In the late 1960s a committee of business people and missionaries in Nairobi, led by Chris Hindley (manager of Kenya Brooke Bond), rented the main auditorium at City Hall one Saturday per quarter and invited boarding schools to send students to an evangelistic youth rally there. Around 1970 the first Executive Secretary of YFC International, Ray Harrison, made a very significant trip across Africa to make contact with people concerned about youth evangelism. When he got to Kenya he discovered this committee and invited Chris to attend the YFCI Convocation in Cyprus in 1971. At that meeting, Chris met Mel Slack, Overseas Director of Canadian YFC, and asked him to find a Canadian to come to Kenya and assist this committee to develop a YFC ministry. Mel knew Brian & Mary Cummins, who had a background in YFC, and asked them to consider this invitation. Jack Layman, an American missionary and member of the Nairobi committee, went to Calgary Canada and interviewed them. God then led them to accept the call and they arrived in Kenya in May 1972.
They began by helping the committee with the City Hall rallies, setting up an office, raising funds, recruiting staff and developing more ministries under Nairobi YFC as “Ministry Coordinator.” Brian initially worked under Chris Hindley and after his departure from Kenya was responsible to Som Dass, a businessman with Kenya Shell who served on the board as the first national director. Committee/Board members in the early 1970s included Dr. Stephen Talitwala (chair), Solomon Gacece, Joyce Scott, Sam Mbuya, Bert Banzhaf, Fred Odjiambo, Rosemary Ngigi, Livingstone Bbanga, Elfie Japp and others.
John Ellison, a British businessman and a member of the initial committee, moved back to England in late 1972. However, he played a very significant role because he owned one of the upper floor flats at Karuna Close and Brian was able to buy it for YFC with K.Sh. 70,000/ raised from Canadian supporters. John also passed over his P.O. Box 14880 at Westlands, which was a wonderful blessing because there were no mailboxes available there and the waiting list was long. Som Dass lived downstairs and when his family moved to another part of Nairobi a couple of years later he sold his flat to YFC, again for K.Sh. 70,000/ raised from Canada. Initially, the Cummins family lived upstairs and used one room as the office. When the bottom flat was purchased, the office moved downstairs. In 1977, Brian became the Area Director for YFCI, moved his family to Golf Course estate and the two flats at Karuna Close were used by Kenya YFC, with Step magazine occupying the bottom flat as their first office for a while.
The first Kenyan full-time staff person was Gilbert Emonyi, who had been working at the Nairobi Baptist Church office under Rev. Tom Houston. Gilbert’s passion for evangelism and his musical ability made him a very valuable staff member. Hannah Mwangi also joined the staff helping Mary in the office and participating in the early music teams. Our board members provided much assistance and so did a committed team of volunteers led by Macmillan Kiiru. In the early years, board members and volunteers were especially drawn from Nairobi Baptist, St. Andrew’s, the Cathedral, Nairobi Chapel, and AIC Ziwani.
Besides the very popular rallies at City Hall, early ministries included lunch-time clubs at day schools downtown, music team ministries, a followup program using a series of correspondence lessons written by Brian, called “The Great Adventure”, Youth Leaders Training Schools (YLTS) for church youth leaders, Youth Seminars at boarding schools in various towns across Kenya, and a weekly radio program which was carried on VOK and FEBA. The YLTS program was especially valuable for helping churches, with excellent YFC trainers coming from the USA (Art Deyo, Len Rodgers, Gary Dausey), Canada (Buddy Burge), India (Victor Manogarom), and Jamaica (Gerry Gallimore). After a YLTS in Nairobi in 1975, Victor, Gerry and Brian conducted a similar training program in Dodoma for youth leaders across Tanzania.
A volunteer committee in Nakuru had also been holding rallies for a number of years, and they quickly came under the YFC banner. But it was the music team ministry which especially expanded the work beyond Nairobi, becoming a sort of ‘trademark’ of YFC ministry and leading to the development of Kenya YFC. The first ‘touring’ music team, in 1974, consisted of Joseph Ndolo, Hannah, Gracie Kalute, Christine Dodman, and Brian. They visited schools and churches in the Nakuru, Eldoret and Kitale areas for about one week. A staff music team – Gilbert, Hannah and Brian with occasional help from Gracie and Joseph – ministered throughout 1974 and 1975 in clubs, rallies, and weekend seminars mostly around Nairobi but also in Thika, Mombasa, Arusha and the area around Mwanza Tanzania.
Over the next few years, Kenya YFC recorded music team cassettes at Valley Road Church’s studio which were produced by Evangel. But the very first music recording, a 45-rpm record, was done in the living room upstairs at Karuna Close, using a song written by Gilbert (titled, “Fool”) and sung by Lameck Uzele, Hannah and Brian. In 1976 Kenya YFC sent its first music team further afield with a major tour of Zambia (Joseph Ndolo, Norah Kivuva, Rhoda Ondeng, Lameck Uzele) and then Canada (David Nthiwa took Joseph’s place). This team pioneered the way for later “Liberation” music teams which were multi-national in composition, were trained in Kenya, and then ministered under YFCI in Zambia, Nigeria, France, Canada and the U.S.A.
After five years of pioneering ministries with Kenya YFC, Brian moved into a new role in late 1977 as YFCI Area Director for what was then known as Upper Africa. The Kenya board appointed David Nthiwa as its first fulltime national director, and he moved into Karuna Close and managed the office and ministries from there. However, the relationship between Kenya YFC and the YFCI Area remained close with Kenya providing the foundational base for wider ministries like international music teams, Step magazine and Area-wide training.
– Brian Cummins (November 2008)