More than three Seventh-Day Adventist churches in South Mugirango and Bomachoge in Kisii County were locked up by the authorities leaving congregants to pray in their homes.
The churches were locked following the ongoing standoff between the church leadership and the controversial Nairobi Cosmopolitan Conference (NCC).
Moreover, on Saturday, October 22, one person was injured as two camps clashed in the church over the matter.
Members of Nyamonyo Seventh Day Advent church stated that for two weeks now, they had been forced to hold services in the open after police closed their church.
Additionally, at the center of the disagreement is the bitterness which had been brewing up between the SDA church leadership and those of the Nairobi Cosmolitan Conference. NCC is not recognized in the hierarchy of the SDA church leadership.
Furthermore, the General Conference, the global church headquarters, has already taken the entity to court even as they advised the faithful to give it a wide berth.
In Kisii County, especially in South Mugirango and Bomachoge, renegade church elders told journalists that their decision to abandon South East Kenya Field was due to failure by the leaders to address their grievances.
Likewise, one of the lead church elders at Nyamonyo SDA Benard Migiro, narrated how some senior police officers paid them a visit last Sabbath during the service and ordered them out before locking the doors.
“We were having a morning devotion when some people from South East Kenya Field entered the church and headed to the pulpit but when we objected the police were called in and ordered us out,” said Migiro.
According to Migiro, the trouble with Southeast Kenya Field began after they asked them for a pastor for over four years in vain. As a result, the Nairobi Cosmopolitan Conference sent them a cleric to escalate the conflict further.
As of Monday October 25, officials from the Nairobi Cosmolitan Conference said more than 60 churches in the larger South Mugirango area have already joined them.
Nevertheless, NCC leadership has since condemned the incident.
According to the SDA global church leadership, NCC is still illegal and has no right to use its identities anywhere.
Similar sentiments have been voiced by the Central Kenya Conference (CKC) in Karura, Nairobi where the conflict that sparked the contested conference began.
“The Nairobi Metropolitan Conference is not one of the Adventist organizations either in East Kenya Union Conference or West Kenya Union Conference. It has not been processed through the official Adventist channels – the local conference, local union, the divisional and or General Conference,” said a recent statement to the media.
