Preyer leader: Randy SDA pastor lured church elder’s wife into bed using cash

A sex scandal at the Thika SDA church is at the centre of a High Court case in Nairobi. Peter Mwaura, a church elder, learnt about his wife's affair with Pastor Joshua Njoroge after she confessed in the presence of a district pastor and the elders. The pastor was to be ex-communicated. Instead, the church reinstated him and blamed the elder’s wife.

Upon his own investigations, Mwaura discovered the affair had been going on for three years. As part of the affair, Pastor Njuguna had been sending Mwaura’s wife money, sometimes twice daily through M-pesa.

The sex scandal has seen some elders get threatened and their property vandalised, forcing them to record statements at the DCI. Now the elders are challenging the Executive Committee of Central Kenya Conference, in court.

Ezekiel Kirunya, on behalf of the petitioners, stated that Mwaura, the elder of Holly Hills Seventh Day Adventist Church in Thika, discovered that his wife was having an affair with Njuguna, an official of Central Kenya Conference.
His petition states that, “the local church of Holly Hills held a meeting to discuss the affair by the church elders, who tasked me to be in charge of the case and to establish the circumstances of the matter.”

Kirunya says in his petition that the church board heard the parties concerned and that Mwaura’s wife confessed in the presence of a district pastor and the elders. However, although she sought forgiveness, the love affair continued.
This, he argued, went against church policy and that the former president of the Central Kenya Conference recommended that Mwaura’s wife be dropped from the church register within 14 days.

But “the Executive Committee of the Central Kenya subsequently sat and in a bizarre turn of events, exonerated the erring pastor in what left the Church perturbed by the clear abdication of duty, and ignorance of the rules of fairness and justice,” states the petition.

This was after Mwaura’s wife wrote a letter in July and admitting that the love affair happened and giving the green light for her name to be dropped from the church register. The committee in its finding stated that the first petitioner’s wife was calpable of adultery but “exonerated their own, Joshua Mbugua Njuguna, in very unclear and bewildering manner.”

  After looking into the evidence, the church recommended the pastor be ex-communicated from the SDA church and its leadership and the erring parties be punished according to the provisions of the church manual. Surprisingly, the Executive Committee of Central Kenya Conference sat and exonerated pastor Njuguna for lack of evidence. Mwaura’s wife also received a letter declining her request for her name to be dropped from the church register as her husband’s case had been dismissed.

The CKC president, Pastor Paul Mwangi, recommended that the elder’s wife be punished and Pastor Joshua Njuguna exenorated.
“As members of the Thika Pastoral District, we have come to learn that the pastor had terminated his contract in May due to medical grounds but he was reinstated and is on active payroll.”

The petitioners lament that the SDA Thika church has continued abusing their powers by protecting erring members who are their cronies instead of reprimanding them as per the church manual. Instead, they were victimizing the voices of reason within the church.

On December 1,  the High Court  ordered that “the respondent file and serve their responses within five working days and set mention of the matter for December 14 to confirm compliance."