Monday 26^th. through Thursday 29^th. August, we had very encouraging meetings with delegates who are part of the RBAK in Kenya.

History. Trinity Baptist Church was started in Nairobi in 1978 and the first effort at church planting was in the early 80s in Thimlich in the far south-west corner of Kenya near Lake Victoria. Over the years churches have started in various parts of the country, men have been trained in the course in Nairobi (PTC) and the Association is the desire to stay in meaningful fellowship. The first meeting was in Nairobi in 1998. 23 local churches are in formal membership, which is based on the 1689 Baptist Confession of Faith. Many more are interested in the RBAK and still others are in the planting stage (unconstituted). There are still some others that now have their own registration with the Kenya Government and do not wish to keep the fellowship through the RBAK.

Numbers present. Only 9 of the 23 local churches were represented, most of the rest sending apologies because of inability to raise the transport cost to come to Nairobi. 2 delegates were present from churches seeking membership and there was 1 guest from an unconstituted church.

Programme. We saw a real interest in the Association by those present. It has been thought by some that the RBAK is only for churches that have been registered under Trinity Baptist Church, Nairobi. However, 3 of the 9 represented at the meeting have their own registration, and one of them will host the meetings in 2014 and therefore automatically lead the Association into 2014. We are so thankful the Lord that our fellowship is not based on Government registration but upon our joint confession of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We had sessions on various things presented by various with us in Nairobi taking the lion’s share as we were the hosting church for the year: the central importance of prayer and the ministry of the word in the life of a pastor (David Ngetich & Keith Underhill), the purpose of RBAK (Keith Underhill), giving and church business meetings (Murungi Igweta), church planting (Fred Lodeki), evangelism (Benson Nyamai), church projects (Simon Ochieng).

Decisions. One of the reasons for the existence of the RBAK is to help member churches sort out their problems (cf. Acts 15). One great difficulty in implementing this is the unavailability of funds to move around the country. So we agreed there should be a sum contributed annually according to the number of members in each church, and this would help appointed brethren (2 Cor. 8:19) to travel. We have one such local church where one of the pastors was dismissed but he refuses to accept it and has caused great problems for the past year. One brother offered himself to go to help sort out the situation.

Reports. This is a very important part of the meetings, and we aim to share with you some of the things that were reported in the future on the web site.