Emily Choge

When she was just five years old, Emily Choge probably didn’t realize that the life-changing experiences she had were setting in motion God’s plans for her. Emily was born with one leg shorter than the other, and at age five she was sent from her home and her family in Kenya —as she could not endure the long walks to the school—to a boarding school. She stayed in boarding schools for most of her young academic life, all the while facing more physical challenges, resulting in a leg amputation at age 14. But Emily never lost her lifelong calling to be an educator. And it was this displacement from her home at an early age that led Emily to focus her studies on the spiritual lives of refugees in Africa.

John Stott Ministries was blessed to support Emily and her passion. She became a scholar when John Stott visited the Nairobi Evangelical Graduate School of Theology (NEGST), where Emily was studying and teaching. He was impressed when he heard Emily wanted to study ethics under Lewis Smedes at Fuller Seminary in California and personally gave her a Langham Scholar application. It began what was to become a strong Langham Scholar program at Fuller, with several scholarship recipients now studying there annually. After her Ph.D., Emily returned to Kenya to teach and write at three different seminaries.

Emily is also noted as one of the contributors to the recently released Africa Bible Commentary, the ever-important resource for African pastors that supports them with sound, culturally relevant biblical teachings in their own language. She notes how hospitality—an important concept in African culture can be abused by hosts who either choose not to reach out to others, or by guests who take advantage of their hosts’ generosity. And she also recognizes the importance of hospitality to refugees:

“One option is to practice communal hospitality, so that the burden is shared within the body of Christ rather than being carried by one individual. To help our brothers and sisters who have been displaced by war, we need to encourage our governments to adopt just and human refugee policies. Most of all, we need to pray that our hearts will not be hardened by the abundance of needs around us so that we turn a deaf ear to the needy brother or sister on our doorstep. Remember Jesus’ words: ‘I was a stranger and you invited me in (Matthew 25:35).” (Africa Bible Commentary, p. 390)

Her commentary on the African concepts of hospitality reveals the strong calling for Africans—and perhaps for Christians worldwide— to reach out to the displaced and despondent.

Emily continues her passion for teaching, carrying a demanding schedule at three seminaries. She is a full-time faculty member at Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya. She also teaches a group of pastors in Eldoret via a part-time appointment at NEGST. And Emily teaches a distance-learning course in St. Paul’s United Theological Seminary, on community care for people living with HIV and AIDS. She also continues to work with the uprooted, keeping contact with refugees in Kakuma, and plans to integrate her work with them by involving students from Moi who are members of the Refugee Welfare Club.

On top of her passion for teaching, Emily invest in the future of African education by supporting the school fees for as many as 10 of her nieces and nephews.

As a teacher, writer, lecturer, scholar, and aunt, Emily Choge is proving to be one of God’s true disciples, particularly in the campaign to reach out to uprooted people of Africa and teach them about the one home they never have to leave—their home with God.

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