Pastors don’t look like pastors anymore. Sometimes they also often engage in unrecognisable, unpastoral, things. [To mean, fun things].
Take Senior Pastor Nick Korir of Nairobi Chapel, for instance. A few days from today he will swing his legs over his Yamaha XT 600, half bike-half beast, with a band of his like-minded brothers, off to an ambitious journey around the coastline of Africa.
They intend to reach the four extreme points of the continent; Al-Ghīrān Point, Tunisia, to the north. Cape Agulhas, South Africa, to the south. Xaafuun (Hafun) Point, near Cape Gwardafuy (Guardafui), Somalia to the east, and Almadi Point (Pointe des Almadies), on Cape Verde (Cap Vert), Senegal to the west.
That’s 40,000 kilometres if anyone is counting. Most will be spent under helmets riding during the day and finding somewhere to rest their heads after sunset.
As an ardent motorcycle rider (he’s the founding chair of Motorcycle Kenya), his objective is to raise funds for scholarships for needy students in high schools and universities in Kenya through Nairobi Chapel’s LOGOS Scholarship Fund.
His two passions—youth and biking—have found a tangent. “One of the biggest frustrations I have had as a pastor,” he says, “is meeting the spiritual needs of a young person and leaving them in a state of poverty, of hopelessness.”
When did God put you on this path of service and how did He come to you?
[Chuckles] Interesting. I was working for ADRA [Adventist Development and Relief Agency] in South Sudan during its civil war. I was in the renewable energy industry at that time, doing irrigation systems for an institution run by the Adventist Church.
I noticed that children affected by war were not attending school, so I volunteered to teach them -Geography, Maths, English, the works- after I had punched out at work.
I found it so rewarding that when I spoke to my girlfriend - now wife- back in Nairobi on the phone she’d say, “You know, you are most animated and excited when you talk about these children, not about your work. I said, that’s true. I truly found it more fulfilling than irrigation. So I prayed about it and once when I was praying God told me, 'I brought you to Sudan to fall in love with the youth of Africa...'
Wait, hold on. I'm fascinated when people say God told them something because God never tells me anything. How did He tell you about the youth of Africa? Did you hear a deep, grave voice?
[Laughs] God speaks to us a lot but we are not always listening. We just need to quieten ourselves and listen. I call it a conscious voice. When He told me this, I immediately knew this was what God wanted me to do.
So I resigned my job three months later and came to my church and said, I want to be a youth pastor. The church didn’t have one, so I volunteered for a year as I tried to figure out what this was before I was absorbed permanently. In the meantime, I opened a barber shop in Kericho to support myself as I did my ministry work. I'd cut hair up to about 2 pm then go to church until evening.
I focused on the youth who had just finished high school. The pool table had just hit many towns so I’d go to where it was and meet and shoot pool with them while talking about issues.
What do you remember most about that period in time?
It was a confusing period. I’m a firstborn - I have a twin sister - with three younger sisters. In many of our cultures, the firstborn, when he's finished university, is expected to support everybody else. But here I was.
I had just resigned from a decent job because of some impression, some conscience thing. My parents were confused. My dad especially couldn’t understand why his only son would quit his job to minister.
You could see the disappointment on his face. I have never felt that shameful in my life. I felt like a loser. A year later, I joined Nairobi International School of Theology to study theology. So, that's where my journey began.
Did something happen in your childhood that indicated, even remotely, that you would end up as a pastor?
Definitely. My mother told me of a dream she once had. In the dream, she had was playing a big drum and I was following her with a smaller drum.
She didn't understand the meaning of the dream until I told her I wanted to get into ministry. She said God made it clear to her that the big drum was that she would be leading adults to heaven. The small drum was my ministry to lead the youth to heaven.
She is very spiritual and has been serving God all her life. Growing up, she always kept us close to church and emphasised faith. But before I discovered my path with God, I got into everything that a young person would want to do between high school and the beginning of campus before I rededicated my life to Jesus Christ just before joining university. That was a critical point in my life.
How’s your relationship with your dad?
To answer that I have to tell you how I married my wife because it impacted my relationship with my dad. My wife is Kikuyu and I’m Kalenjin. We had to postpone our first wedding date (December 15, 2001) because my dad was completely against me marrying her.
This was during the tribal clashes period, so the political climate in the country was quite hostile. We had dated for five years by then but we decided to give him more time, maybe he would soften his stance.
