The Apostle Who Never Preached

Over the years, I have had the privilege of meeting and spending time with several men of God.

Some were gifted preachers.

Others were remarkable teachers.

A few could quote Scripture with such ease that I occasionally wondered whether they slept with the Bible open under their pillows.

But none of them surprised me quite like one Apostle Charles from Kakamega.

It was towards the end of 2019 when my friend Joe called me.

"My uncle is coming to the United States," he said. "Would you mind hosting him and his wife for about a week?"

I agreed without much thought.

After all, how difficult could a week be?

Then Joe casually added one more detail.

"He is an Apostle."

The moment I heard that title, my imagination immediately got to work.

I mentally prepared myself for seven days of uninterrupted spirituality.

I imagined waking up at five in the morning to the sound of passionate prayers echoing through the house.

Breakfast, I assumed, would begin with a devotional.

Lunch would probably include a sermon from the Book of Numbers.

Dinner would naturally end with worship songs and perhaps an altar call before dessert.

I even wondered whether my television would be declared too worldly before the week was over.

By the time they arrived at my home in Olathe, Kansas, I had already convinced myself that my social life was about to take a compulsory sabbatical.

How wonderfully wrong I was.

The Apostle and his wife settled in so naturally that within hours they felt less like guests and more like family.

Yes, we talked about faith.

But surprisingly, we spent far more time talking about life.

We talked about raising children.

Marriage.

Leadership.

Business.

Money.

Failure.

Farming.

People.

Character.

The importance of keeping your word.

The value of listening before speaking.

And the curious ways life teaches lessons when we are paying attention.

Some evenings we laughed until our stomachs hurt.

Other conversations stretched late into the night, wandering from one topic to another without either of us noticing the time.

I kept waiting for the marathon prayer sessions I had imagined.

They never came.

Instead, I discovered something unexpected.

The Apostle rarely preached.

He simply lived what he believed.

Looking back, I think that affected me more than any sermon could have.

It made me wonder whether faith was ever meant to stay inside church walls.

Perhaps faith reveals itself less in how loudly we pray and more in how patiently we listen.

Less in the verses we can quote and more in the promises we keep.

Less in what we say on Sunday and more in how we treat people on Monday.

Somewhere during that week, I also realized that I had carried my own quiet prejudice.

I had reduced an entire human being to a title.

I had assumed I already knew what an Apostle would be like before I had even met him.

Life has a habit of humbling assumptions.

The older I become, the more I find that some of the wisest people I have met are not trying to impress anyone with how much they know.

They simply leave you thinking more deeply after every conversation.

When the week came to an end and they returned home, I realized I had learned far more about life than I had about religion.

Then again, perhaps those things were never meant to be separated.

Perhaps faith is simply life lived well.

Perhaps religion, at its best, is meant to shape character rather than merely fill calendars with meetings.

And perhaps the most powerful sermons are the ones that never sound like sermons at all.

I had prepared myself for a week of preaching.

Instead, I received a week of perspective.

Sometimes the greatest teachers are the ones who never make you feel like you're in a classroom.