Rival groups fight for control of Nairobi SDA church

The wrangling seen two years ago in Nairobi over the running of some Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) churches has resurfaced, with the venue this time being the Mountain View church, 16km from the initial battleground.

For the past two Saturdays, two parallel worship sessions were held at the church, near the Kangemi Dam. A video seen by the Nation shows rival groups in a heated exchange in the Ekegusii language.

The scenes are reminiscent of those witnessed at Maxwell Church in Nairobi in July 2019.

As stated in a court case relating to the confrontation, one session has been happening inside the church building while the other took place outside, with the outside party accused of using blaring speakers.

The dispute pits members of the Nairobi Cosmopolitan Conference (NCC) — a splinter group that left Maxwell following months of ugly exchanges — against those allied to the Central Kenya Conference (CKC), which claims to be the proper conference mandated to run the church.

In court, CKC says NCC, registered in 2019, is a company limited by guarantee that was not registered to operate as a church. It adds that NCC is not aligned to the global administrative structure of the SDA church.

On July 2, the NCC leadership filed a case at the High Court in Nairobi seeking orders to stop the rival body from organising prayers at the same venue on grounds that they are infringing their constitutional rights to assemble and worship.

Six days later, Justice Anthony Mrima ordered that the case be heard at the first instance. He ordered that written submissions be made in a week before lawyers for the two sides appear in court on July 20.

In his affidavit, Pastor George Simi, who represents the Mountain View church’s board and who is aligned to the NCC side, says the parallel worship is a threat to peace.

“On July 3 and 10, 2021, groups organised by [the CKC wing] stormed and held a parallel church service outside the Church compound where we fellowship in the main church building. The said persons are intruders and that explains why they are holding the church service outside the main church building,” Mr Simi states.

“The parallel church services held by groups organised by the respondents are disruptive since they mount public address systems 40 metres away from the church building. This is also likely to result to a breach of peace as the members of our church and the ones organised by the respondents are compelled to share the same facilities including washrooms.”

The other party says it has not stormed the church, only that its officials went to the Mountain View building “on invitation”.

“I am aware of my own knowledge that the officers of [the CKC] have only come to Mountain View SDA Church on invitation by the church members,” Robert Ng’wono Obonyo, a church elder at Mountain View, says in an affidavit.

Mr Obonyo adds that the East Kenya Union Conference of the SDA Church, an overseer organ, has attempted to unite the warring factions but the splinter group is resisting reconciliation attempts.

“(They) have persistently remained hostile to the leadership of the SDA Church,” he states.

“Indeed it is true that the membership of the SDA Church are free to join any local conference of the church. However, I state that [NCC] is not a church organisation, cannot run a church organisation and is not a legitimate and/or recognised conference of the SDA Church.”

In response, NCC says it has not claimed to be a church.

“The SDA Church has only one single registration as a Church in Kenya. The NCC, just like the respondents, is a local conference of the Seventh Day Adventist Church,” Mr Morara said in his affidavit.

The July 2 case brought to three the number of court cases pertaining to the fight for control of the SDA church in Nairobi, a church with hundreds of thousands of members.

The East Kenya Union Conference, which has faced turbulence over the past few years, says it had 613,791 members by June 2020.

Another case filed in 2019 in the commercial court in Nairobi is seeking orders to stop the splinter group from using trademarks associated with the SDA church.

Yet another case is at a magistrate’s court in Nairobi and is also couched as a commercial dispute. It was filed in June this year and seeks to stop one party from invading the Mountain View Church.

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