As time passed I reflected on the the story of the children of Israel crossing the Jordan River into the land of promise. Two years after our first wedding date, I told my fiance, ‘this is the year we're getting married’. I then told my dad, ‘I'm now ready to get married.’ He asked me “to who?” because he assumed I’d met someone else. I told him it was the same person. He said; “No, not if it’s her”.
The hostilities began again. But this time I was certain that God wanted me to go ahead and so we had our wedding on November 29, 2003. Neither my dad nor my mom came, not even my relatives.
Only my sisters came in defiance because they said, ‘This is our only brother and he's getting married and so we're going to be there.’
I remember the night before my wedding I called all my friends, and told them, ‘Guys, if you're my friend, please show up because I don’t want the seating area on the groom's side to be empty.’ [Laughs]. And they came, saving my face.
Must have been tough getting married without your parents there.
It was. We held the ceremony at Kenya High grounds, and I kept looking at the entrance hoping to see a bus full of my parents and relatives pull in just in time because remember, God had told me that that was the year to cross the Jordan. But no bus came.
Pastor Nick Korir poses for a photo during an interview at the Galleria shopping mall in Nairobi on January 16, 2025.
Photo credit: Wilfred Nyangaresi | Nation Media Group
The week after the wedding, after we returned from our honeymoon, I called my dad and told him, “Dad, can I visit home?” And he said, “Yeah, you can but you can’t come with that lady.” I told him we were now one and if I couldn’t come with her then I won’t come at all. “Don’t come, then.” He added, “And I wish not to talk to you anymore.” We didn’t talk for about eight months.
Then out of the blue, he called me in August 2004. I was wary and confused. He was casual, even cracking jokes. He then asked if my wife was nearby, he wanted to speak to her. It was even more confusing.
I handed her the phone and as they spoke I went down on my knees and started crying. He invited us home and when we finally visited he organised a wedding reception for us.
It was confusing because like other Kalenjin men, my dad doesn't change his minds easily. I asked him who convinced him and he said, “God changed my heart.” Yeah, so we've been in a process of healing where my relationship with him is concerned.
I didn't know how much bitterness I had until I wrote him a letter five years after our wedding to ask for his forgiveness and to tell him that I had forgiven him.
What are your struggles as a pastor?
I have many. I struggle with what the church is today; how the church began and what it is right now are worlds apart. There is an authenticity of faith that allowed the church to endure persecutions like no other, a measure of sacrifice. And I'm not pointing fingers at the church; I'm pointing fingers at myself.
If I were in the first-century church, would I have endured my flesh being stripped out piece by piece and me not rejecting Jesus? Would I have endured my feet being tied with a rope and my head being brought into boiling oil? Would I have denied Christ? I struggle with the content of my faith, with the measure of my commitment.
I struggle with the fact that I'm serving God from a place of convenience. Each time I go out of the city and meet a pastor who is serving in the harshest conditions, it hits me hard that there's so much more I need to be and so much greater I need to cover in terms of my faith.
They say when you ask God for something, He says yes, no, or wait. What have you asked God and He said a firm no?
My wife and I have been married for 21 years. We asked God for biological children, but we were not able to get them. I struggled with His no for a long time.
I pray for many couples seeking children, couples who have waited 10+ years to get children. For 20 years, every month I have dedicated children and it was one of the toughest ceremonies to conduct when I was still waiting for my child from God.
But I got to the place where I realised it's not for me to determine, He is the giver. I am a gift already and He's the one who decides who gets which gift.
We stayed for 14 years before we adopted our two lovely sons; identical twins. They're eight years old now. My wife told me that sometimes God allows children to be conceived in your womb, but sometimes God allows children to be conceived in your heart.
How did you discover biking?
My dad used to be a field officer in the tea plantations in Kericho. He’d go about his official duty on his bike and in typical teenage fashion I’d try out the bike when he was away.
When I got a bike while in university and started dating my wife, she told me,“ You, me and this bike cannot exist in the same relationship”. So I got rid of the bike and for the seven years we were dating and the first five years of our marriage I never rode a bike.
On our fifth wedding anniversary dinner, my wife gave me a card and inside was a note written: I have bought you the bike of your dreams.
She had saved money to buy me the Yamaha XT Tenere 600. It's the first bike that crossed the Sahara Desert when during the Paris Dakar Rally. I had the desire to conquer new territories and so that's how the concept of this trip came about.