee makes up a tightly knit group of about fifteen committed members, including several married couples.This echoes the structure in many small Pentecostal churches, but varies from larger denominations, where most members do not play active leadership roles.
Notably, none of CEG's committee members is paid by the church, and they all dedicate much of their own personal resources-time and money-toward maintaining the church and in particular the ministry that africaTodAy 69(1 & 2) they oversee.For example, James, head of the instruments department, regularly contributes from his own pocket to the maintenance of the church's sound system and instruments.John, the pastor, is an educated man with a graduate degree and a stable administrative employment in one of the city's institutes of higher learning, who performs his church role pro bono.He explicitly shows aversion toward the prosperity gospel and some pastors' excesses-a message that he delivers in a carefully worded, softly spoken tone, and that reinforces the church's friendly and welcoming atmosphere.His dedication to his members manifests itself through common visits to people's homes and hospital beds and through special acts of devotion that have won his congregation's admiration.In one instance, he transported a coffin containing a church member's departed child on the roof of his car all the way to the family's shamba (homestead, farmland), where he then presided over the funeral.Such stories of dedication are touted by CEG's members as proof of the honesty of their commitment, while the church's elaborate structure conveys a sense of latent infrastructure awaiting greater things to come.To quote James, "the church is small, but whatever is going there is bigger." 13 Included in this last statement are many activities organized at the church for its members to show solidarity and mutual empowerment.As the focus of our attention is on material support in times of need, it is enough to briefly illustrate some of these "softer" types of everyday (economically) empowering activities.As in Pentecostal denominations elsewhere in Kenya (Deacon 2012), the church regularly coordinates meetings on business and entrepreneurship, held on Sunday afternoon at the initiative of the Kenyan Congress of Pentecostal Churches.Henry, CEG's assistant pastor, gave the example of a recent talk given by representatives of a local bank, who introduced the congregation to loans for small businesses.He suggested that such talks are particularly appealing to lower-class church members, looking to develop their business acumen beyond a single humble employment, for example as a night guard or a moto-taxi driver.Indeed, the church pays substantial attention to the financial independence of its members.In the harshness of Kisumu's employment market, where, as we were told, looking for a job is a full-time job, the use of church contacts to find employment can be invaluable.The involvement of fellow congregants in one's enterprises makes business sense, we were told, as it allows one to be surrounded by trustworthy coworkers and subordinates.As James explained, involving a fellow church member as a business subordinate means that, "I can send you to an office and pick one million [Kenyan shillings]; that's a lot of money, so I must trust you." Such emphasis on solidarity raises questions concerning the modes of support within the church, especially considering widespread material scarcity.In the next section, we propose a classification of four categories of congregational support before turning to discuss the relations between leaders and lay members that, we propose, are key for understanding the deployment of these categories.

Four Modes of Material Support
At CEG, we identified four modes of assistance to members in need: direct support from fellow congregants, support within a ministry, support by the church committee, and support by the entire assembly.
The first category involves direct interpersonal support among members in a way that makes no mention of a formal church mechanism.Spontaneous generosity is presented in the spirit of Christian love and reflects the core ideal of congregational solidarity.By bypassing institutional mechanisms, such direct interpersonal engagement allows for quick and discreet support.Ideally, the beneficiary may not even make an explicit plea for assistance, as fellow congregants may sense his or her hardships and voluntarily come to aid. Henry explained, "as individuals, because now we have known you, I've known your status, I've known how you live, I know your financial capability, so sometimes it becomes easier to help one another." 14That most of CEG's members live in proximity to each other in the slum of Nyalenda make such ongoing mutual support easy, both inside and outside the church.About eight committed female church members stay in the same part of Nyalenda, where they routinely engage with each other through their small businesses.Grace explained: Most women in our church, they are businesswomen; they do small businesses.One sells fruits, the other has a salon, there is one who has a small shop and sells supplies, so they work closely, and they have a strong network of working together: you bring me customers, [and] I bring you customers.
Grace presented such ties as an indication of equality and mutuality, but they also lay bare internal economic disparities.That she herself-a committee member and a so-called supermember-does not live in the slum and does not participate in this network indicates her somewhat elevated economic status compared to her peers.However, she does make use of the church's informal network of self-help and small-scale business empowerment in other ways: like others in the church, she has her shamba upcountry, whose produce she often sells in the church.Indeed, not long before our interview, she came to church selling bags of mung beans that she herself had cultivated.
