Presbyterian Church of East Africa

Presbyterian Church of East Africa
Classification	Protestant
Theology	Reformed
Governance	Presbyterian
Leader	Rt. Rev. Julius Guantai Mwamba
Associations	World Communion of Reformed Churches, World Council of Churches, National Council of Churches
Region	Kenya
Founder	Thomas Watson
Origin	1891 Kenya
Branched from	Church of Scotland
Congregations	1,000 and 310 parishes and hundreds of house fellowships
Members	4,000,000
Primary schools	dozens
Secondary schools	dozens

Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA) is a Presbyterian denomination headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. In Kenya, 10% of the population is Presbyterian. It was started by missionaries from Scotland, most notable of whom was Dr John Arthur. It has its headquarters in Nairobi South C.

The story of the Presbyterian Church of East Africa (PCEA) begins with a business company, when in 1889 Sir William Mackinnon and Mr. Alexander Low Bruce, made private plans for a Scottish Mission among the Kamba and Maasai and later to the Kikuyu people. In 1891, at the invitation of the late Sir William Mackinnon, Mr. A.L. Bruce and other directors of the Imperial British East Africa Company, a band of Missionaries left London for British East Africa. These were Mr. Thomas Watson, Evangelist Mr. John Greig, Mr. John Linton, Mr. C.M.A Rahman and were met at Mombasa by Dr. Moffat. The party was later in the year joined by Dr. James Stewart of Lovedale, South Africa, who became the leader of the Mission. These missionaries arrived in Kibwezi in October of the same year and established a mission under the name of the "East African Scottish Mission". In 1892, the first temporary Church at Kibwezi was opened by Dr. James Stewart, and also the first School with two pupils.

In 1893 mission work was strengthened by the arrival of Mr. John Paterson who introduced basic agriculture and the first coffee seeds.

Owing to the infestation of Kibwezi by Malaria and the subsequent loss of life of Missionaries, Mr. Thomas Watson visited Dagoretti in 1894 to explore possibilities of transferring the mission station. In 1898 the missionaries moved from Kibwezi to Dagoretti where they constituted themselves as the "Church of Scotland Mission" (CMS). In 1900 Watson died of pneumonia at Kikuyu. Other notable CSM missionaries of this period include Revd Dr John Arthur, who worked with the Alliance of Protestant Missions.

When the mission was handed over to the Church of Scotland, it found believers among the Kikuyu people through the work of its stations at Kikuyu and Tumutumu (1908) and among the Meru people in Chuka, and Mwimbi, and among the people of Imenti through its work at Chogoria (1915).

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