Pentecostal Mission Must Not Bless Deceptive Recruitment

A young adult receives an overseas job offer through a friend of a church member. The salary is extraordinary, the departure urgent and the paperwork obscure. Someone asks a pastor to pray over the journey. At that moment, prayer can remain pastoral care—or it can be heard as institutional approval of a recruiter nobody has checked.

Pentecostal communities are built through testimony, trust, hospitality, mobile communication and strong relational networks. These are gifts for mission. They can also be exploited by people who attach a fraudulent opportunity to a respected name, a Christian vocabulary or a public prayer. A church does not need to become an immigration agency to recognise this risk. It needs the humility to say that spiritual confidence cannot verify an employer, contract, visa, fee or destination.

Pentecostal mission must never bless deceptive recruitment. It should form believers who test claims, protect confidential information, use lawful reporting and referral pathways, resist coercion, and accompany survivors as persons with agency rather than objects of rescue or dramatic testimony.

On 18 October 2026, The Star reported figures attributed to the United States Department of State's 2026 Trafficking in Persons assessment. It said Kenyan authorities identified 271 trafficking victims in 2025, compared with 195 in 2024, as well as 1,021 potential victims. Of the confirmed cases, 260 involved forced labour and 11 sexual exploitation. The…