The second category of assistance involves support through a particular section of the church, such as home-based cell-group meetings or ministries involving only youth, men, or women.In such circles, joint activities and visits to fellow congregants' homes facilitate intimacies and mutual accountability (Rohregger 2009, 151-52).Located halfway between the institutional and the private, these activities serve as spaces for deepening connections, confessing hardships, and asking for support in a half-discreet environment, which proves effective for recruiting new members (Brusco 2010, 83-84;R. Marshall 2009, 68-71).Meeting weekly for common prayer and Bible study, these meetings may be used to pool money together to meet small expenses for mourning members, visiting bedridden members, or simply discussing jobs and business opportunities.Expectedly, the distinctiveness of this category of assistance is less pronounced at CEG-where everyone knows everyone and there is no real need to divide into cells-than in CITAM.As we observed in our visits to cell-group meetings at CITAM and elsewhere, home fellowships counter the alienation and anonymity of the larger congregation and create intimacies based on geographic proximity and shared class orientation. 15 The third category involves support by the church committee.This category shares similarities with the previous category; however, as the supporting group in this case makes up the church's leadership, this mode of support introduces clearer structural hierarchy.Unlike the earlier categories, where support may be offered spontaneously, assistance by a church committee is normally offered in response to an explicit request from members.Procedure obliges that any request for formal assistance from the church must first pass through the church committee.James explained: Most of the time, we have strong members, committed members in the church.We come and receive them; we discuss those issues, "so-and-so, they have a problem," be it sickness, school fees. . . .So we sit with them, and we discuss with the church committee.If you go to the pastor, the pastor will call the committee members; the committee members will sit down together and discuss.
The fourth category involves the church assembly.Collective action normally takes the form of fundraising events held at the end of the Sunday service.These events, neither the most common nor the preferred form of church assistance at CEG, are known as harambees (fundraising), a term that has a long history within Kenyan social and political culture (Mbithi and Rasmusson 1977).As noted elsewhere regarding family networks, gift giving serves as a social lubricant between donors and benefactors.Through giving, donors are granted recognition, respect, and the right to involve themselves in the lives of others (Kroeker 2018, 288).For better or worse, of all the categories of support that we describe, this option is the least discreet and exposes one's life challenges for all to see.Sums of money collected in such a manner surpass those collected via other categories of support, but they are limited to rare occasions and challenges of extraordinary magnitude, such as a death in the family, although at times they may support joyous occasions, such as members' weddings.Grace explained: The most common problem is funerals.Someone lost their mother, father, brother, sister.We do contribute for them; we do a fundraising for them, and even on the personal level, if you feel like you want to give something extra, then go ahead.Sometimes the pastor even gives his vehicle to ferry people to the funeral.This four-way typology may recall the intuitive distinction between vertical and horizontal church ties.For example, to become Pentecostal in the Copperbelt, "people are drawn into relationships that take two primary forms: vertical ties to church leaders that reflect the overarching paradigm of dependence, and horizontal ties to other believers that, as networks of religious practice, also have the potential to facilitate moving by the Spirit" 16 (N.Haynes 2017, 75-76).When it comes to material provision, we may think of the vertical-horizontal distinction along the lines proposed by Barbara Rohregger ( 2009), in which vertical support relates to formal, unilateral institutional provision, while horizontal support relates to bilateral, interpersonal modes of support.
We have seen that at CEG, it is often hard to draw such a clearcut distinction: the church's small size, the dominance of its supermembers, and the case-by-case policy (or absence thereof) together create fuzziness as to who is acting as a formal agent of the church and who is acting in the capacity of an individual.It is striking that CEG, despite the complexity of its structure, has no designated coffer or ministry aimed at supporting members in need.Reflecting its internal disparities, attempts to create such a joint fund did not materialize because of disagreements concerning the fixed monthly sum that all members were to contribute, with some members considering the proposed sum to be too high and others considering it too low.But even as CEG relies primarily on informal modes of support, it does seek to project an air of top-down institutional outreach to members in need.Rather than emphasizing the vertical-horizontal distinction, we propose that, at CEG, a more revealing focus would be on the dynamics of class and commitment.It is to this dynamic that we now turn.

