Aila remained faithful to Jesus and several years later, God spoke to him through a vision of cabbages growing in the desert. The cabbages represented people: Aila’s family, his tribe, and the neighboring tribes. Aila began a journey that eventually took him back to his people and the deserts of Northern Kenya.

Watch a video of Dr. Aila’s story.

In the early 1990’s, as Aila was training some young disciples on the border of Kenya and Ethiopia, one of them stood up and said, “I can’t stay in this class any longer. I must go to the people who have not heard the gospel.” This led to a season of prayer and formation of teams who left and went to unreached tribes nearby. This was how Lifeway began.

Training is central to disciple making and soon after Dr. Aila was invited to lead training events in other parts of Kenya. God raised up men and women as disciple-making leaders. By God’s grace Lifeway began to see disciple making movements emerge in neighboring countries. Most of these movements were catalyzed by leaders Dr. Aila trained and mentored. Eventually, Dr. Aila was asked to train leaders in other parts of Africa, then beyond the African continent. Dr. Aila is considered a pioneer and leader among the global networks of disciple making movements.

In 2022, Dr. Aila entrusted leadership of Lifeway Kenya to John Dibah so he could focus more fully on the broader reach of Lifeway Global. In this role, Dr. Aila continues to help catalyze emerging networks of Disciple Making Movements.

Lifeway Global is working to engage new unreached people groups, equip leaders, and catalyze disciple making movements and networks. Dr. Aila’s visionary leadership includes collaboration with ministries and leaders who have a passion to reach the unreached. Lifeway is growing a network of movements who are organizationally independent of one another, but choosing to partner for Kingdom growth.

Dr. Aila wants to see, “… the DNA of Disciple Making Movements multiply to the ends of the earth as God raises up new movement leaders and teams to catalyze more movements.”