ABOUT
ON BOARD
A Texas U.S.A. based 501(c)3 organization and a registered Kenyan Society.
MISSION & HISTORY.
On Board Ministry's basic mission has not changed since it's creation. We train pastors, lay leaders, and called-ministers in a low-cost, introductory, and foundational understanding of the true Gospel and Biblical doctrine.
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After many years of joining and leading mission trips to east Africa, it became clear to Rev. Dallas Turner that local churches were being established all over the coastal regions of Kenya, but few had trained pastors. Unbelievably, some churches had sizable congregations, yet the pastor had never even owned a Bible. This is a natural development when becoming clergy immediately increases ones stature in the community, and when stories and traditions are effortlessly circulated through an oral society. For those pastors truly called and with Godly intentions, many times education either cost too much to obtain or classes were held too far away from their livelihoods to be possible to attend.
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In 2000, Dallas and his wife Alexia, were called to form On Board Ministry to offer a path of education at a low-cost, taught by other Kenyans, and offered in smaller local groups. Using a condensed version of a Bachelor of Theology degree authored and authorized-for-use by Dr. Alvin Low, Dallas set out to train the trainers. Organizing a Board of Directors and forming a 501(c)3 entity, the Lord saw fit to fund the ministry without any fundraising efforts.
Beyond our core purpose, while teaching our curriculum, OBM sees men and women mature in the Word, and the ministry then helps those men who have been called to full-time, or nearly full-time, ministry to plant churches in the region. OBM's training and church planting mission focus is only in the four lower coastal counties of Kenya (Kilifi, Taita-Taveta, Kwale, and Mombasa).
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After many years and hundreds of pastors trained, Dan and Tonya Trantham joined the ministry in 2017 to focus on the strategic intentions of the ministry. Church planting and pastor training over the previous 17 years had been viewed as providing a solid resource to locals and encouraging the course graduates in their pastorship. Since OBM is not a domination, ongoing training focuses on providing the tools and the training for the church plants to mature in local congregational governance. In addition, OBM's Kenyan Society ensures no local church is left without an organized association of sister churches for their leadership, being able to continue their professional education while providing accountability for one another.
CHALLENGES.
Any Christian left to their own is subject to drifting from their foundation. That's one of the tenet purposes of the local church: edification through fellowship. In Kenya, the rampant spread of the word-of-faith movements and the perceived benefit of the so-called prosperity gospel, including the allure of charismatic teachings, tribal traditions of animism or ancestor worship, and of course the proximity to the Arabian peninsula causes good doctrine to become polluted and then further disseminated.
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OBM must further educate, reinforce, and encourage our church planting graduates to ensure what was taught is practiced both today and tomorrow.
THE MINISTRY.
For that reason, OBM has four main pillars of our ministry. Our core mission: OBM School of Theology, our natural availability to Church Plant, the intention to conduct on-going bi-monthly Continuing Education Conferences, and Summer Group Trips designed to encourage community outreach of one of our recent plants.
ORGANIZATION & MANAGEMENT.
On Board Ministry is a 501(C)(3) nonprofit registered in the United States under EIN: 74-2931569 based in Keller, Texas. OBM operates in Kenya as the registered society Turner OBM Ministries under SOC/58215 based Kisumu, Kenya.
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Presently OBM's management model is not to fund full-time North American missionaries in-country. Instead, OBM's use of funds are that on-average 61% of all donations go to direct pastor support, 26% goes to travel expenses for USA leadership, 8% to CE Conference expenses, and 5% to administrative costs. Administrative expenses consists of anything from Kenyan government costs to printing costs here in the United States.
OBM's training and church planting mission focus is only in the four lower coastal counties of Kenya (Kilifi, Taita-Taveta, Kwale, and Mombasa).