The Pivotal Role of the Church Committee
In the previous section, we began to see how, at CEG, leaders and supermembers-whom we have subsumed collectively under the church committeeplay different roles from lay members regarding the allocation of funds for assisting members in need. 17The centrality of committee members is observable in categories two to four of material support, and especially in three and four, as it is the committee that decides how to handle formal requests for assistance.This dynamic, with the risk of disaffiliation on the part of lay members, can help us understand the deployment of specific modes of assistance.Being assisted by the church may help bind uncommitted lay members by demonstrating the church's care and commitment toward them, but organizing a formal collection risks repelling those who already feel burdened by an emphasis on economic contributions.James, a leading committee member and supermember, explained, "when we say, 'next week we africaTodAy 69(1 & 2) have fundraising,' we need money to assist somebody's school fees, we hope to do like this-we realized that when they reach that day, other members are not coming-the noncommitted ones."He went on to explain: When we have a problem, there are some [things that] we announce and there are some things we cannot announce.We gauge, you know, there are some things you can say, and you make people go away.Not all problems we announce, not all.But, like sickness, serious sickness, we can announce: "Somebody is sick, and they need this and this, there is money needed, what can we do?"That one we can announce to the whole church because that is a member who has a serious problem.
While a fundraiser would be held in such extraordinary situations, the church would think twice before referring cases to the entire congregation.Indeed, even though the church committee is at liberty to pass a member's problem to the Sunday assembly for a fundraiser, it is careful and mostly reluctant to do so, fearing not only resentment and accusations of favoritism by lay members, but also that such demands may drive out the uncommitted and economically fragile.James explained: Most of the time, what we do, when somebody comes to us and they say, "I want school fees; I have the problem of school fees," there are some members, you know these kind[s] of things you cannot say in front of the church.You know, sometimes, if we say we have a fundraising for someone, there is somebody on the other side who will be in need for school fees too.
We thus see that, in an environment where most of the population experiences material lack, CEG must walk a tightrope-giving members a sense of institutional support while not inviting unrealizable demands that could turn uncommitted members away.CEG often seeks to resolve this challenge by having the church committee absorb the costs of members' assistance.James gave the following illustration: [If] somebody, they don't have a transport to go and see someone who is sick in Nairobi, a relative, go and see a relative in Nairobi, and we announce that in church-we cannot.They need a transport, so we come and sit [in the church committee], we give five hundred, five hundred, and we give you [money for] transport and you go. . . .If somebody is sick, they need two thousand, if [Pastor] John gives five hundred, I give five hundred, Henry gives five hundred: that money is enough.We thus see how the politics of material assistance to members in need passes through evaluations that take into consideration leadership/laymember disparities and weigh the risks of members' flight versus the wish to mete out support and bind lay members toward greater commitment.This highlights an important point, whereby the church committee not only demonstrates greater commitment, but also corresponds to the congregation's financial and educational elite: at CEG, overall, members of the church committee hold more prestigious, middle-class jobs (accountant, teacher, businessperson) compared to lay congregants, who are less well trained and rely on petty jobs, and many of whom are youth.This socioeconomic disparity is illustrated in CEG's car-hire business, based on a network of privately owned vehicles that can be rented out directly from their owners.The business involves six committed members-nearly half the church committee, including the pastor and the assistant pastor and his wife-and no member from outside the committee.
