The deliverance church as we know it today is synonymous with Bishop Mark Kariuki. The Nakuru born bishop has been the Deliverance Church overseer since the year 2009 when be took over from Bishop William Tuimising.
Before taking over as the General Overseer, Bishop Mark Kariuki was the Chairman of the Deliverance Church Council (DCC). The DCC is a governing council formed during the Deliverance Church National Pastors’ Conference at St. Mary’s Pastoral Centre, Nakuru. This was in 1991, the same year that the Deliverance Church, Nakuru bought their current piece of land in Freehold.
Bishop Mark Kubai Kariuki was a teacher before he resigned to found the Nakuru’s Deliverance church. Born in Elburgon, he attended Michinda Primary and Koelel High School before proceeding to Asumbi Teachers Training college. It was in Asumbi that he got saved and got baptized in 1973.
In Mombasa where he was initially posted as a teacher, Mark met and married Joyce Wangui in 1978. The wedding was held at the Kenya Polytechnic and the couple was in the ensuing years blessed with three children.
In 1979, Mark and his family moved back to Nakuru. Initially, they used to worship at the Assemblies of God Church (AGC) under Pastor Harun Lihanda.
In 1983, Mark Kariuki resigned from his teaching post. He was by then a Deputy Headteacher at Kenyatta Primary school. In October the same year, he started Nakuru’s Deliverance Church. Initially, he had only six people in his congregation and they used to worship at the Old Town Hall.
As everyone who knows him will tell you, Pastor Mark is a charismatic, self-driven preacher. His church grew in leaps and bounds. At some point, the Deliverance Church Nakuru was recognised as the fastest-growing church in Kenya.
Pastor Kariuki was and still is a vehement preacher. Doing crusades and visiting secondary schools and colleges in Nakuru, he won many followers to his church. In 1987 after the Reinhard Bonke crusade in Nakuru, the membership almost doubled and he was forced to have three Sunday services.
In 1991, the church acquired its own piece of land in Freehold adjacent to the AGC church where he used to worship. By then, the church had a membership of over 2000.
Pastor Mark was also responsible for the growth of the Deliverance Church in most of central Rift Valley. All of this can be attributed to his leadership qualities.
Pastor Mark is the Chairman of the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya (EAK) and is quite outspoken in current affairs affecting the country.
In May 2013, Mark married his second wife in a grand wedding held at Kasarani. His first wife had died in November 2007 and six years later, he married his second wife Joyce Wacera. Theirs was the last wedding featured in Samantha’s Bridal Show. It had an attendance of over 6000 and lasted seven hours. They honeymooned in Tanzania.
