Kenyan Morning Prayer and Leaving Kabare: Kings Family CMS Link Letter 17, Sept 1991
by Graham Kings
Date added: 29/01/2026
Jesus, the Seed of Abraham,
blesses the nations;
Jesus, the Prophet like Moses,
frees the oppressed;
Jesus, the Lord of King David,
leads his people;
Jesus, the Servant of the Lord,
suffers and saves;
Jesus, the Son of Man,
destroyed and raised.
This is one of the canticles in the new Kenyan Service of Morning Prayer. Three new canticles in Morning and Evening Prayer are settings of Jesus’ Aramaic poetry – why are there no words of Jesus in the Prayer Book or ASB canticles? These are The Song of Blessings (Matthew 5:3-10), The Song of Jesus (Luke 6:27, Matthew 25:35-36, Luke 7:22-23) and The Song of the Kingdom (Matthew 6:25-33). Two new canticles use Paul’s Greek poetry in Philippians 2:5-11 and in Colossians 1:5-18 but in the second person singular, addressed to Christ ie ‘You are the image of the invisible God…’. Some of the traditional canticles are also included.
A new booklet just published, the fruit of the conference here in April, contains five new liturgies: Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, Baptism, Admission to Holy Communion, and Confirmation and Commissioning. The first three are authorized for experimental use but the last two are for study only at this point.
Bishop Gitari attended the Fourth International Anglican Consultation on Liturgy in early August in Canada and it was decided that he should chair an All-African Anglican Consultation on Liturgy next April in Kenya (guess where?). There will also be a Kenyan Ecumenical Theological Conference here in December, so Dr Ben Knighton, my successor, will be kept busy.
Graduation Day will be on 12 October, and the Guest of Honour will be Sir Roger Tomkys, the British High Commissioner in Kenya. The students have written an Africanized passion play (the last week of Jesus’ life, with echoes of current Kenyan political life) and part of that will be performed then. The new library building should be nearly completed by then and he will open the new archive centre upstairs, for which the High Commission have funded some equipment. A recent valuable addition has been 28 taped interviews with older Kikuyu Christians, who remember the Gospel first coming to this area. Rev John Karanja conducted the interviews as part of his Cambridge PhD research. One of the elders interviewed died in July.
The new library will be in use after Christmas, but the official opening will be in July, when the Bishop of Chelmsford returns to visit the diocese.
We leave Kabare on 24 October and have a week’s holiday at Mombasa before flying on 2 November. We will spend November at the home of Alison’s parents:
48 Temple Fortune Lane, London NW11 7UE, before moving to Cambridge in December:
York House, 43 Belvoir Road, Cambridge CB4 1JJ.
From January to July, we will be in Cambridge, then we go to the USA for the rest of 1992. Not bad, a sabbatical after two terms! Long before I had been offered my new job, I had been invited to lecture, research and be in residence with the family, at the Overseas Ministries Study Center, New Haven, opposite Yale, from September to December. This is an ecumenical centre for mission and publishes the International Bulletin of Missionary Research.
What about schools? Rosalind and Miriam have done very well at Turi school (First Prize and Progress Prize in class respectively) and in Cambridge they will attend Milton Road Primary School from January onwards – apart from sampling American education in the final term of 1992.
In July, Alison had four days in the remote semi-arid area of Isiolo, staying in the bush with a Somali nursery teacher, who had recently become a Christian.
We will be very sad to leave Kabare for we have immensely enjoyed our home and ministry here since 1985 and have made very deep friendships. We have come to know God in new ways. We also are excited about seeing our families and friends again and feel Bishop Gitari will be sending us back to be missionaries in our own country, having been trained in Kenya! Thank you very much for your prayers for us and for the Institute. We look forward to visiting our link churches in the first half of 1992.