Overlaps among leadership roles, religious commitment, and socioeconomic privileges are not absolute, but they are also not coincidental.We often noticed that better-educated and better-paid individuals tend to gravitate toward church positions.This might be because they see themselves, and are perceived by others, as more skillful or as natural leaders, but they may also be coaxed into such positions to ensure access to their talents and means and to harness them to the church's use.Placing members in a position of institutional responsibility involves a tacit expectation that they will become dedicated to the success of that particular ministry-including by sustaining it through economic contributions.These observations are fully in line with Naomi Haynes's (2017) understanding of the higher-class attribution of supermembers and their elevated institutional status.At the same time, Haynes notes that supermembers' influence as confidants of the pastor and recurring donors can lead to suspicion of favoritism and even to accusations that they are buying their way into religious influence.Along these lines, we must remember that CEG's committee's decisionmaking role may serve not only the interests of the church but also those of individual supermembers.For example, a year before our arrival at the church, two supermembers-one of whom is Henry, the appointed assistant pastor-got married to each other, and the committee organized a harambee and absorbed most of the wedding costs.Indeed, the church not only held the ceremony, but jointly donated money for food, transport, and the wedding party.These contributions, which attracted much pride, supposedly amounted to over KSh 100,000 (nearly €900), covering about three-quarters of the event's costs.The entire congregation was invited to contribute to this cause, as did specially invited harambee guests, but it was announced and facilitated by the church committee.A critical reading may suggest, therefore, that while the church committee may reach out and assist lay members, such support largely touches on minor matters and is offset by the value of retaining control over principal church decisions.Whatever we make of the wedding example, it shows how the church committee enjoys advantages africaTodAy 69(1 & 2) associated with their decision-making role.Whether read in purely institutional and strategic terms or involving implicit personal interests, the church committee's intent on retaining its privileged power of arbitration was clear.
This control, however, may be tested by the issuance of membership cards.In the wake of the burgeoning of the neo-Pentecostal movement, many denominations have been trying to concretize their special relations with their members through the issuance of membership cards, with the hope that this move will enhance congregants' loyalty within an otherwise high-turnover religious landscape.Practically, membership cards serve as a useful reference, especially among job seekers, who may show it as proof of their religious commitment, implying trustworthiness and an upright moral character.In the late 2000s and early 2010s, CEG experimented with issuing membership cards, with the hope of drawing a sharp distinction between irregular visitors and proper members.Not long after the initiative was launched, however, it was called off.In a turn of events reminiscent of other small Pentecostal churches, the about-turn followed a series of awkward standoffs, as irregular churchgoers and even former members treated the card-which had no expiration date-as proof of entitlement to church support.In a conversation, Pastor John shared his concern with incoming requests by such reemerging card carriers, who would unfairly vie against fully committed church members in asking to gain access to the church's limited resources.His worries echo a wider national trend, and today, Kenyans seem likelier to rely on alternative proofs of church affiliation, such as baptism cards, dedication cards, church certificates, and specially written attestations from pastors. 18 We argue that the membership-card episode illustrates the tension between the desires to set fixed guidelines and to retain flexible arbitrational control at the hands of the church committee: The idea of automatic entitlement as implied by the cards is in tension with that of the church committee serving as an entitlement gatekeeper, authorized to adjudicate distribution and modes of assistance according to its own considerations, institutional-strategic or otherwise.Considering the subtleties that go into such deliberations, the concentration of decision-making power in the committee's hands offers flexibility in the form of finer filtering of requests and tailored responses to individual cases.In other words, the retreat from membership cards is a retreat from a latent one-size-fits-all ideal of parity and its replacement by a sober recognition of members' difference in commitment and socioeconomic status, which require church leaders to walk a fine line and employ case-by-case deliberations.At the same time, this regulative role leaves open the prospect for privileged access and favoritism.

Conclusion
In this article, we discussed the provision of assistance in times of need at a Pentecostal church through the lens of leadership/lay-member dynamics.We noted that CEG projects a sense of institutional dependability while shying from overly relying on irregular and little-resourced members in providing for the collective coffer.This, we argue, results in consigning support to informal modes of members' and church groups' assistance and even more so in forcing the CEG's committee members to bear the brunt by personally absorbing much of the costs of assisting members in need.This sacrifice is noteworthy in light of what by now has become a common trope within Kenyan Pentecostalism, whereby leaders are depicted as selfenriching hypocrites, careless about their congregation's socioeconomic sacrifices-a charge supported by the routine uncovering of church scandals (Gez and Droz 2015;Parsitau and Mwaura 2010).By contrast, our findings recognize the personal sacrifice made by the church committee.Indeed, our presentation of a dominant flow of support from committee members to lay members qualifies the common allegation against Pentecostal teachings as laying excessive demands on lay members to sacrifice their often meager resources and surrender them to the Pentecostal pastor (Heuser 2015; Van de Kamp 2011).Without external or overseas support, CEG's leadership contributes greatly from its own resources of time, talent, and money, with the hope of advancing its community and with nobody among them-not even the pastor-being on the church's payroll.
