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A Brief History CMI in Kenya

CMI was founded in 1996 to facilitate the ministries of Randy, Becky, Nichole and Joel Coates among the people of East Africa. In 1997 we left careers in accounting and teaching in Atlanta, Georgia to move to Kenya and immediately took up the task of church planting. Together with our African brothers and sisters, we have planted 18 churches throughout the country.

Cornerstone and Dr. Kamau

In Kenya, we partner with Kenyans.  Our mandate is to work alongside (not above) our African brothers and sisters to facilitate the work of reaching the unreached throughout East Africa.  In 1997 Dr. Francis Kamau (a close friend of the Coates family since studying together at Fuller Seminary) and Randy registered an independent Church organization in Kenya. The resulting churches are known as Cornerstone Faith Assembly Churches (not affiliated with Assemblies of God).

Francis Kamau was formerly a leader with the Kenya Assemblies of God (KAG). He responded to God’s call to leave KAG and begin an independent ministry with a focus on reaching the unreached people in Kenya and beyond.  This vision fit perfectly with the aims of CMI so it was an ideal partnership. Dr. Kamau is the chairman of the Kenyan Organization.  Randy sits as the only non-Kenyan on the board of directors and operates in Kenya as a missionary under the authority of Cornerstone.  Cornerstone is not legally connected to any other ministry organization in Kenya, the US or elsewhere including CMI, yet the vast majority of CMI’s ministry  occurs under the umbrella of Cornerstone.

Church Planting

Our first church was established in Nairobi (Kenya’s capitol) in the living room of the Coates house in 1998.  The Cornerstone offices were destroyed when al-Qaeda terrorists bombed the United States Embassy in August. Our offices were directly across from the Embassy.  Bombed out offices and a quickly growing home-church lead us to relocate into one of the most densely populated areas of Nairobi next to the massive Kibera slum (Africa’s largest). 

Our Nairobi church has quickly grown to nearly twelve-hundred people.  Francis Kamau is the senior pastor of the church.  Randy serves as an associate pastor and Becky is the Children’s Ministry director—overseeing and serving some 40 co-workers and approximately 200 kids weekly.

While Dr. Kamau has continued to serve as ministry chairman and pastor of the Nairobi church, Randy assumed leadership of evangelism and church planting efforts for Cornerstone.  It is to this purpose that the vast majority of CMI’s financial resources have been directed since the year 1999.

After two years of establishing the “mother congregation” we embarked on our first church plants.  Our model of survey, prayer, evangelism, discipleship, and leadership development gave rise to three rapidly growing church plants among the most un-churched regions of central Kenya.

In 2000 we turned our attention to the heart of the CMI and Cornerstone purpose statements—reaching the unreached. We have since planted thirteen thriving churches among the semi-nomadic Turkana in remote regions of Northern Kenya.