Our History
Over the decades that this ministry has been active in East Africa, we have been called by several different names. Our current name, Kahawa Media, is only the most recent. Looking back at the different names that we’ve had, we can clearly see how God has blessed us at each stage, and how He has expanded our vision and increased the reach of the ministry.
Sig and Joy Feser
The story of what the ministry has been called begins with our founders, who were simply called Sig and Joy Feser. They answered the call of God to missions and moved to Zaire in 1986. There they learned about a deep need for training amongst the local pastors they met. Of the 3000 pastors they were working with in Zaire, less than a dozen had any formal training. They intended to train church leaders there for many years, but instead were kicked out of the country after only 8 months.
They landed in Kenya, confused, and still determined to help meet the needs of the pastors they had left behind in Zaire. There was then no way to provide training in person, so Sig set out to produce a 16-page guide for those pastors, giving them simple topical references for various things they might want to preach about. From the seed of this little concordance, God would produce an amazing amount of fruit.
Emmanuel Tract Fellowship
After a few months in Kenya, the Fesers accepted an invitation to move to Tanzania. There they were privileged to take the reigns of Emmanuel Tract Fellowship, using the written word and the postal system to disciple young people across Tanzania.
It was there that they encountered World MAP, who had heard about the little concordance Sig was working on and who asked him to extend the scope of it so that it could be put into Ralph Mahoney’s excellent 1,000-page minister’s manual, The Shepherd’s Staff. The concordance grew to more than 100 pages.
The partnership with World MAP flourished. Emmanuel Tract Fellowship translated The Shepherd’s Staff into Swahili and began distributing it free of charge to thousands of pastors across East Africa. We have been in continuous partnership with World MAP since 1989, first doing the concordance and leadership seminars, then translation and distribution of their books and ACTS magazines. We have sent over 50 issues of ACTS magazine in Swahili to 70,000 leaders. These days, we supply books in Swahili, English, French, and Portuguese to more than a dozen countries in Africa.
Pamoja Ministries
Our ministry was very successful in distributing the written word in the form of books, magazines and tracts, and so we asked, “What other forms of media could be successful tools for ministry?” It quickly became obvious that music, film, cartoons and animations could also be created and targeted towards the groups that were more comfortable with those forms of expression. We began with a short cartoon called Yoeli which deals with overcoming fear. Its success inspired us to create a full-length musical film, Nipe Jibu.
Both Yoeli and Nipe Jibu were (and still are) successful ministry tools. With these tools in hand, and inspiration to create many more, it was obvious that we had grown past the name Emmanuel Tract Fellowship. Since all of our success had come in partnership with other ministries, both local and international, we chose the name Pamoja (Together) Ministries to better reflect who we had become. We changed our name, and adopted the slogan, Discipling Cultures Though Media.
Over the years, Sig and Joy continued to create and distribute Christian media. Beginning in 2010, they passed the leadership of Pamoja Ministries on to their son, Jeremy, who led the organization to create many more products, and to translate existing resources into Swahili in partnership with organizations such as Go To Nations, and MissioGlobal.
Pamoja Ministries continues to Disciple Cultures Through Media from its offices in Arusha, Tanzania. We are proud to partner with them, and to continue to distribute Christian media products across Tanzania with them.
Kahawa Media
The name Kahawa Media came about almost accidentally in 2010. As a Pamoja Ministries missionary, Jacob Mills was given the task of distributing our music videos, books and films in the coastal regions of Tanzania. On a trip to the capital, Dar-es-Salaam, he encountered nothing but roadblocks at the bookstores and music shops he entered. The store manager was never available.
After returning to Arusha, we realized that there was a problem with Jacob’s business card. When the employees of the various shops took Jacob’s business card to their managers to enquire about a meeting, the managers saw the words, ‘Discipleship', and ‘Reverend’, and quickly concluded that Jacob was seeking to put Christian material into their stores. We realized that in a Muslim-owned business, this was never going to be met with favor.
As we sat drinking coffee, surrounded by coffee plants, we got the idea of doing business as Kahawa (Coffee) Media. We made new business cards introducing Mr. (NOT Rev!) Jacob as the Director of Sales and Marketing for Kahawa Media. Suddenly, the managers were available to meet, and they accepted the Christian material because of its high quality. It is amazing the difference a name can make!
Since that time, we’ve published all of our media under the name Kahawa Media, and have had success distributing it everywhere – even in places like Zanzibar which are overwhelmingly Islamic.
In 2017, God began to lay on our hearts the need to expand the ministry into Kenya. After an intensive time of prayer, we decided to register a branch of Pamoja Ministries in Kenya. As it turned out, the word ‘Pamoja’ had been used many, many times already in Kenya, and we were unable to use it for ourselves. Once again, Kahawa Media came to the rescue. We found that the name was available for us to use, and received our registration in early 2020.