This, however, still does not tell the whole story.Within a highly dynamic religious landscape replete with material scarcity and socioeconomic disparity, the basic obligation for churches to reach out to their members in their hour of need ought to be understood in the context of the church's institutional structure and interests, particularly in the context of fundamental concern with members' commitment.Churches like CEG identify ways for ensuring that their material support will serve as a token of the mutually binding relations oriented toward making an exclusive membership.The church's modes of support provide its leaders with a range of possibilities-we may say a toolkit-for asserting such special bonds with uncommitted members.The gatekeeper role is assumed with great care, on the one hand showing the church's generosity and, on the other hand, making sure not to open the floodgate of demands for assistance by less committed members, as CEG experienced after its introduction of membership cards.Last, and while recognizing the church committee's dedication to institutional interests, we raised the question, "In what ways might such involvement allow committee members privileged access to personal gains?"Considering CEG's orientation within normative Kenyan Pentecostalism (Gez 2018) and the movement's global networks and mutual influences regarding such elements as teachings, style, and modes of operation (Meyer 2010), we believe that our findings are applicable beyond the case of CEG.This assertion is supported by our wider research frame, where we found echoes of similar institutional dynamics.At the same time, recognizing the movement's internal diversity, we should acknowledge that not all Pentecostal churches share the characteristics identified at CEG.For one thing, the high percentage of members' participation in leadership roles that africaTodAy 69(1 & 2) we see at CEG would not be possible within a megachurch like CITAM.CEG's modes of support have much to do with its size, which allows for such a degree of informality while not putting too great a financial strain on the church committee in its provision to members in need.Going beyond the matter of size, we note that CEG's communal spirit allows the church committee substantial latitude.This would probably not be the case in churches with a more centralized structure built around a single leader's charisma.Last, while we embraced the notion of supermembers to express the gravitation of higher-class church members into the church's inner circle, the relations between leadership and class require further research and refinement.aCKNOWLeDGmeNTS This article was written with the help of Project StAR (structures anthropologiques du religieux), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (project no.100013-130340 and 100013-146301), and with the help of the research project "Middle Classes on the Rise," hosted by the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies, with financial support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.It has also been inspired by Project SALMEA (Self-Accomplishment and Local Moralities in Eastern Africa), funded by Swiss National Science Foundation and the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (project no.10001AL_182304 and ANR-18-CE93-0009-01).The authors wish to thank members of Project StAR (Yvan Droz, Jeanne Rey, and Edio Soares), as well as Erdmute Alber, Loreen Maseno, and colleagues from the seminar "Ethnologische Schreibwerkstatt," for commenting on an earlier version of this article.
NOTeS 1.This article was accepted for publication on august 8, 2021.
2. For example, the termination of the short-lived collaboration between the World Bank and faith leaders in the mid-2000s has been explained by, among other reasons, the former's disapproval of many faith-based organizations' preoccupation with missionary activities, with some going so far as conditioning provision on religious participation (J.haynes 2013; K. marshall 2013).
3. We use pseudonyms in reference to CeG and all interviewees.While CeG, strictly speaking, is a branch of a larger denomination, it enjoys substantial executive and financial freedoms and is, according to one of its leaders, "semi-independent." For the sake of simplicity, we refrain from delving into its relations with its wider denomination.

4.
For the sake of simplicity, we describe research activities conducted by either of us as conducted by both.11.This concern with the alienating effect is widely acknowledged by large churches such as CITam, which try to offset it by creating parallel, cozy sites of interpersonal interaction, most notably through a system of zoning and the creation of local cell groups: through weekly home fellowships, such groups serve as small-scale spiritual and material support networks operating on the neighborhood level.
