The Parish Investment Committee (PIC) at PCEA Lang’ata was formed to look for ways and means of generating income to help the church meet its financial needs. Its recorded achievements include helping purchase the Parish manse in Ngei 1, buying land in Isinya for resale to members, purchasing three flats in Lang’ata out of its income and proceeds, and contributing toward building a session board room — practical, patient stewardship carried out over years, not overnight.
Most people picture church ministry as what happens on a Sunday morning. Fewer picture a committee quietly reviewing property purchases, rental income, and long-term capital projects so that the ministry happening on Sunday morning has a building, a manse, and a budget to stand on. That is the work of the Parish Investment Committee (PIC) at PCEA Lang’ata Parish — one of the least visible, most consequential ministries a congregation can run.
Why a Church Needs an Investment Committee
The PIC’s own stated purpose is disarmingly plain: it exists to look for ways and means of generating income to help the church meet its financial needs. Congregations run on more than offerings collected on a Sunday — they need funds for buildings, maintenance, staff housing, and the countless ordinary costs of sustaining ministry over decades, not just this quarter. Rather than leaving that entirely to chance or to periodic fundraising drives, Lang’ata Parish set up a dedicated committee to plan for it deliberately.
What the Committee Has Actually Built
The PIC’s record of concrete achievements reads like a modest but real property portfolio, assembled patiently over time:
- Participated in the purchase of the Parish manse in Ngei 1 — securing housing for parish clergy, a recurring practical need for any congregation with a resident minister.
- Bought land in Isinya for sale to members — turning land acquisition into an opportunity for members themselves to benefit, not only the parish institution.
- Purchased three flats in Lang’ata, funded out of the committee’s own income and proceeds rather than new fundraising — a sign the earlier investments were already generating returns that could be reinvested.
- Contributed toward building a session board room, among other ongoing developments — infrastructure that supports the parish’s own governance, echoing the Kirk Session structure described in our piece on what it means to be a Presbyterian church.
Read together, these aren’t isolated purchases — they trace a pattern of a committee that reinvests its returns to fund its next project, a discipline familiar to anyone who has managed a household budget, applied at the scale of an entire parish.
A Ministry Alongside a Ministry
The PIC’s work sits alongside another Lang’ata committee doing something similar on a smaller scale: the Board of Social Responsibility, which produced its own songbook as an income-generating project to fund its charitable work. Different committees, same underlying instinct — that a congregation’s practical needs and its charitable ambitions both deserve organized, sustained financial planning, not just goodwill.
What the Bible Says About Building and Providing
Scripture has surprisingly detailed things to say about organized, communal provision for the house of God. When David prepared for the Temple his son Solomon would build, he didn’t simply pray for it — he organized enormous material and financial contributions, and invited the whole assembly of Israel to give willingly alongside him (1 Chronicles 29:1-9). Nehemiah’s rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls likewise depended on practical organization as much as prayer — assigning sections of wall to specific families and groups so the work could actually get done (Nehemiah 3).
The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) is often read purely as a lesson about personal faithfulness, but its core image is unmistakably financial: a servant who is praised specifically for putting entrusted money to work and multiplying it, not merely preserving it untouched. A parish investment committee, at its best, is that parable applied at institutional scale — taking what has been entrusted to the church and stewarding it so that it can do more tomorrow than it can today.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Parish Investment Committee at PCEA Lang’ata?
It is a committee formed to look for ways and means of generating income to help the church meet its financial needs, functioning alongside the parish’s governance structures rather than replacing them.
What has the committee achieved?
Its recorded achievements include helping purchase the Parish manse in Ngei 1, buying land in Isinya for sale to members, purchasing three flats in Lang’ata out of its own income and proceeds, and contributing toward building a session board room.
How is this different from the SACCO?
The SACCO is a member savings-and-credit cooperative focused on personal loans for members’ individual needs; the Parish Investment Committee focuses on generating income and building assets for the institutional needs of the parish itself. Read more in our SACCO article.
Final Thoughts
A manse, some land, three flats, and a board room don’t sound like the stuff of a stirring sermon. But behind each of those line items is a congregation that decided its long-term financial health was worth organizing for deliberately — a form of faithfulness that rarely gets a headline, but that quietly makes every other ministry in the parish possible.
Want to Know How Your Parish Plans for the Future?
Every parish organizes its own committees and priorities. Reach out and we’ll point you in the right direction.
Historical details in this article are drawn from PCEA Lang’ata Parish’s own published ministry records. Compiled by the Editorial Desk.