12. The reasons for this structural elaboration in even the smallest of denominations take us beyond the present discussion.One possible explanation emphasizes the Pentecostal expectation of each individual believer to serve as an active ambassador of the faith.another explanation emphasizes setting up institutional infrastructure, whereby the structure echoes the church's conviction of its potential for a breakthrough by successfully setting up multiple branches.Yet another explanation emphasizes the mechanisms of imitation, whereby churches copy each other's structures-a process expedited by denominational fragmentation.Last, it might be suggested that such institutional elaboration might be an attempt to control the manifestation of congregants' pneumonic zeal and leadership ambitions by ensuring a clear division of roles and well-directed outlets.Such struggles are of the hallmarks of the Pentecostal movement, with its admission of lay individuals' access to the gifts of the holy Spirit.
13. Interviewed in Kisumu, June 5, 2014.Kisumu, may 31, 2014.15.In addition to multiple cell groups run by zone leaders, at the time of our research (2017), CITam hosted eleven groups exclusively for women-ten for married women and one for africaTodAy 69(1 & 2) singles and widows-as well as special fellowships for students, married couples, and mothers with small children.

Interviewed in
16.The Pentecostal vertical axis should be seen in light of tension between the subversive potential of the holy Spirit to "blow where it pleases" and the eventual establishment of rigid leadership hierarchies (N.haynes 2017).17.We considered presenting the leadership/lay-members distinction in terms of inner and outer circles.In the corporate world, inner-circle members can be criticized for representing a homogeneous, upper-class elite, tied together through cultural, educational, and social networks-including familial ties-and having an interest in preserving its own privilege by keeping itself distinct from the outer circle (Useem 1984).This distinction has its appeal by drawing attention to variations in internal organizational interests and logic, but we opted against it, as it might conjure up inaccurate images of outer-circle members as being excluded outright.
18. Indeed, the abandonment of membership cards has been noted throughout our fieldwork.
Daniel, secretary of a small Pentecostal denomination in Kibera, Nairobi, recalled how, seven years since issuing membership cards, all but three of the original members have left the church.he concluded, "many churches who had [membership cards] have abandoned it altogether as it wasn't making any difference.I mean, it doesn't prevent their members from [moving from] one church to the other, and it is not legally recognized." Like CeG, Daniel's church has since stopped issuing membership cards.
LENA KROEKER holds a master's degree in historical anthropology, African linguistics, and sociology from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, and a PhD in social anthropology from the Bayreuth International Graduate School of African Studies.She was a visiting professor at the Universität der Bundeswehr München and is currently a research fellow at Bayreuth University, Germany.Her ongoing research project is titled "(In)security of the Kenyan Middle Classes: Social Mobility and the Fear of Falling" (DFG, German Research Foundation funding).The project connects two debates: the current debate about middle classes in Africa and the debate about social protection in the Global South.Her publications include an edited volume titled Middle Classes in Africa: Changing Lives and Conceptual Challenges (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018; with Tabea Scharrer and David O'Kane).(lena.kroeker@uni-bayreuth.de) Between 2011 and 2014, we conducted eighty-seven semistructured interviews focused on individual religious biographies with Kenyan Christians.These interviews, which included lay practitioners and leaders, sought to maximize diversity and minimize the risk of a selection bias while aiming at the center of the bell curve of contemporary urban Kenyan Christianity.Fieldwork involved participant-observations in dozens of church events ranging from Sunday services to Bible-study and prayer groups and outdoor crusades, with special attention to everyday religious performativity.We conducted extended studies of three churches: in addition to CeG, we focused on a lower-class Pentecostal church in Kibera and an upper-middle class Presbyterian church in Nairobi.In 2017, we administered structured questionnaires on personal support networks in two Pentecostal churches in Kisumu; the study included twenty-six members of a smaller Pentecostal church (ICOC) and forty-two members of CITam.6.according to the 2019 Kenyan census, the country's population of 47.6 million consists of 85.5 percent Christians.7.Lesser-tapped networks included friendships, designated financial support groups, professional links, and neighbors.8.Interviewed in Kisumu, may 31, 2014.Interview details are presented only upon each interviewee's first appearance.9. Limited record keeping and high membership turnover make it difficult to gauge the number of church members, and while CeG's Pastor John estimates the church's size as about a hundred, our own assessment suggests a number half that size.During one Sunday service (June 8, 2014), Pastor John announced that they would like to prepare a database of members' contact details so that all could be reached easily.That such a list does not yet exist attests to the ambiguities regarding the identification of membership status.10.Interviewed in Kisumu, June 5, 2014.